I have even more respect for Arne Duncan for inviting Ravitch to come meet with him – but he was probably wasting his time: she's gone completely off the deep end and sold her soul to her buddy Randi.  That said, I want to hear what she has to say, so I ordered her book and look forward to reading it:

"Is Arne Duncan really Margaret Spellings in drag?" Ravitch asked in a February 2009 blog item, suggesting that the education secretary's policies are not much different from those espoused by Spellings, who held the office under President George W. Bush.

Many analysts, educators and policymakers have challenged Ravitch's views. Obama and his education officials say they are collaborating with unions even as they challenge them to rethink the status quo. Still, it is a mark of Ravitch's influence that she landed a meeting with Duncan in his office in October, at his invitation.

"I have great respect for her," Duncan said Thursday. "She's a really smart lady. She cares passionately. We have some differences of opinion."

…Chester E. Finn Jr., an education analyst at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and longtime friend, recalled sitting next to Ravitch in the East Room of the White House when the second President Bush proposed the law in January 2001. "We were both applauding," Finn said. "It seemed to make sense at the time."

In her book, Ravitch writes: "I wanted to believe that choice and accountability would produce great results. But over time, I was persuaded by accumulating evidence that the latest reforms were not likely to live up to their promise. The more I saw, the more I lost the faith."

Ravitch resolved to write the book in 2007 to overcome what she called an "intellectual crisis." Its title echoes the classic 1961 critique of urban planning by Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

Finn, who held a senior education post in the Reagan administration, said he shares Ravitch's pessimism about the record of education reform. "We agree it's not very encouraging," he said, "and then we come to opposite views of the way forward."

Ravitch, he said, wants to "re-empower" the public school system. "The same evidence has turned me into a radical who wants to blow up the system," he added.

The quote from Checker Finn is particularly important.  Obviously reform efforts to so far, nationwide, have achieved limited success, as the twin achievement gaps have not yet closed in any meaningful way (though I suppose one could argue that they would be wider without the reforms to date).  From this, Ravitch reaches the totally erroneous conclusion that the reforms are wrong, whereas the truth is that the reforms have been limited in scope and, even when implemented, have been hampered and even crippled – both due to ferocious opposition by the adults, for whom the system is working just fine.  The solution, therefore, is MORE, BOLDER reforms, now that we know what needs to be done.

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Business principles won't work for school reform, former supporter Ravitch says

By Nick Anderson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 26, 2010

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022505543.html

For those who believe that performance pay and charter schools pose a threat to public education and that a cult of testing and accountability has hijacked school reform, an unlikely national spokeswoman has emerged.

This Story

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