Diane Ravitch Quotes

Schools should be held accountable for results.

'No Child Left Behind' requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms.

You can spend a lot of money on education, but if you don't spend it wisely, on improving the quality of instruction, you won't get higher student outcomes.

Scholarships that allow students to get a good education are important, but first we want to measure the progress that the schools are teaching our students, we want to hold them accountable for the progress, we want to hold the schools accountable for teaching the young people in America.

That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil's means; great teachers foresee a pupil's ends.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.

the superiority of state over private education lies in the fact that in the former the teacher is responsible to society... The result desired by the state is a wholly different one from that desired by parents, guardians, and pupils.

We can't go on appropriating more and more money to state universities without knowing that we're getting an excellent product back out of them.

Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education.

I'd aspired to give people a profound education - to teach them something substantial. But the data was at odds with this idea.

Appropriate assessments are a crucial part of effectively educating students. But they only measure a narrow segment of what kids need to learn.

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

What you really want to do, the objective is to get as many students coming out of there thinking differently than they went in.

It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied, but what should be the character of this public education, and how young persons should be educated, are questions which remain to be considered. As things are, there is disagreement about the subjects. For mankind are by no means agreed about the things to be taught, whether we look to virtue or the best life. Neither is it clear whether education is more concerned with intellectual or with moral virtue.

For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.

The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.

I don't think that it is necessary to rethink curricular goals. But it is certainly worth thinking about whether these goals can be reached in multiple ways.

Standardized tests are an indicator of the kind of service taxpayers are receiving - and whether schools, educators and policymakers are doing their jobs. In the United States, taxpayers spend almost $600 billion annually on public education, so it's not unreasonable to ask what all that money is producing. In fact, it's irresponsible not to know.

I think that any important educational goal can be realized via several routes.

I'm skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education.... People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it's very unclear how viable they are in many cases.

We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.