Diane Ravitch, the former assistant U.S. Secretary of Education and onetime supporter of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), spoke candidly on Wednesday about her change of heart concerning the education policy of former President George W. Bush and charter schools in a question-and-answer session with Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor in Stanford’s School of Education.

Ravitch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and former assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, had strong words for the Obama Administration and its “Race to the Top” fund, as well as glowing praise for teachers around the country.

“No Child Left Behind has failed...it has become a philosophy of ‘measure and punish,’” Ravitch said. She said proponents of NCLB are “destroying education and calling it reform.”

Ravitch focused on moving the dialogue in education reform away from “measure and punish” and toward helping schools and teachers deal with difficult problems. She discouraged policymakers from seeking blanket solutions to define and address failing schools and offered an analogy: “NCLB is like promising to keep cities crime free and then firing police officers in cities that don’t meet this impossible goal.”...Read more