Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Book Forum

Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University and renowned education historian, has long been at the forefront of national discussions on education policy and politics. In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, March 2010), Ms. Ravitch charges that school reform is on the wrong track. She further argues that charter schooling and test-based accountability will not improve American education and that there are multiple reasons for low achievement, including the absence of a sound and coherent curriculum. Her stark indictment and own change of heart on many of these issues offers a chance to assess the assumptions and evidence that undergird today’s most visible education debates.

Please join us to hear Ms. Ravitch present the ideas in her new book. Immediately following her presentation, AEI resident scholar and director of education policy studies Frederick M. Hess moderated a discussion featuring William A. Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; AEI visiting scholar Mark Schneider, former national commissioner of education statistics and currently vice president at the American Institutes for Research; and Dennis Van Roekel, president of the 3.2-million-member National Education Association.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess



  • An educator, political scientist and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including “The Same Thing Over and Over,” “Education Unbound,” “ Common Sense School Reform,” “ Revolution at the Margins” and “Spinning Wheels,” and he pens the Education Week blog, Rick Hess Straight Up. His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, National Affairs, The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic and National Review. He has edited widely cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public School Charters as well as on the boards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.


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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Lauren Aronson
    Phone: 202-862-5904
    Email: lauren.aronson@aei.org

 

Mark
Schneider

  • Mark Schneider is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute  and Vice President at the American Institutes for Research, based in Washington DC. Prior to joining AIR, he served as the U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics from 2005-2008. He is also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author and editor of numerous article and books on education policy, including the forthcoming book Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 20120),  Higher Education Accountability (Palgrave, 2010),  Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? (Princeton University Press, 2007), and  Choosing Schools (Princeton University Press, 2000), which won the Policy Study Organization’s Aaron Wildavsky Best Book Award. Schneider has been working to increase accountability by making data on college productivity more publicly available. To that end, he is one of the creators of www.collegemeasures.org and serves as the president of College Measures LLC, a joint venture of AIR and Matrix Knowledge Group.


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  • Phone: 2024035510
    Email: mark.schneider@aei.org
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