Ms. Diane Ravitch, who served as the Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush in charge of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement, claims in this video of her interview with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show that public schools are an American success story. Originally, a proponent of accountability and supporter of No Child Left Behind, Ravitch has transformed her thinking and questions the "testing" initiative in public education and the "privatization movement" with the greater commitment by public officeholders to promote the growth of charter schools.
Ravitch believes that there is an assault on public education, and as she stated in an interview with Tim Goral, the senior editor of District Administration, the assault "is deliberate. This is a national effort to destabilize and to undermine public confidence in public education, and to make people feel that things are so desperate that anything is worth trying. So you get people opening charter schools who are totally unqualified to run a school..."
In the interview with Jon Stewart, she discusses this movement, which is the basis for the title of her new book, Reign of Error. If you care about public education and equal access for all, this video is a quality informational piece recommended for viewing.
