Portside

'Again and again, she returns to this: “Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation,” which make for a “toxic mix.” Public schooling in itself, she emphasizes, is “in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it."

'In her zeal to deconstruct that narrative, Ravitch takes on almost all the well-known private-sector leaders and political officials — among them Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, Wendy Kopp and Michelle Rhee — who have given their encouragement, or barrels of their money, to the privatizing drive. It isn’t likely they’ll be sending her bouquets. Those, on the other hand, who have grown increasingly alarmed at seeing public education bartered off piece by piece, and seeing schools and teachers thrown into a state of siege, will be grateful for this cri de coeur — a fearless book, a manifesto and a call to battle.'

Jonathan Kozol, former fourth-grade teacher
and author of “Savage Inequalities,” “The
Shame of the Nation” and, most recently,
“Fire in the Ashes".' Review of "Reign Of Error,
The Hoax of the Privatization Movement
and the Danger to America’s Public
Schools" by Diane Ravitch