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Diane Ravitch, the education historian and best-selling author, borrowed her title from Jane Jacobs, the chronicler of urban planning.

And it looks like Ravitch’s publisher borrowed the cover art for her latest book from a novel published not too long ago — about a one-room schoolhouse. The two books side by side:

Last week, a Teach for America alumnus, one-time KIPP teacher, and Harlem charter school founder declared that he does not believe in education “reform” — at least as it’s currently imagined. That’s despite the fact that Marc Waxman, who has moved to Denver since founding the Future Leaders Institute, is on the verge of opening a second charter school.

In the piece, published by Education News Colorado, Waxman said that the education historian Diane Ravitch’s public change-of-heart — in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” — moved him to make his own views public. He wrote:

It’s not that I agree with everything Ravitch says.  It’s just that I felt like it was a courageous act on her part to write it.  Frankly, it was inspiring and motivating.

Now, Diane Ravitch has responded to Waxman in a letter published in our Community section and on Education News Colorado. Read it here.

Also of note, from Ravitch’s stuffed speaking schedule, is news that she will address an audience of KIPP and Teach for America educators next month. Her calendar item:

October 14, 2010 (Houston): KIPP, Teach for America, and Rice Education Entrepreneurship Programs, Ley Student Center at Rice University, Grand Hall, 7:10–7:50 p.m. (open to the public).

Diane Ravitch offered a first look at her new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” at a GothamSchools event in December where she explained that seeing education theories play out in reality caused her to change her mind about standardized testing, school choice, and the entire notion of “accountability.”

Today, the book officially hit shelves, after receiving a spate of favorable reviews in major newspapers. People who have been following Ravitch’s transformation in recent years will find much of her argument familiar. Still, her book offers those who are new to the story a 240-page primer on major trends in education policy — trends that Ravitch says are undermining the country’s once-great schools.

While the book contains Ravitch’s take on New York City’s recent education history — hint: she’s not positive — it is by no means solely about New York. Ravitch also weaves tales from San Diego and Washington, D.C, where activist superintendents have pushed aggressive changes, into a big picture about the general direction of American education. New Yorkers did play a special role in helping Ravitch prepare the book for publication: Diana Senechal, a city teacher who has contributed to GothamSchools, was her research assistant.

Visit the community section to read an exclusive excerpt from the book, in which Ravitch describes why her favorite high school teacher wouldn’t succeed in today’s data-driven teaching environment. Also, Queens teacher Arthur Goldstein, who received an advance copy, offers a glowing endorsement.

Education historian Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” comes out this week. This exclusive excerpt is from Chapter 9, “What Would Mrs. Ratliff Do?”

My favorite teacher was Mrs. Ruby Ratliff. She is the teacher I remember best, the one who influenced me most, who taught me to love literature and to write with careful attention to grammar and syntax. More than fifty years ago, she was my homeroom teacher at San Jacinto High School in Houston, and I was lucky enough to get into her English class as a senior.

Mrs. Ratliff was gruff and demanding. She did not tolerate foolishness or disruptions. She had a great reputation among students. When it came time each semester to sign up for classes, there was always a long line outside her door. What I remember most about her was what she taught us. We studied the greatest writers of the English language, not their long writings like novels (no time for that), but their poems and essays. We read Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Milton, and other major English writers. Now, many years later, in times of stress or sadness, I still turn to poems that I first read in Mrs. Ratliff’s class.

Mrs. Ratliff did nothing for our self-esteem. She challenged us to meet her exacting standards. I think she imagined herself bringing enlightenment to the barbarians (that was us). When you wrote something for her class, which happened with frequency, you paid close attention to proper English. Accuracy mattered. She had a red pen and she used it freely. Still, she was always sure to make a comment that encouraged us to do a better job. Clearly she had multiple goals for her students, beyond teaching literature and grammar. She was also teaching about character and personal responsibility. These are not the sorts of things that appear on any standardized test. (more…)

A chart from the CREDO study shows black and Hispanic students in charter schools have higher scores on reading and math tests than peers in district schools.

Students in nearly 50 charter schools across the city are outperforming their peers in district schools on state tests, according to a study by an education research group at Stanford University.

The report, which was done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, known as CREDO, uses the same methodology the group used when looking at the performance of charter schools in several states across the country. Looking at 49 city charter schools from the 2003-04 to 2008-09 school years, CREDO matched data from about 20,000 students in grades 3-8 to an identical number of students with comparable scores at local competing district schools. Though the Department of Education asked CREDO to do the analysis, the foundation procured its own funding for it.

CREDO’s study of charter schools across the country offered a mixed picture — charter schools in some states did better than local schools, while others did worse — but New York City stands out as having a particularly successful crop of charter schools. (more…)

If you weren’t at the GothamSchools party last week, then you missed a real treat: Diane Ravitch reading publicly for the first time from her forthcoming book, ”The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.”

