My memoirs will be officially published on October 20! But the book is available now in stores and online!

The book is titled AN EDUCATION: HOW I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT SCHOOLS AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

Please join me as I discuss the book with Leonie Haimson at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Diane Ravitch on “An Education,” with Leonie Haimson

Tue, Oct 21 2025

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Brooklyn Heights Library, Multipurpose Room

 

Join us to hear Diane Ravitch discuss her new book, An Education, with Leonie Haimson.

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She denounced privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality.

In this intimate and timely memoir of her life’s work as a historian and advocate, Ravitch traces her ideological evolution. She recounts her personal and intellectual journey: her childhood in Houston, her years among the New York intelligentsia, her service in government, and her leftward turn. Ravitch shares how she came to hold conservative views and why she eventually abandoned them, exploring her switch from championing standards-based curriculum and standardized testing to arguing for greater investment in professional teachers and in public schools. Bringing together candid reflections with decades of research on education, Ravitch makes a powerful case for becoming, as she calls herself, “an activist on behalf of public schools.”

Books will be available for purchase from Greenlight Bookstore.

Diane Ravitch was a Research Professor of Education at New York University from 1995-2020 and is a historian of education. She worked on education policy in both George H. W. Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s administrations. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education (NPE) and she is the author of two dozen books including Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945– 1980 (1983), Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2013). Ravitch posts regularly about American education policy on her widely read blog.

Leonie Haimson is the founder and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a non-profit organization that advocates for smaller classes in NYC and the nation as a whole. In June 2022, in part because of the organization’s advocacy, NY State passed a law requiring that NYC schools phase-in smaller classes in all grades. She serves on the board of the Network for Public Education, is a member of the New York State Data Privacy Advisory Committee and was appointed to NYC Department of Education Working Groups on class size, student privacy and AI. She has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Good Day NY, CBS, WNBC News, NPR, and Democracy Now, has written op-eds for numerous publications, and co-hosts a weekly WBAI radio show and podcast called “Talk Out of School.”

diane ravitch
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