Diane Ravitch

historian on Educating Kids

http://www.dianeravitch.com/

http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/ravitch.html

involved in Common Core http://www.commoncore.org/

author

• Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reform-s ISBN:0743203267

  • Ny Times review - Her thesis is that as public school enrollment surged in successive waves after 1900, progressive theorists - like Edward L Thorndike, William Heard Kilpatrick and James B Conant - repeatedly sought to water down the curriculum by creating ''undemanding vocational, industrial, or general programs'' into which women, blacks and poor immigrants were shunted, all in the name of ''democracy'' and ''meeting the needs of the individual child.'' Although these progressive ideas took different names and different forms - the ''child-centered'' movement, the ''social efficiency'' movement, the ''life adjustment'' movement - they all shared a mistaken belief, Ravitch writes, that the vast majority of students couldn't master the rigorous pre-college curriculum previously offered exclusively to elites. Instead of reducing educational inequality, she argues, such reforms actually served to aggravate racial and social stratification in the nation's schools at just the moment when universal education was becoming a reality.

• The GreatSchoolWars: A History of the New York City Public Schools ISBN:0801864712 (Educating KidsInNyc)