Diane Ravitch on the (Not) New Education Approach

NYU Professor and education historian Diane Ravitch comments on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (via Politico). I, like Ravitch, wish Obama had selected Linda Darling Hammond...

But along comes Arne Duncan, our new Secretary of Education, and everything he has said to date might have just as well been said by Bush's Secretary Margaret Spellings. Duncan paid his visit to New York City and toured a charter school, not a regular public school. He declared that the nation's schools need more testing, as though we don't have enough information already to act on our problems. He declared his support for charter schools, where only 2% of the nation's children are enrolled.

The one educator close to Obama who actually has experience in the schools--his chief policy advisor Linda Darling-Hammond--was demonized by the new breed of non-educators and their media flacks, and she has returned to Stanford University. There was no room apparently in this administration for someone who had been deeply involved in school reform for many years, not as an entrepreneur or a think-tank expert, but as an educator.

It looks like Obama's education policy will be a third term for President George W. Bush. This is not change I can believe in.