An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else

by Diane Ravitch

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She denounced privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality.

In this passionate and timely memoir of her life’s work as a historian and advocate, Ravitch traces her ideological evolution. She recounts her personal and intellectual her childhood in Houston, her years among the New York intelligentsia, her service in government, and her leftward turn. Ravitch shares how she came to hold conservative views and why she eventually abandoned them, exploring her switch from championing standards-based curriculum and standardized testing to arguing for greater investment in professional teachers and in public schools. Bringing together candid reflections with decades of research on education, Ravitch makes a powerful case for becoming, as she calls herself, “an activist on behalf of public schools.”

Genres: Education, Memoir, Nonfiction

248 pages, Hardcover

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor of Education at New York University, a historian of education, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education.
She was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991-93.
She was married to Richard Ravitch from 1960 until they divorced in 1986.
She married Mary Butz in 2012.
Aside from her many books on education history and policy, Ravitch writes for The New York Review of Books and maintains an influential blog on education.

Reviews

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diane Ravitch's memoir, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else is an interesting journey into how she changed her mind after three decades of conservative views about education.

Ravitch has always been a champion of public schools. When vouchers and charter schools were first introduced as a concept, it was to help those who were struggling in school. Vouchers and charter schools turned into a choice by those with privilege.

Ravitch describes how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Common Core had no effect on test scores. Forcing teachers to always teach toward improving test scores can crush the joy of learning and of teaching. Ravitch believes that standardized tests confer privilege on the already privileged. Because NCLB and Common Core did not show any change, Ravitch stated that she no longer believed in the power of testing or the promise of choice.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I requested this book (An Education) because I deeply respect the author, Diane Ravitch, and her writing about the need to save public schools and the dangers of the increasing number of charter schools, most of whose students do no better (and often worse) than public school students (the standardization high stakes tests so highly touted by the people and organizations promoting increased privatization).

In this book, Ravitch recounts her life journey from her early years in Texas, her intellectual growth from neoconservative (her own description of her political views for many years who completely changed her political views regarding education, turning from a staunch promotor of high stakes testing and charter school to a passionate defender of public schools, teachers and principals and an approach to teaching--and learning--that emphasizes well-trained teacher possessing a wide and varied number of skills to address the needs of the particular students they teach.

As someone who taught in the New York City public school system for 20 years, most of it under the Bloomberg administration (a time of great fear for teacher and administrators alike) I was riveted by her analysis of the issues surrounding privatization of schools and the effects of high-stakes testing. For many years, Ravitch was among the earnest believers (as contrasted with the extremely wealthy and powerful people and their organizations promoting the destruction of public education in favor of primvate (often relgioius) school.

There's not enough time or space to go into the issues surrounding these areas. At a time when we are seeing the dismantling of the federal government and the federal department of education, these issues continue to be pressing. The dream of well-intentioned people like Ravitch, that charter schools would end racism and create increased opportunity for students at various disadvantages has not been bourne out by events.

A main argument of Ravitch is that it is impossible to separate education from the rest of a student's life. To educate someone, a society must attend to all their needs. A student who is hungry, homeless, lacking medical care--any one of a number of social and economic issues

Ravitch is a fascinating woman. Married with 3 children (one of whom died at 2 years old from leukemia), she discovered her identity as a gay woman in her late 40s and has been happily together with Mary Butz for over 40 years.

As a personal memoir, this book is very interesting and as a biography of her ideological journey it is fascinating.

Anyone interested in education--and for me that includes anyone who cares about creating a healthy, functional society--will value this book. Whether you agree with Ravitch's views or not, there is much to learn--or argue with--in this work. Ravitch is never afraid to be direct and say exactly what she thinks (and why).

Wonderful, well-written, passionate, and informative, An Education will be published on October 21, 2025 by Columbia University Press.

