The Death and Life of the Great American School System Summary

In *The Death and Life of the Great American School System*, Diane Ravitch, a historian of education and former assistant secretary of education under George H. W. Bush, delivers a pointed critique of the reform movement she once championed. Ravitch structures the book around a reversal: she recounts how she supported standards, testing, and accountability in the 1990s, then explains why she concluded that these same policies, as implemented, were damaging public schools. The book examines specific cases rather than abstractions. Ravitch devotes attention to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, arguing that its emphasis on test scores in reading and math narrowed the curriculum and labeled schools as failures without addressing poverty. She analyzes the San Diego school reforms under Superintendent Alan Berszinsky, a district-wide experiment in decentralization and testing that she treats as a cautionary tale. She also scrutinizes New York City's Children First reforms under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, including the rise of small schools and charter schools, and the uses and misuses of standardized data. A central framework is Ravitch's distinction between genuine school improvement and what she calls "the business model" of education, in which choice, competition, and metrics replace professional judgment and democratic control. She discusses the role of foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in promoting small high schools, and she questions the evidence behind markets, merit pay, and mayoral control. Throughout, Ravitch defends a vision of public schooling as a civic institution, not merely a consumer service, and calls for addressing inequality, supporting teachers, and using tests diagnostically rather than punitively. The book is both memoir and policy argument, documenting one influential reformer's public change of mind.