Diane Ravitch Attacked

by Edd Doerr

Diane Ravitch's important new book Reign of Error, which I reviewed quite favorably on several blogs on Sept 5, hit the bookstores on Sept 17. But the conservative attacks on her defense of public education and critiques of the school pseudo-reformers have begun in earnest. One of them, by conservative hack columnist Kyle Smith, appeared on Sept 15 in Rupert Murdoch's sleazy New York Post.

Here is the response I sent to the Post: "Kyle  Smith's smear of Diane Ravitch's book Reign of Error is unworthy of The Post. Ravitch offers positive recommendations for improving our public schools while exposing the fallacies and foibles of the pseudo-reformers. Ravitch's opposition to school privatazation is supported by more than two-thirds of Americans, as shown by the 2013 Gallup/PDK poll and 27 statewide referendum elections from coast to coast. Smith ignores the 2/013 Stanford CREDO report showing that two-thirds of charter schools are either worse than of no better than regular public schools, despite their skimming advantage."

Letters to editors are necessarily very brief and polite. The Post on Sept 17 printed only my second sentence, along with my name and identification as president of Americans for Religious Liberty, but they also printed two longer letters from New Yorkers  defending Ravitch.

As the attacks on Ravitch and her book will surely be widespread, readers of this blog might care to email me (arlinc@verizon.net) such attacks. I will be happy to try to respond to them.