I am grateful to have received a copy of this book from the publisher, author, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Brian Shevory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Diane Ravitch’s fascinating new book An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else. I’ve been following Ravitch’s blog for nearly 13 years, and I’ve come to appreciate the articles she shares as well as her insights. Her posts have become a welcome part of the start to my mornings, but more importantly, the articles she shares, the researchers and journalists she references, and the issues she highlights have expanded my awareness about issues in education, both nationally and around the world. I’ve previously read The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Reign of Error, but I didn’t know too much about Ravitch’s background beyond what she’d share on her blog. I was aware of how seismic her shift in beliefs were when she came out against standardized testing, school choice, and other reformist movements in education, but at that point, I knew she held some positions within the Bush I administration. Ravitch’s new book provides much more insight into her personal life, her experiences with education, and how she eventually became a proponent of school reform in the 80s and 90s but gradually shifted to a different mindset after realizing the failures of educational reform. As she frames this shift in her introduction, she “went from being a staunch conservative to being ‘woke’”, and I loved learning more about how this shift occurred, and why, based on her life experiences, it really wasn’t surprising that someone like Diane Ravitch would continue to question her own beliefs and ideals and move towards beliefs and ideals that supported student learning, teachers, and schools. What was most fascinating, and also somewhat sad, was how Ravitch’s views, whether conservative or progressive, seemed to repel one group or the other. She shared an anecdote about leaving Columbia to work in the Bush I administration, and when she returned to Teacher’s College, she wasn’t welcomed back. Similarly, during her time in the US Department of ED, democrats controlled Congress and informed her that they would not allow any of Bush’s policies to pass. These experiences helped to highlight that many eras of American life were (and continue to be) polarized, but Ravitch’s experiences throughout this book help to remind us of “the importance of admitting error, of keeping an open mind and regularly looking at evidence, of listening to people with whom I disagreed.” I really appreciated this mindset, especially today when it seems that nearly everything we read or encounter is either meant to make us enraged or is manipulated to induce a kind of emotional response rather than to calmly think the information through and consider its meaning. Furthermore, Ravitch’s experiences remind us that we do have the right to change our opinions, and that as we continue to grow, learn, and live, this is a natural outcome. Our values, our preferences, and even our priorities will change over time, and we should be able to admit either when we were wrong or why these aspects of our selves have changed.
Ravitch’s book straddles the line between a kind of memoir and a philosophical reflection, examining how one’s ideas and beliefs shift over time. She begins the book discussing her family and her experiences growing up in Texas among a large Jewish family. I really enjoyed learning more about Ravitch’s family, and the kinds of experiences and encounters she had with racism and classism in Houston. Furthermore, it was interesting to learn about the expectations for women at the time, and how despite pushing young female students into home economics, Ravitch always wanted to write. I found it really interesting, though, that someone who is primarily known for education didn’t study education or really think about becoming a teacher. The chapters that focus on her experiences at Wellesley were also fascinating to read. Not only do they portray a picture of what college life was like in the early 60s, but Ravitch also had some famous classmates, and it was cool to read about the shows she put on with them. More importantly though, I enjoyed reading about her love for learning and writing, and I could see how this desire to continuously learn, to be intellectually curious, led her to continue to ask questions about schools and systems of learning.
I won’t go too much into her personal biography, but Ravitch’s chapters focusing on her marriage and her emerging scholarship of the New York school system are both fascinating and sad. As she begins to grow and develop as a writer and focuses more and more on education in NYC, events in her marriage challenge her beliefs and ideas. As Ravitch reminds readers, this was a much different time when women had fewer options, and her marriage to a more traditional man from a wealthy family probably led her to continue to accept her husband’s wishes for her. Yet, it was amazing to learn about how gained a foothold in a small publication, which led to new opportunities to learn and study with scholars of the history of education and school systems at Columbia, which eventually led to Ravitch writing a book and earning her PhD.
I found these subsequent chapters to be the most interesting, as Ravitch begins to learn more about inequality in schools and to recognize their potential as the great equalizer in American society. Her own personal story about her beliefs and ideals in schools is fascinating and seems to come largely from her own experiences as well as the research on the history of education in America. It was fascinating to read about the many times she attended functions at the White House, how she became a member of think tanks and helped to shape policy and curricula in different states. Although she discussed helping to write the California state History curricula and standards, I was wondering whether she ever worked with Jerome Bruner, who was responsible for many important shifts in American education in the 1960s, and largely helped to shape the idea of a spiral curriculum. His constructivist ideas helped to shift American education away from the behaviorist trends that dominated education and are still in practice in some form in many schools. Nevertheless, Ravitch discusses the many educational and political luminaries with whom she worked during