Changing My Mind About Schools (and Everything Else) w/ Diane Ravitch

About this episode

Diane Ravitch discusses her journey from advocating for education reform to challenging the very movement she helped create.

"This is a book about my life, about admitting 'I was wrong,' and about how important it is to say it out loud," is how our guest today, Diane Ravitch, begins her 2025 memoir, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else. What follows is her incredible life's journey spanning nearly nine decades, from learning to write as a left-hander using a quill pen at her Texas public school to becoming one of the most influential leaders of the modern conservative American education reform movement. Having spent the first half of her professional life in education policy advocating for national standards, testing, and accountability reform alongside charter schools and so-called school choice programs; as a founder of Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Assistant Secretary of Education during the George HW Bush administration, and serving on the board of the National Assessment for Educational Progress or NAEP (the "gold standard" of achievement assessments), however, as the opening quote reveals, after seeing this vision of education reform in action, she very publicly changed her mind about all of it. ‍Diane has now spent the last 15 years vigorously challenging…

People in this episode

Guest: Diane Ravitch

Topics covered

• education reform
• public schools
• memoir
• accountability
• testing
• policy change

Keywords

• education
• reform
• Diane Ravitch
• public schools
• accountability
• testing
• memoir

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Network for Public Education, National Assessment for Educational Progress

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

Places: Texas

More episodes of Human Restoration Project

• Teaching in the Wreckage of the Real: A Narration · May 30, 2026 · 27 min
• We Are Worldbuilders: A Narration · May 16, 2026 · 15 min
• The Future of Public Education is a Community School feat. Kelly McMahon, Jitu Brown, Angelia Ebner, and Dave Greenberg · May 2, 2026 · 57 min
• The Promise (and Persistent Myths) of Montessori Education w/ Andrew Faulstich, Dr. Ayize Sabater, and Kelly Jonelis · April 18, 2026 · 1h 8m
• Spring Break 2026: HRP Summer Book Club & Montessori Mythbusting · April 4, 2026 · 5 min
• Reanimating the Art of Teaching w/ Gary Stager · March 21, 2026 · 1h 29m