Fred Klonsky has an excellent summary and hilarious critique of Mike Petrilli’s review of “Reign of Error.”

Mike suggests that I was “a double agent,” hiding in plain sight in rightwing think tanks for thirty years, so I could one day exposé them.

This is funny.

Checker Finn and I founded the Educational Excellence Network in 1981. We published screeds about declining standards for years. Note: That is when my work as a double agent began. When Checker joined the Reagan administration, I took over his role as leader of the Network. Aha, I had to double down on our criticism of the schools to hide my secret identity.

Checker recommended me to Lamar Alexander, who invited me to take Checker’s old job as Assistant Secretary in charge of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and Counselor to the Secretary. Wow, I was really embedded in the belly of the beast.

After leaving government, I spent nearly two years at Brookings (warning sign of double agent!), turned down the offer to hold the Brown Chair in education (now held by Grover “Russ” Whitehurst, head of education for George W. Bush, who fired me from my unpaid fellowship at Brookings in 2012), and returned to Brooklyn in 1994 and a research professorship at New York University. For a time, it appeared that my days as a double agent were over.

But opportunity soon knocked, and I was paid to be a fellow at the rightwing Manhattan Institute, on whose behalf I went to Albany to testify on behalf of charter schools. The legislation passed, demonstrating that my bona fides as a double agent were in good standing.

Also, after I left government service, all the while pretending to believe in testing, accountability, competition, and choice, I wrote several articles advocating these policies to maintain the pretense. More important, I was a founding member of Checker Finn’s Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (now called Institute, for tax purposes).

I was also a founding member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution, which consisted of the creme de la creme of the conservative intelligentsia. Now firmly established as a genuine rightwing critic of our failing public schools, I learned all the inside secrets. Nirvana for a double agent! I learned that most of my colleagues hated unions (I already knew that); I learned that testing was the sine qua non of education policy (I knew that too); I learned that the answer to educational malaise was unregulated choice. (No surprise.) I loved the lavish parties, the great wines, I actually liked and enjoyed my colleagues.

But, finally, after thirty years as a double agent, the burden of duplicity became too great.

I had to confess that I preferred children to plutocrats.

I had to confess that I had no faith in the transformative power of unregulated choice (especially after the economic meltdown of 2008).

I realized I could not betray my origins as a graduate of the Houston public schools.

I lost my faith, if faith it was. I blew my cover with the publication of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Author Steve Brill said I sold out for the speaking fees that unions would surely shower on me. How clever of me to plan so far in advance. After many years as a double agent, I laughed at Brill’s theory. I knew where the real money was–and when I blew my cover, so well hidden for thirty years, I knew I was leaving behind the Hoover Institution, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and so many others willing to pay handsome fees to those they trust.

After my cover as a double agent was gone, I made a series of recommendations that Mike Petrilli ridiculed as pie in the sky:

Klonsky writes:

“Petrilli sneers:

“The skeptical, hard-nosed (if biased and data-slanting) Ravitch of the first half of her book turns into a pie-in-the-sky dreamer in the second half.

“Consider her “solutions”:

“1. Provide good prenatal care for every pregnant woman.

“2. Make high-quality early-childhood education available to all children.

“3. Make sure every school has a “full, balanced, and rich curriculum.”

“4. Reduce class sizes.

“5. Provide medical and social services to the poor.

“6. Devise actionable strategies and specific goals to reduce racial segregation and poverty.

“(She lists five other “solutions” that simply amount to rolling back reforms: Ban for-profit charters and charter chains; eliminate high-stakes standardized testing; don’t allow “non-educators” to be teachers, principals, or superintendents; don’t allow mayoral control of the schools; don’t view education as a “consumer good.”)”

Klonsky comments:

“That’s what Petrilli considers pie-in-the-sky.

“To me it sounds like a recipe for quality schools.”