the 80s and 90s, and it was fascinating to learn about this. However, what I found most fascinating was to learn about the policies she worked on during her tenure in the Department of Education during the Bush I presidency. While she had primarily positive things to say about Bush I, the whole policy was based on belief—belief that if they talked about higher standards, then it would someone trickle down to teachers and students, who would believe in themselves and work harder to achieve. They didn’t advocate for any additional funding or programs, but asked teachers and schools to do more with less (sound familiar?). In many ways, it reminded me of how the Regans addressed other issues with pithy sayings like “Just Say No.” It’s a nice sentiment, but really provides no real support or guidance. And now, as the department is eviscerated and its own secretary has deemed its role useless, is it any wonder why the public sentiment towards the Education Department has become so negative?
Ravitch continues her story, noting how the Clinton years brought in some eventual reforms, but I found the chapters that dealt with Bush II and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to be the most fascinating and relevant to my own experiences. I began teaching in 2000. I was actually student teaching during the 2000 election and remember just how the kind of unsettled nature of the election reflected my own uncertainty about graduation and entering the workforce. Ravitch’s own skepticism of NCLB was exactly what I remember experiencing sitting in a schoolwide PD meeting where our principal informed us that within 9 years, we needed to have all students proficient in Math and Reading. Although none of the teachers were opposed to student achievement, we were all working towards that goal every day, I think that all of us realized the improbability of this lofty goal. There was incredible variability, and I remember that I had students who rarely came to school or who had such severe behavioral problems that they were routinely referred for in-school suspension, where I had to somehow make worksheets for them to learn the materials we worked on in class. NCLB, as Ravitch mentioned about another policy, looked good to the public, but was not realistic in schools. Furthermore, she notes that many of these reformist policies were top-down approaches that punished schools that didn’t meet the standards. Furthermore, by attempting to align student performance to teachers, NCLB and its descendants like Race to the Top, created a system rife for cheating and/or avoidance. Furthermore, with so much weight on standardized tests, teaching became more test-preparation oriented, with fewer lessons focusing on concepts or ideas and more and more of a drilled down focus on skills and rote practice. It’s a section of the book that elicits a little PTSD from my last years in the classroom, but through Ravitch’s skepticism and questions about the nature of standardized testing and the punitive nature of these reforms, she helps to highlight the great cost that this era of American education had on students, teachers, and schools. Prior to the NCLB chapters, Ravitch discuses the shift in NYC’s schools with Bloomberg and Klein, which seems to be one of the loci of the reformist movements that ushered in the kind of corporatization of schools. It was actually shocking to read about some of the events that happened both in schools and personally to Ravitch and her partner, Mary. Throughout this experience, Ravitch continued to question and meet with individuals with whom she disagreed or questioned to learn more about how or what the other side thought. If anything, I think this is one of the key take-aways from Ravitch’s book—that it is important to listen and attempt to understand those with whom you may disagree. It’s a point she continues to reference throughout, and it also helped her to gradually understand the scam of school reform. She was able to begin to see how school choice, charter schools, and vouchers were used for purposes other than what they were initially designed for. Or how the reforms often addressed issues of choice or vouchers as a means to provide opportunities for families in poverty, but when looking at the outcomes, the results often tell a different story. It is Ravitch’s willingness to listen to others, but also her insistence on reviewing the facts and outcomes that informed her decisions to no longer advocate for vouchers, choice, or standardized testing.
With social media and the internet leaving a long digital trail of our lives, our thoughts and ideas, and our writing, there’s a lot for people to sift through and explore our thinking. We often see how people’s old tweets or posts are dredged up to possibly catch them in a lie or challenge their current beliefs. While Ravitch doesn’t have anything to apologize for, she offers a wonderful exploration of how our lives and experiences inform our values, ideals, and our priorities, but also how these can shift over time with further experiences, interactions, and learning. Throughout it all, Ravitch reminds us to keep our minds and ears open, to consider other’s perspectives, but to also evaluate our own positions against the evidence and ideas. I also appreciated her closing thoughts where she acknowledges how the books and articles she read influenced her thinking and ideas, and how it is important to sometimes take a step outside of our comfort zone and connect with a writer, book or ideas that challenge our assumptions and thinking. It may not shift our perspectives, but it may offer us further understanding of another perspective, which is something that we do not often see today. This is a great book to read for anyone who is involved or interested in American education. Since I am a regular reader of Ravitch’s blog and have read some of her books, I found this book to be fascinating. Highly recommended!
PS- I felt like there was so much to write about in this book. However, I forgot to mention how much I loved reading about Ravitch’s interactions with Bayard Rustin. I graduated from West Chester University and lived right next to Rustin Park. I minored in African and African American Literature, a program that was run through the Douglass Institute, and Rustin’s legacy was incredibly important to many of my professors and me. I couldn’t believe that Ravitch had Rustin sing in her home! It was really amazing to read.