Reading from a selection titled “What I Learned About School Reform,” Ravitch explained why she has reversed her position on policies from test-based accountability to school choice. (more…)

Joel Klein. (File photo)

Joel Klein stayed positive about his reputation in an interview last night on NY1, even as host Dominic Carter played two different clips showing elected officials (both candidates for citywide office) criticizing the schools chancellor.

Klein chalked up any complaints he’s received to politics — and said President Obama is receiving the same kind of flak on the national stage, for implementing a similar education program.

“He’s putting those out there, and you know what’s happening? You get push back,” Klein said.

(I put in a call to David Cantor, Klein’s spokesman, and I’ll write to Klein too, because I’m curious what push back he’s referencing. Both teachers unions have largely supported the Race to the Top stimulus fund, if tentatively. Maybe Klein has in mind Diane Ravitch? Or could he have read Leonie Haimson’s Huffington Post piece yesterday, “Arne Duncan Has Become An Embarrassment”?)

Klein was particularly sanguine about the proposed extension of the city’s so-called “social promotion” ban announced yesterday. “When I came on here in 2004, when the mayor ended social promotion, you had the pictures — everybody was demonstrating, and all the noise,” Klein said. “Now it is 2009 and we have ended social promotion in every one of these grades, and you know what? You don’t hear noise any more, Dominic. You know why? People know what’s right for kids.” (more…)

According to Mayor Bloomberg, under his leadership New York City’s schools have experienced rising graduation rates, soaring test scores, and unprecedented accountability. In blog posts, newspaper op/eds, and research papers, his critics have charged that the evidence doesn’t support those claims. Now, those critics have collected their analysis in a single volume.

The book, bluntly titled “NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know,” is intended to “to ignite a genuine debate and dialogue about the future of the New York City public school system,” according to the introduction by Diane Ravitch, the education historian and Bloomberg foe.

Published in conjunction with Class Size Matters, the nonprofit run by activist parent Leonie Haimson, the book contains essays by 17 scholars, advocates, and politicians who have long contended that the city is overstating how much schools have improved under the current administration. In some cases, the essayists argue that the city schools have actually deteriorated in the last seven years. (more…)

The Department of Education and Diane Ravitch, a former supporter who has emerged as one of the department’s most vocal critics, have for years sparred over how to interpret DOE data.

In their latest skirmish, the department and the historian have each issued memos refuting the other’s claims about how well the city schools are performing. The DOE’s memo went out by e-mail to all principals; Ravitch’s appears for the first time in this post.

The newest dustup stems from an op/ed Ravitch wrote for the New York Times earlier this month, in which she argued that data show the DOE is incorrect to say schools have improved significantly since Mayor Bloomberg took control of them.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein immediately fired back against Ravitch in a letter to the editor. But apparently some principals needed more convincing, because Klein wrote in a recent Principals Weekly newsletter that he had heard from “a number” of them with questions about whether Ravitch’s op/ed was accurate. To answer the principals’ questions, Klein said he asked Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, a senior DOE official who oversees testing, to fact-check Ravitch’s claims. Bell-Ellwanger produced an 8-page memo, dated April 28, rebutting Ravitch point by point. Klein linked to the memo in his most recent e-mail newsletter to principals; I’ve also posted it in full below the jump.

After I shared Bell-Ellwanger’s memo with her, Ravitch composed a long response of her own, noting that her Times op/ed was thoroughly vetted before publication. “The editor at the Times required documentation for every single fact in the article, and I supplied it,” she writes in her response, which I’ve posted just after Bell-Ellwanger’s memo below. (more…)

Some high schools allow students who fail a class to get credit for it anyway by completing a short course or special project in a controversial practice known as “credit recovery.” But despite the practice’s widespread use, credit recovery has actually never been permitted under state regulations, which require a certain amount of “seat time” for students to earn course credit.

Now, the practice could soon get a green light from the State Education Department, which last year said it would review whether credit recovery met its standards for course completion. At its meeting this week, the Board of Regents reviewed a proposal from SED for a formal policy on what the department called “‘making-up’ course credit.” 

The proposed policy, which SED developed in collaboration with the city Department of Education, does away with seat time as a basic standard for whether students earn high school course credit. The proposal would require schools to establish committees of teachers and administrators to determine whether a student’s make-up work should receive credit. It would not require that students spend a specific amount of time making up the credit, but it would mandate that replacement instruction be given by a teacher certified in the subject. (The full proposal is at the end of this post.)

SED Deputy Commissioner Johanna Duncan-Poitier told the committee that a policy is needed because credit recovery programs are becoming more prevalent. (more…)