Ravitch's first book
The Great School Wars (1974) is a history of New York City public schools. It described alternating eras of centralization and decentralization. It also tied periodic controversies over public education to periodic waves of immigration. Publishers Weekly wrote: "Ravitch contends that these sanitized materials sacrifice literary quality and historical accuracy in order to escape controversy." Ravitch's writings on racial and cultural diversity were summarized by sociologist
Vincent N. Parrillo:
Reading instruction Ravitch said that she "supports the teaching of phonics when appropriate." She was critical of the then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg who, after taking control over New York public schools, replaced
phonics with
balanced literacy helped by
Joel Klein, the then
chancellor of the
New York City Department of Education. Klein credited balanced literacy with raising the city’s fourth-grade reading scores. Ravitch rebutted that claim by noting that the rise in reading scores occurred in 2002—before Klein became chancellor and implemented balanced literacy. At the same time Ravitch said that she could not bring herself to believe in "the science of reading." According to her, "there is no 'science of mathematics,' no 'science of science,' no 'science of history'." Ravitch said that the charter school and testing reform movement was started by billionaires and "right wing think tanks like
The Heritage Foundation" for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers' unions. She reviewed the documentary
Waiting for Superman, directed by
Davis Guggenheim, as "propagandistic" (pro-charter schools and anti-public schools), studded with "myths" and at least one "flatly wrong" claim. Of Education Secretary
Arne Duncan's
Race to the Top program, Ravitch said in a 2011 interview it "is an extension of No Child Left Behind ...[,] all bad ideas." She concluded "We are destroying our education system, blowing it up by these stupid policies. And handing the schools in low-income neighborhoods over to private entrepreneurs does not, in itself, improve them. There's plenty of evidence by now that the kids in those schools do no better, and it's simply a way of avoiding their - the public responsibility to provide good education." Repudiating the policies she had formerly espoused, Ravitch wrote
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education (2010), which became a surprise best seller. One reviewer noted that "Ravitch exhibits an interesting mix of support for public education and the rights of teachers to bargain collectively with a tough-mindedness that some on the pedagogical left lack." Her next book
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and Its Danger to America’s Public Schools was a national bestseller. She describes in detail the policies that are needed to improve the lives of children and families, based on research, and beginning with prenatal care for all pregnant women. Data show that the U.S. lags other nations in providing prenatal care and high-quality preschool, but leads other advanced nations in rates of child poverty and inequality of wealth and income.
National standards and Common Core During the 1980s, Ravitch began calling for voluntary national standards in education. She became associated with
Core Knowledge movement, championed by
E. D. Hirsch. During her stint as an assistant secretary of education, she was tasked to develop national standards, even though the federal government did not have the authority to make the states adopt them. By 2007, Ravitch no longer accepted the free-market components of education reform. She continued to work with Hirsch calling for more attention to curriculum and instruction. In 2008 she became a co-chair of the board of the newly created Common Core, Inc. Funded by the
Gates Foundation, the Common Core issued a press release saying that the curriculum maps were "comprehensive, coherent sequence of thematic curriculum units connecting the skills outlined in the CCSS with suggested student objectives, texts, activities, and much more." In her book
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education, published in 2010, Ravitch proclaimed: Every school should have a well-conceived, coherent curriculum. A curriculum is not a script, but a set of general guidelines. Students should regularly engage in the study and practice of the liberal arts and sciences: history, literature, geography, the sciences, civics, mathematics, the arts, and foreign languages, as well as health and physical education. She continued: Nations such as Japan and Finland have developed excellent curricula that spell out what students are supposed to learn in a wide variety of subjects. If we are willing to learn from top-performing nations, we should establish a substantive
national curriculum that declares our intention to educate all children in the full range of liberal arts and sciences, as well as physical education. The curriculum would designate the essential knowledge and skills that students need to learn. Ravitch turned her attention to poverty and
racial segregation as the main causes of low student achievement. Ravitch claims that the Common Core "was a rush job, and the final product ignored the needs of children with disabilities, English-language learners and those in the early grades." She says that the country needs "schools where all children have the same chance to learn. That doesn’t require national standards or national tests, which improve neither teaching nor learning, and do nothing to help poor children at racially segregated schools." ==Personal life==