Talk:Diane Ravitch

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Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University. She holds the Brown Chair in Education Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where she is a Visiting Senior Fellow and edits the Brookings Papers on Education Policy. Dr. Ravitch is on the Board of Trustees of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

She is a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, to which she was appointed by Secretary of Education Riley in 1997 and reappointed in 2001. She is also a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. She was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards.

Before entering government service, she was Adjunct Professor of History and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the author of:

  • The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003)
  • Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform (2000)
  • National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide (1995)
  • What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (with Chester Finn, Jr.) [1987]
  • The Schools We Deserve (1985)
  • The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945- 1980 (1983)
  • The Revisionists Revised (1978)
  • The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (1974)

In addition, she has edited fourteen books,including The American Reader (1991); The Democracy Reader (with Abigail Thernstrom) [1992]; Learning from the Past (with Maris Vinovskis) [1995]; and New Schools for a New Century (with Joseph Viteritti [1997]). She has written nearly 400 articles and reviews for scholarly and popular publications.

She has lectured in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, the former Soviet Union, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, and throughout the United States. Her lectures on democracy and civic education have been translated by the USIA into many languages, including Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian. Her books have been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Swedish, and Japanese.

In 1989, she advised Teachers Solidarity and the Ministry of Education in Poland. In 1991, the Polish Government awarded her a medal for her work on behalf of Solidarity.

She was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education (1979), the Society of American Historians (1984), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985). She was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 1984-85, the first person chosen from the field of education studies. She was awarded the Henry Allen Moe prize in the humanities by the American Philosophical Society in 1986 and received the Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award in 1989. She was honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1992. The Library of Congress invited her to deliver lectures in 1993 in honor of the 250th birthday of Thomas Jefferson.

She is a director of the New York State Council for the Humanities and a member of PEN International. She is a director of the New America Foundation. She is on the advisory board of the United States General Accounting Office. She is an honorary life trustee of the New York Public Library and a former Guggenheim Fellow.

She was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by the following institutions: Williams College; Reed College; Amherst College; the State University of New York; Ramapo College; St. Joseph's College of New York; Middlebury College Language Schools; Union College.

A native of Houston, she is a graduate of the Houston public schools. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1975.