Diane Ravitch Quotes

I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.

Albuquerque is my home. I want my kids and all of our children to be able to go to any public or charter school and receive an excellent education.

It's time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that every child has the opportunity to attain an education.

Once I started the first school, I realized this is what my life is meant to be, is to promote education and help kids go to school, and that's very clear.

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

I just have a position that any child that's in a failing school should be able to get out, or be in a position to have that school fixed.

I cannot ever stand up and stand against a parent having options, because I benefited from my parents having options. And when people tell me they’re against school choice, whether it’s the Opportunity Scholarship Act or charter schools, I look at them and say: “As soon as you’re telling me you’re willing to send your kid to a failing school in my city [Newark, N.J.], or in Camden or Trenton, then I’ll be with you.” ... I’m going to be out there fighting for my president, but he does not send his kids to Washington, D.C., public schools. I got a governor in the statehouse, he does not send his kids to Trenton public schools. I could go all the way down to city council people in Newark, that do not send their kids—so what have we created? A system that if you’re connected, elected, have wealth and privilege, you get freedom in this country? And now you want to deny that to my community? No. I am going to fight for the freedom and the liberty and the choice and the options of my people, in the same way you will defend that right for yourself.

Charter schools were supposed to compete with public schools, and in turn, that competition was meant to improve education. But that wasn't the end result.

On the [Betsy] DeVos case, I agree that the gun - her gun position is kind of weird, kind of crazy, but I do think she does know about public schools.

[Betsy DeVos] does care about charter schools, which are public schools. She does care about choice, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to care about. It's because it's the one issue where the Democratic donor base was really energized, which was the teacher unions.

Support charters; insist on change for failing schools.

The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.

When you say you don't think we should have public schools, they can't believe you mean that. You must mean that they should be smaller. But you can't really mean no public schools.

As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.

In Barack Obama, we have a great education president who is rebuilding America. His Race to the Top program is doing more to 'spur us' to improve our public schools than anything we've ever done as a nation.

There is a growing acceptance and interest in publicly funded school choice as a catalyst for education reform in general and a way to empower parents to be education reformers.

Arizona is a national leader in school choice with both charter schools and tuition tax credits giving parents and their children more school choices than ever before.

Let's focus on how we can take someone who is being poorly educated in an American public school and how they are poorly trained for a job, and put in place those opportunities for them to get that education, give their parents choice in education, make it real for them.

You look at public education system, charter schools, infrastructure, in so many ways New Orleans has come back stronger.

If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system.

We have a law that allows us to establish charter schools here in this state. We ought to get going on it.

Ensuring preschool education for all and investing more in public schools is essential if the U.S. is to avoid becoming a neo-feudal country where advantages and disadvantages are passed on from one generation to the next.

One of my main legislative efforts in education is to help expand and replicate successful charter schools. Charter schools are public schools with site-based governance.

Public schools in the late '80s and early '90s were a total mess... we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.

We all have a stake in ensuring that all students have the schools they deserve and that communities are leading this effort, not being left behind. To do that, we must challenge unchecked charter expansion and the forces driving it.