[Rory Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a classic ‘marmite’ book on education. Many readers will no doubt love it or hate it, depending on their own ideological commitments. It may even elicit stronger feelings, as few stories beat a tale of conversion, forswearing a previous error (educational conservatism) to embrace the true faith, which the author describes as becoming ‘woke.’

Personally, I found the book disappointing, not because of its preference for one ideology rather than another, but because it is once again reinforcing the role of ideology in education. I don’t see anything admirable in jumping from one ideology to its opposing ideology. What would be truly impressive would be a changing mind which rejected ideological extremism itself, as having no place in education.

What the author does well is to make the case that (educational) conservatism isn’t delivering on its promises. Chapter 14 flags up the problems of the Bloomberg-Klein reforms in New York. And yes, 23 years later, ‘No Child Left Behind’ hasn’t delivered on its targets. And yes 25 years of vouchers and charter schools has not delivered on its promises either. Where she explains her opinions, then she makes good points. Yes, it is a recognised weakness of standardised assessment that it can indeed end up being just an (expensive) way of measuring wealth inequality.

But then she jumps to the opposite ideology with generalisations and demonisations. For example, we hear in chapter 16 that school vouchers are to promote religious indoctrination. ‘Privatization is theft of what belongs to the citizenry.’ ‘The hateful, calculated attack on our nation’s public schools is motivated (and)…driven by racism.’ And of course, her opponents are all bigots ‘reactionary billionaires’ and ‘dark forces’ who (unlike the woke) don’t care properly about children.

What the book doesn’t tell us is that part of the motivation for conservatism was the fact that there were well documented problems with the prior educational culture, which conservatism was reacting against. Conservatism may be failing to deliver, but didn’t the alternative approaches also fail to deliver?

Yes, standardised testing is problematic, but has it really never contributed to any school improvement, anywhere in the world: ever? Or is the more plausible position a more nuanced, less extremist position, somewhere in the middle of current ideologies which are either all-for, or all-against?

Consider the issue of mandating teacher practices (like teaching phonics). The author thinks that teachers should always be free to choose what they think works best. Yes, that sounds obviously true and completely sensible in ideal circumstances. But if we are honest about the past, we should also know that the obviously sensible policies have not always transpired in practice.

When ideologies blossom, true believer syndrome means that faith can become impervious to reasoning and evidence. And so educational authorities can end up feeling that the only way forward is to mandate, rather than to try to discuss or to leave it to teachers to choose for themselves. Once again, it raises the question of whether issues like mandating are just symptoms of a much deeper problem: one of ideology’s malign influence?

One of the most depressing paragraphs in the book occurs in chapter 15, when the author states: ‘When I was an advocate of testing, accountability, and choice, I read articles and books that reinforced my views. As I turned skeptical, my reading broadened to include the critics of what I had once championed. There’s a lesson there for all of us: not to get trapped in our own bubbles.’

What makes that paragraph so depressing is that the reader has to wonder why the author wasn’t ‘broadening’ her reading and considering critics of her views long before she ever wrote a single book? Why on earth did she have to wait until her faith in her current ideology began to waver before she could consider alternatives? What ever happened to rigorous academic research…? Ah, ideologies: that’s what happened!

In reality, most of the non-experts and non-ideologues know all too well that there are points to be made on all sides of the educational debate. Some of what conservatives say is true and some of it is false. Some of what the woke say is true and some of it is false. Both conservative and woke positions include some individuals who are sincere and of good will. What is needed is not demonisation or conversion from one ideology to another, but rather a conversion from ideologies themselves, so that educationalists commit to find a middle ground which rests on agreed interpretations of evidence. Otherwise, it is the pupils in schools who will always suffer the ongoing inconsistencies and swings of policies, as different ideologies repeatedly gain and lose ascendancy.

