First published 2025
Diane Ravitch once championed the conservative education agenda. She believed in high-stakes testing, national standards, accountability measures, charter schools, and vouchers as solutions to America's educational problems. Then she witnessed these policies in action and everything changed. The real culprit wasn't bad teachers or failing schools, but poverty itself. Privatization schemes deceived the public while damaging students and schools alike. In this memoir, Ravitch chronicles her complete ideological transformation. She moves from her Houston childhood through her time with New York intellectuals to her government service and eventual leftward shift. She explains how she adopted conservative positions and why she ultimately rejected them. Her journey takes her from promoting standardized curricula and testing to advocating for investment in professional educators and robust public schools. Drawing on personal experience and extensive educational research, Ravitch builds her case for defending public education and addressing inequality's root causes.
Genres: education, non-fiction, biography-memoir, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: ideological-transformation
Setting: Houston, New York
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
248 pages · Hardcover · Columbia University Press