Ravitch was in Houston last week, as a guest speaker as part of a speaker series that I also spoke at about a year ago. Here's Ravitch's shill, the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss, with the story:

Education historian Diane Ravitch gave a speech at Rice University about school reform in which she directly challenged officials from Teach for America and the Knowledge Is Power Program who were present -- the very people who had invited her.

Ravitch, the author of the bestselling book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" and a former assistant secretary of education, spoke at Rice as part of a lecture series sponsored by The Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP), the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), and Teach for America.

Point by point, she picked apart school reform measures pushed by the Obama administration, leaving no topic untouched: charter schools, value-added teacher assessment, punitive sanctions on low-performing schools, No Child Left Behind, how Finland became an educational model by supporting teachers in ways the United States doesn't, the Texas educational miracle that wasn't, etc.

You can watch the video at http://www.vimeo.com/16479134.

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Posted at 9:04 AM ET, 11/17/2010