Ravitch: School reformers scapegoat teachers, ignore poverty

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President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have formed an alliance with billionaire "school reformers" whose agenda is to downgrade U.S. public education and blame its shortcomings on "bad teachers," warns educational historian Diane Ravitch. Ravitch spoke Thursday night before a crowd of more than 1,000 education professors, students, public school teachers, and community activists at the University of Wisconsin. "These corporate reformers are pursuing a strategy based on ideology, not on evidence," she charged. "It is demoralizing teachers and setting up public schools to be de-legitimized, as they are called upon to meet impossible goals. This is not an improvement strategy, it is a privatization strategy." Ravitch, once assistant secretary of education under George W. Bush, has undergone a remarkable transformation after observing how the education system became fixated on test results, the scapegoating of teachers and the promoting of a privatized approach to education.