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The Death and Life of the Great American School System
How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
In this critique of American education reform, historian and former federal education official Diane Ravitch reassesses policies she once supported. She argues that standards-based reform lost its educational purpose when standards became inseparable from high-stakes testing, sanctions, and numerical targets. She also questions whether charter schools, school choice, mayoral control, private management, and business-style accountability can deliver the broad improvements their advocates promise. Drawing on federal policy and reform campaigns in cities including New York and San Diego, Ravitch examines how incentives can narrow curricula, encourage manipulation of results, destabilize schools, and weaken trust in teachers. The book is both a policy argument and an intellectual self-correction: Ravitch explains why she changed her mind about central elements of the reform movement. Her alternative emphasizes a coherent curriculum, knowledgeable teachers, strong neighborhood schools, app…