school reform

Chicago's Mayoral Race isn't Red v. Blue, but Conflicting Visions of What a City Should Be

by Martha Bayne

Schools are the center of the Chicago mayoral election, specifically the question of whether the city will invest in them as community institutions or continue down a path of privatization started by candidate Paul Vallas in the 1990s when he ran the public schools. 

The Atlantic profiles Diane Ravitch ... and her successful struggle against the school reform movement

Sara Mosle, who teaches writing at Philip’s Academy Charter School in Newark, N.J., has written about education for The New York Times, Slate, and other publications.The survival of the school-reform movement, as it’s known to champions and detractors alike, is no longer assured. Even a couple years ago, few would have predicted this turn of events for a crusade that began with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, gathered momentum as charter schools and Teach for America took off in the 1990s, and surged into the spotlight with No Child Left Behind in 2001. As a schoolteacher, I know I didn’t anticipate this altered landscape. If one person can be credited—or blamed—for the reform movement’s sudden vulnerability, it’s a fiercely articulate historian, now in her 70s, named Diane Ravitch.