Overall, this is an interesting life story, although readers should be aware that there are occasional references to bereavements and child abuse. But it is an utterly depressing snapshot into the way that ideological mindsets are driving educational policies. And it is really disappointing that a book like this cannot see and engage with that issue. By the end of the book I am afraid that conservative and woke educational perspectives left me with just one thought: ‘a plague o’ both your houses!’

(These are honest opinions based on a free digital ARC version of the text).

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before I forget - I received this book as a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and publisher!

Alas, the book itself wasn't what I was expecting. I thought it would be either a fact-heavy sort of volume explaining why and how someone would shift their perspective; or a personal meditation on the philosophy of schools and testing.

Instead, I got a volume that might have been better titled "Namedropping: An Autobiography".

Our guests included Barbara Walters, Rupert and Anna Murdoch, Pat and Elizabeth Monyhan, Felix and Liz Rohatyn, and labor leaders like Al Shanker and Victor Gotbaum and their spouses. I made a huge mistake when Barbara Walters came to dinner with her friend, the financier Ace Greenberg. I innocently asked her if she had ever interviewed Nixon: she shot me a venomous look and said, "Certainly! I have interviewed every president!" Benjamin Netanyahu came for drinks one night not long after his brother's death in the raid on Entebbe.

This is, admittedly, a bit of a special case - she describes the dinners she hosted with her husband, and naturally she mentions who attended them. But she's always meeting someone, and few of the meetings are relevant to the topic of schools, while the celebrities waltz in and out of her book leaving no trace behind. She meets George Lucas and she still has no idea why he invited her over. She picked up an article from a man who was a political dissident (I forget the name; I'm not looking it up).

About her sons:

Michael, like Joey, excelled in school. Unlike Joey, he was outgoing and self-directed. When he was six years old, he wrote a "novel" about a family of foxes. One of my friends, Rita Kramer, who authored a regular child-rearing column for The New York Times Magazine, wrote a "review" of Michael's book and commended him for its "ortographic novelty." He made friends easily. Both boys studied Greek and Latin, taught by the same teacher. Michael loved theater and was regularly cast in school productions; he was also editor of the Dalton school newspaper. Michael went to Yale, where he majored in English literature. Like his mother, he is a writer, but a writer of fiction. We collaborated on a book called The English Reader for Oxford University Press.

Her writing style feels clipped and dry, jumping from one idea to another, as if she's writing a reader for primary school kids, but somehow for adults. It was quite jarring at first, and I'm not sure if it's better later on or if I just got too used to it to notice it anymore.

We find out that she was sexually abused by her father as a teen, that her husband was controlling, that she felt a jolt of desire for her future wife when they touched the first time, that she helped build a children's playground in her neighborhood. All important things in her life, I'm sure - but why are they here? Is this an autobiography under a different name? And if it is, why does it feel so... impersonal, somehow?

As for her changing her mind about schools and high-stakes testing, there's surprisingly little about that. While she tells us about her interest in schools, what the title announced as the main topic of the volume is mostly discussed after the 70% mark, and it's not incredibly well explained.

I learned a bunch of things about the US school system and its challenges, but mostly by reading between the lines. I had no idea, for example, that the US didn't have national standards for what should be taught in school until very recently. I also had no idea that the No Child Left Behind program was mostly punishment on steroids for schools and teachers. Insane.

Anyway, the point is that she no longer feels that standards and high stakes testing are good things, because those tools have been misused - by imposing shitty standards that weren't properly researched, as well as by punishing teachers and schools when students didn't do well on tests, therefore making teachers and schools test-obsessed.

...Coming from a country that has national standards and high-stakes testing, honestly, the only thing I'd change is that I'd add the possibility for people to redo the Baccalaureate exam at any point later in life, because its scores are now used for university admissions. Like... yes? It's good to have standards instead of going yolo? It's a good idea to have proper exams instead of pretending you're the bestedest, most interesting person ever in front of an admissions officer?

Ravitch says there should be more focus on helping kids with standards of living and whatnot - hard agree from me, but what's that got to do with standards and testing?

