On our present course, we are disrupting communities, dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports of their progress, and creating a private sector that will undermine public education without improving it. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform.
--Diane Ravitch, Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2010
I was both shocked and delighted to read this. Not so much because she changed her mind, but because of the rationale. It's important to understand than when a "pilot program" has run its course and failed, it's time to dump it and change course.
Educational policy should share the stage with health care policy.