Evaluating Education Reform: An evening with Ravitch, Hanushek, Darling-Hammond, Cook, and Schrag
An evening with Diane Ravitch focused on her just-released book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (Knopf, 2013).
In Reign of Error, Ravitch argues against privatization and for public education, and in a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, puts forth a plan for what can be done to preserve and improve public education. In her lecture, she will discuss the topics she addresses in her book, including the strengths of U.S. education, how policy makers are failing to address the root causes of educational failure, and how to effectively address the challenges.
A moderated discussion followed, featuring Ravitch; Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University; Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford and founding director of SCOPE; and Channa Mae Cook, former principal and teacher and current Stanford doctoral student. Peter Schrag, former editorial page editor and columnist for the Sacramento Bee, will moderate.
Participant bios
Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University. From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education; from 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. She has authored numerous books, including Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (2013), and The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010). She is an honorary life trustee of the New York Public Library and a former Guggenheim Fellow. She was a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University) from 1999 to 2009. She was a member of the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation from 1996 to 2009. She blogs at dianeravitch.net. Web site.
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. Her research and policy work focus on issues of educational equity, teaching quality, and school reform. In 2008, she served as director of President Obama's education policy transition team. Her book, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine our Future, received the coveted Grawemeyer Award in 2012. Her most recent book is Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Really Matters for Effectiveness and Improvement (2013). Full bio.
Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues with his work frequently entering into the design of national and international educational policy. His research spans such diverse areas as the impact of teacher quality, high stakes accountability, equity, and efficiency in school finance, and class size reduction along with the role of cognitive skills in international growth and development. His pioneering analysis measuring teacher quality through growth in student achievement forms the basis for current research into the value-added of teachers and schools. His most recent book, Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School (2013), describes the cost to the U.S. of not improving its schools. Web site.
Channa Mae Cook taught high school English and was a literacy coach in Los Angeles Unified School District before she went to New Orleans in 2007 and co-founded Sojourner Truth Academy — an open-enrollment high school designed to prepare students for both college and community leadership through a social justice framework. Cook served as principal from the school's inception until July of 2011. She is now a doctoral student at Stanford, studying race, inequality, and language in education.
Peter Schrag (moderator) served for 19 years as editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee and is a former executive editor of Saturday Review magazine. After his retirement from the Bee in 1996 he continued to write a weekly column for the paper until 2009. He has written for the Atlantic, Harper’s, the Nation,the New Republic, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Playboy, the American Prospect and other publications. He is the author of Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future (New Press, 1998; University of California Press, 1999; a New York Times Notable Book), Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America’s Schools (New Press, 2003), California: America’s High-Stakes Experiment (University of California Press, 2006), and Not Fit for our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America (University of California Press, 2011). He served as a director of EdSource and on the advisory council of the Public Policy Institute of California.
