Education rebel takes on reformers

Los Angeles was the scene last week of two events that took on corporate-style school reform, which emphasizes competition and accountability and is promulgated by many state governments and the U.S. Department of Education.

The first consisted of two L.A.-area appearances by education historian Diane Ravitch, whose new bestselling book is “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.” Ravitch spoke at Occidental College in Eagle Rock and at Cal State Northridge. Both events were packed.

Ravitch, 75, is widely seen as a leading spokeswoman for a movement that calls for collaborative school reform, which emphasizes social services for families and anti-poverty economic policies. She opposes the widespread use of standardized testing as a means to assess teachers and schools.

“There is an obsession with bad teachers,” she said in Northridge. “It is destroy- ing the teaching profession.”

She defends schools as delivering better results than they are given credit for and likes to highlight abuses and scandals in the charterschool movement. Charter schools remain popular among Los Angeles parents.

Ravitch’s critics cast her as a defender of a status quo dominated by teacher unions and other adult-interest groups, which, they say, use poverty as an excuse for failed schools.

In her appearances, Ravitch called for an opposition movement — and that’s what was underway over the weekend at a downtown “human rights” conference organized in conjunction with the nation’s two major teacher unions.

The Reclaiming the Promise conference had the goal of bringing together students, parents, clergy and community organizations into alliance with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Assn. More than 500 people attended from across the country.