I don't know. I'm sure she has much better books, and this is simply the one in which she decided to talk more about her life - maybe the namedropping is a way to turn this book into an "Acknowledgments" section for the rest of her corpus of works.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became aware of Diane Ravitch when I read her book The Death and Life of the American School System. I picked up that book because, as a college professor of the arts in the early 2000s, I was puzzled by the attitude of most of my students. Their anxiety was on full display when it got close to test time - they wanted to know exactly how many questions were on the test and what kind they were. They wanted a review sheet and expected to go over it in class. They were very uncomfortable with ambiguity and expressing personal opinion. Because I was concerned about these behaviors, i read several books and articles, including Death and Life. When I realized that what I was seeing was the behavior of young people who had grown up with standardized testing, I completely changed my teaching. Tests became online only, take the test when you’re ready, and they could have access to all notes and texts. I wasn’t concerned about “cheating” in this method - during a test, a student wasn’t parroting back answers but doing creative thinking about material they had at hand.

Because Ravitch was so much a part of my own teaching epiphany, I was frankly surprised to learn that she once championed the conservative ideals of standardized testing, Common Core and school choice. I give her a great deal of credit for following through on educational experiments with these concepts, especially in the Bush and early Obama years, analyzing the data with an open mind, and realizing the flaws in the system she had once endorsed. She spends much of the book discussing her upbringing, by way of explaining how she had adopted her conservative views. This part of the book went very slowly for me - I didn’t see what relevance much of this information had to her thesis. By the time she reached the final chapters and began to talk about the differences between her early and current views, she became passionate about her beliefs and defended them beautifully.

The most important takeaway from this book for me was that much of conservative opinion on education has nothing to do with serving every child. It has much more to do with creating a system where rich, primarily Christian white people can create a world where they can isolate their children from people who are different than they are. While that sounds like a radical statement, it seems as though the data supports it. Ravitch also details conversations with influential people one of whom, when asked about how the system would serve disabled children, told Ravitch that he simply didn't care about disabled children. There has been no significant change in student performance in over 25 years of tests and vouchers. On the contrary, we have widened the gap between rich children and poor children, and gone even further by defining “DEI” and “critical race theory” as evils perpetuated on innocent children by left-wing radicals.

I have no idea how we’re going to get out of the situation we’re in, but scholars like Diane Ravitch are important voices that need to be heard. Many thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You get the sense, as Diane Ravitch wraps up "An Education," that she is indeed wrapping up-- she sees this as her last opportunity to get it all out there: Her early life. How she found happiness. Mistakes and regrets, and triumphs. It's a very satisfying read.

For her followers and admirers (count me in), it explains everything about her history. Her working-to-middle-class roots and her family's loyalty to FDR and what the Democrats stood for, c. WWII, go a long way to explaining how she eventually became an articulate proponent of public education. I'm glad she included a nostalgic portrait of growing up in TX with a hard-working mother and feckless (and worse) father.

The glimpses we get into public education in TX in the post-war years resonated with me--and it's easy to see how going to an Ivy League college shaped her entire adulthood. The most fascinating part of the book, for me, was the middle third, where she wrote about researching the history of public education and being asked to sit on boards and be part of the H.W. Bush Ed Department. Award-winning teachers are often asked to become part of the education establishment by sitting on boards, writing op-eds and creating curricula-- and it can be easy to feel as if you're contributing, when what you are actually doing is giving credence to people who have a very different, but hidden, agenda.

The final quarter of the book is the Diane Ravitch most educators know and respect. Her observations come from swimming in the ocean of education policy for decades-- and they're accurate. Making the book a fine testament to a life spent searching for the truth about public education.
Five stars.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

#November2025

I read Ravitch's Death and Life when it came out. I knew vaguely who she was, and about some of the policies she had supported before her epiphany. I can remember yelling, "We KNEW that! We TOLD you this wouldn't work!"

This is a personal journey...from her Jewish upbringing in Houston, working in her father's liquor store, from being the smartest kid in her school, from her exclusive college education. From her "good" marriage...from a charmed motherhood. To the death of a child, the breakup of her marriage, to researching for a Teachers College professor. To lunches in the White House. To conservative foundations and think tanks. To falling in love with a dynamic woman. To her mea culpa to the whole world.

She showed both courage and insight to change...and become the face of education reform with children at the center of our work. Would others be brave enough to do such a public about-face?

While the book is primarily about her personal growth, it was the last chapters about how her research and reading and conversations brought her to her new vision of our work that interested me.

She inspires me in so many ways.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A straight telling, honest profile of a woman who has devoted herself to trying to do the impossible: influence American education.


This is a last book of an important advocate:

[Matt Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an awesome book. I loved learning more about her life and journey.