I have yet to read Diane Ravitch’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I highly recommend Checker Finn’s review of the book here. In the book, Ravitch renounces past support for performance pay, charter schools, scholarships, tax credits, and the like.
Finn writes,
She would undo most if not all of the “structural” reforms that have been put in place in recent years–mayoral control, performance-based pay, charter laws and other choice schemes, reliance on entrepreneurship and market incentives, federal efforts to incentivize and prod the system to change in constructive directions, testing- and results-based accountability and more. She would, instead, look to the “great American school system” and a (somehow) renewed culture and family structure to do right by our children.
There has always been a nod to central planning in Ravitch’s work, but it appears that she is now fully committed to the project.
