Diane Ravitch to Keynote AACTE Welcoming Session
This post also appeared on the AACTE Annual Meeting site.
AACTE’s 66th Annual Meeting will kick off March 1, 2014, with a Welcoming Session featuring Diane Ravitch.
A research professor of education at New York University, Ravitch recently published a book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools—which argues that the crisis in American education is not a crisis of academic achievement, but of the destruction of public schools across the country—that landed in the number 10 spot on the New York Times Best Seller list.
In addition to blogging at Education Week, Politico.com, and The Huffington Post, Ravitch also runs her own widely read blog at dianeravitch.net.
Drawing on over 40 years of research and experience, Ravitch champions public schools across the country and critiques today’s most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the proliferation of charter schools. Long one of the strongest advocates for testing and accountability, Ravitch reversed her position in her influential book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, which laid the groundwork for her current book.
As assistant secretary of education and counselor to U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander from 1991-1993, Ravitch led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards. Appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board in 1997 and reappointed in 2001, she oversaw the National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as the nation’s report card.
A prolific writer, Ravitch has published more than 500 articles and reviews for scholarly and popular productions, as well as numerous books. Internationally acclaimed for her expertise on past and present education, Ravitch has lectured around the world, including at AACTE’s Annual Meeting in 2007.
Ravitch was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education (1979), the Society of American Historians (1984), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985); she also was named Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences (2002). In 1984-85, she became the first person from the field of education studies to be selected as a Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar.
Her many awards include the Leadership Award of the New York City Council of Supervisors and Administrators (2004) and the John Dewey Award from the United Federation of Teachers of New York City (2005). A graduate of the Houston public schools, she received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1975.
For more information on Ravitch, visit dianeravitch.com.
Mark your calendars! You won’t want to miss Diane Ravitch’s Welcoming Session at AACTE’s 66th Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, March 1, 2014.
