34+ Diane Ravitch Quotes On Education, Teaching And Learning

Diane Ravitch is an American historian and research professor of education at New York University. She is an outspoken critic of the education reform movement, and her work focuses on the history of education and the current state of public schooling in the United States. Ravitch has authored several books, including The Language Police, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, and Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Diane Ravitch on education, teaching, learning.

Top 10 Diane Ravitch Quotes

1. Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
2. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.
3. Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department
4. Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.
5. The ladder was there, from the gutter to the university, and for those stalwart enough to ascend it, the schools were a boon and a path out of poverty.
6. Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions
7. Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.
8. American education has been littered with failed fads and foolish ideas for the past century.
9. The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.
10. Testing children until they cry is a bad idea. It is an educational malpractice.

Diane Ravitch Short Quotes

• The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss.
• Those who can’t teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers.
• You can't lead your troops if your troops do not trust you.
• Research does not support any part of Race to the Top

Diane Ravitch Quotes About Education

American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so? — Diane Ravitch

What is happening to teachers now across this nation is a disgrace. The attacks on them are a blot on our nation. Teachers and students are not different interest groups. Anyone who demeans teachers demeans education and hurts children. — Diane Ravitch

When you succeed at keeping almost everyone in school, you must figure out ways to educate everyone you keep in school. — Diane Ravitch

An attack on public education is an attack on democracy. — Diane Ravitch

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education. — Diane Ravitch

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves? — Diane Ravitch

Most people believe that schools were good enough when they were children and that they are good enough now. But the dynamic growth of our system of education has spawned serious problems of educational quality. — Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch Famous Quotes And Sayings

There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions. — Diane Ravitch

Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program. — Diane Ravitch

When you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong. — Diane Ravitch

We will continue to chase rainbows unless we recognize that they are rainbows and there is no pot of gold at the end of them — Diane Ravitch

If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars? — Diane Ravitch

Of course, all students should learn African history, as they should learn the history of other continents and major civilizations. But this history should be taught accurately and based on the best scholarship, not ideology or politics. — Diane Ravitch

The person who knows ‘how’ will always have a job. The person who knows ‘why’ will always be his boss — Diane Ravitch

We should totally ban for-profit charters. For-profit's first obligation is to its stockholders, not to its children. — Diane Ravitch

I support charters, but the right kind of charters. I support charters that support kids who have the highest needs. A charter should be targeting students who are in serious trouble. It should serve students who didn't succeed in public schools when it can help them. Or, at least, charters should agree to accept similar proportions of the kids with the highest needs. — Diane Ravitch

The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountability. — Diane Ravitch

In DC, policymakers think that if we can only have high enough standards, tough enough tests, and hold people accountable, we can close the achievement gap. And it hasn't happened. Yet the new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, is based on the same test-based and market-driven framework and ideology, except it lets the states do it. — Diane Ravitch

One of the persistent ironies of reform is the impossibility of predicting the full consequences of change. — Diane Ravitch

Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities. — Diane Ravitch

Life Lessons by Diane Ravitch

1. Diane Ravitch teaches us to never stop learning and to always question the status quo. She encourages us to think critically and to never accept something as true just because it is the accepted belief.
2. She also reminds us to be open to new ideas and to never be afraid to challenge the opinions of those in power.
3. Finally, her work emphasizes the importance of education and the power of knowledge to effect positive change in the world.