Reign Of Error - Diane Ravitch's New Book

Diane Ravitch has a new book out today.

It's called Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools and you can purchase it here.

There will be many reviews in the education blogosphere today for the book and you should try and read as many as you can, post them on Facebook, Twitter and the like.

The book deserves to be read far and wide.

In a defense I wrote of Ravitch and her book after the NY Post launched a vitriolic attack against her, I wrote the following:

In the book, which I just finished reading, Ravitch very carefully lays out the history of the education reform movement going back to "A Nation At Risk" and shows how the underlying linchpin to so much of the rhetoric, so many of the reforms, has been to undercut the public schools in people's minds and promote choice, vouchers, merit pay, online schools. Teach for America, and charters.

Ravitch then presents the problems with the reforms promoted by the corporate education reform movement, shows how they never have worked and presents real reforms that while costly and not 100% guaranteed (because nothing in life is 100% guaranteed), work in the places they are applied - early childhood education, schools with full and rich curricula, experienced teachers and school staff, rich full programs in the arts, fully-funded libraries, well-maintained school campuses, wrap around services for physical and emotional health, and small class sizes.

You can read the rest of that review here.

Buy the book.

Read the book.

Link to the book.

Help people outside of the education blogosphere, outside of education activism, to learn about the hoax that is being perpetrated on America by the reformers.

I'm getting a couple of copies for my family to read, since many of them only know about education issues from watching Oprah or The Today Show.

Those are the people we want to read this book and to become familiar with Ravitch's arguments.

Those are the people the reformers want to keep fooled into believing charter schools, merit pay, online schooling, firing teachers and all the other corporate reforms they are promoting make the system better rather than push it toward their ultimate goal - privatization.