Paul Horton is a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School and a passionate supporter of public education. Here he reviews Reign of Error.
He calls his review “The One Percent’s Solution and the Betrayal of Public Education.”
That is a good summary of the book right there.
Horton traces the nation’s commitment to public education to its earliest days:
After the Revolution, but before the ratification of the Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance set aside a portion of land sales in the Northwest territories, now the Midwest, to build and fund public schools, beginning a 325 year commitment to public education from the national government.
After briefly outlining the federal role in education, Horton writes:
This historic commitment to public Education has been now been abandoned by the George W. Bush and the Obama Administrations. Moreover this abandonment represents a tectonic shift that most of the public does not understand.
The earthquakes and trimmers occur in public opinion only when parents begin to understand the devastating effects of standardized testing that is being used as a political bludgeon on the children of America to justify the destruction of public education in the United States.
This abandonment of public education is the subject of Diane Ravitch’s brilliant new book: Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
Ms. Ravitch’s book should be read by every American parent, teacher, and school administrator because together these groups must join together to form a movement to resist the anti-democratic “reforms” that have been imposed on the American public education system with virtually no public hearings or due process.
A combination of private foundations, liberal and conservative think tanks, consultants from McKinsey, and Federal officials, according to Ravitch, have supported the private takeover of the public schools. If left unchallenged, says Ravitch, the public school system will soon reach a tipping point where quality public schools will no longer be able to compete with private schools. Public school funding is being gutted by privatization schemes.
He notes that the Obama administration doubled down on the George W. Bush administration’s failed policies of testing, accountability, and choice. Decisions were made by consulting officials on loan from the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and others who had little experience in the trenches of public education. It is a sad and sorry tale.
He concludes:
Ms. Ravitch’s new book, Reign of Error is the best way to educate yourself about the takeover of our educational system by billionaires who, even if they are well-intentioned, do not understand what they are doing. She encourages us not to wait until our children’s scores fall thirty to forty percent on standardized tests to read this book. Rather, we must educate ourselves and others so that we can understand why a test company that produces shoddy products is going to destroy the confidence of our children to advance the misguided policies of the Obama administration that have already failed. Ms. Ravitch’s book is a moral laser beam aimed at the conscience of the American public: there is nothing as morally perverse as educational leaders who applaud that fact that seventy present of the students in one state can fail a test so that they can call for the “death penalty” for more public schools so that Wall Street bundlers and other billionaires can make more money and pay fewer taxes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am so thankful for Diane’s book, to lay out it clearly.
I am also stunned at some of the bad business practices followed by the folks who have led us down this road. I am but a music teacher, but I read a lot and take courses in subjects that are foreign to me. In “Executive Decision Making” I learned that escalation of commitment, implicit favorites, person sensitivity (in this case the wealthy or an association with the wealthy for vanity reasons or financial gain), hindsight bias and confirmation traps are bad routes to take in making decisions. And they all seem to be what is controlling the decisions in RttT.
Why don’t the people who are actually in business and trained in it see this?
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“This historic commitment to public Education has been now been abandoned by the George W. Bush and the Obama Administrations.”
That sentence sums up what has been happening.
The public education system of the United States is one of the glories of the world. It has been an astonishing success, largely because federal and state governments redistributed resources to enable equitable education AND THEN LEFT PEOPLE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL ALONE TO CARRY OUT THAT JOB.
Given the success of our public education system, and given the public trust in our officials to maintain that system, the attack on public education by our federal government, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, can only be described as shocking nonfeasance. What we have seen from these two administrations is ideologically driven radicalism and heedlessness.
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It’s interesting, though, that many people I talk to (age 50-70) have a distrust that states on down will do what they should for education. My principal thinks that without RttT, mediocrity would take over.
Interesting, though, that she is a minority and not a native English speaker and so sometimes I wonder is that mentality born out of a mistrust of other races? Does she fear that without RttT standards to hold her teachers to (who are all white except one, I might add) that somehow age-old WASP mentalities would still rule? It is worth wondering about. It is my reality, so I can’t help but wonder about it. (She is a wonderful administrator, but I notice she is pretty well convinced by RttT).
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Innovation occurs when different visions compete with one another, not when there is top-down, authoritarian control. It’s ironic that a lot of business types support the standards-and-testing regime given that it violates their basic principles. There was a lot of innovation in pedagogy and curricula occurring before NCLB put state standards on steroids. Now, the dosage of the “performance-enhancing drug” of standards-and-testing is to be dramatically increased yet again. And the result is going to be a cancer upon our schools.
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Ask her if she is Broad trained or former TFA. She is certainly ambitious. To rise in any organization, one must parrot the part line. We had a lot of excellence before RTTT.
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