Diane Ravitch Quotes

27 quotes in 485 categories

• Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions
• Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should…
• Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.
• The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail,…
• What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of…
• American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may…
• Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play…
• You can't lead your troops if your troops do not trust you.
• Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.
• Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.
• There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest…
• Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department
• If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the…
• American education has been littered with failed fads and foolish ideas for the past century.
• When you succeed at keeping almost everyone in school, you must figure out ways to educate everyone you keep in school.
• The ladder was there, from the gutter to the university, and for those stalwart enough to ascend it, the schools were a boon and a…
• Those who can’t teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers.
• Testing children until they cry is a bad idea. It is an educational malpractice.
• The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.
• Research does not support any part of Race to the Top

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