The blog of The Assailed Teacher offers one of the best,
most
thoughtful reviews of the book I have read. The
writer is a history teacher and demonstrates the care and concern for context
that typifies the best historical thinking. First, he describes the books I wrote previous to “Reign of Error” and previous to my abandonment of the nostrums of the right.
Thankfully, he recognizes that my historical works prior to 2010 were not political tracts. “The
Great School Wars” (1974) was a history of the great controversies
that shaped the New York City public schools. “Left Back” ((2000)
was a history of battles over the curriculum. He doesn’t mention
it, but my 2003 book, “The Language Police” was an analysis of the
way that pressure groups of the left and the right were censoring
tests and textbooks. Although I was part of rightwing think tanks
at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in D.C. and the Hoover
Institution in California, my books were nonpartisan.
The Assailed Teacher then analyzes some of the unfriendly reviews of the book
and shows how they distort my plain language in “Reign of Error.”
He concludes:
“What Diane Ravitch has accomplished in Reign of
Error is a distillation of everything that is wrong with what has
been dubbed education reform. All of the facts and arguments are
laid out in plain language backed up with compelling evidence, or
“data”, as the reformers love to say. She has hoist the reformers
with their own petard by measuring their failures with the same
yardstick with which they have been measuring public schools: test
scores. In 100 or 200 years, Reign of Error will be an invaluable
primary source about this episode in America’s educational history.
She has rolled up into one convenient book the spirit of our
educational times. This is why the criticisms of Reign of Error
that have been proffered impotently melt away when one starts
analyzing them. Their view is to push a narrow agenda now. Ravitch
obviously wrote this book with one eye on the long view of things,
both the history of the past and the history of now that has yet to
be written.
“Just like Diane Ravitch helped me construct my view of
American schooling almost 10 years ago, she has helped deconstruct
what education reform is about. Moreover, she has pointed the way
towards how to reconstruct our public schools.”
If any self-dubbed reformer tries to get under my skin with barbed words, I will
reread the Assailed Teacher and remind myself that historians write
for the long term, not the moment. They deconstruct the issues of
the day and try to put them into context. If they succeed, their
words survive. If they don’t, they are soon forgotten. The virtue
of studying history is that we are constantly reminded that history
does not move in a straight line. Bad ideas are found out and fall
away. Good ideas don’t always triumph, but we must never abandon
our quest to figure out how to improve our society. We must believe
that expanding our democracy is a goal worth pursuing. And in
believing it, we can make it happen. Thanks, Assailed Teacher.
Please feel appreciated, not assailed, today.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Assailed Teacher is one of the best blogs out there. I am glad it is receiving national attention with this post.
If you only read Diane’s last paragraph about this review, you will have gained wisdom. And if you happen to also read the paragraph Diane quotes from the Assailed Teacher’s review you have powerful words to carry what we believe into the current battle.
What Dr. Ravitch has done with “Reign of Error” is essentially what Larry Kusche did in 1972 when he wrote “Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved”. A reference librarian, Kusche thoroughly researched each of the mysterious disappearances attributed to the super-natural in the “Bermuda Triangle” and when he was finished something rather profound became evident: there was no need to invoke the super-natural or unknown forces to account for any of the disappearances that had created the mystique and intrigue.
While it may be too early to assess the long-term impact of “Reign of Error”, in a similar vein, Dr. Ravitch directs her attention to each of the myths of the failing US schools that have been proposed to destroy public education in the US and dismantles those myths with actual data and facts. My hope is that once the hot air is let out of each of these myths (if you tell them over and over, they must be true . . . ) their collapse can allow for meaningful reform that includes the much larger social forces at work in US society today without the continued need to bash public schools, the administrators, teachers and staff AND the students.
There is no Bermuda Triangle Mystery today – may there be no corporate reform movement to privatize education in the near future.
I asked a friend after the Wednesday Chicago Teachers Union meeting whether Diane Ravitch would he asked to speak to the American Federation of Teachers convention in July 2014 in Los Angeles. With a smile, my friend said, “She should be the keynote speaker.” We will see. Diane spoke to the AFT convention ten years ago in Los Vegas after the publication of “The Language Police.” Both book and speech were good. (I heard the one; read the other). By 2010, when the Chicago Teachers Union’s newly elected leadership arrived for the AFT convention in Seattle, the AFT reached a low point. In a town where any historian could tell you the labor and union histories were enormous (and well respected), the AFT featured the plutocratic union-buster Bill Gates. Not only did the AFT leaders fete Gates, but they ordered some of their myrmidons to cheer him loudly after the noisome speech, in order to drown out the boos.
I enjoyed getting some classic photographs of Gates (and have used them for years), and then some of us spent time with Seattle labor historians. But we would be well on the road to correcting that serious error if in Los Angeles were had Diane Ravitch back to speak to the AFT delegates from around the world. We could also then add some history of the labor movements in California and the Pacific islands for good measure. Our younger brothers and sisters need to learn not only current events (Reign of Error is a great start) but the history of our struggles, from Port Chicago to Vancouver and across the the organizing of the plantation workers of Hawaii (diversity challenges were central to that one).