QOD: Grant Wiggins Writes a Letter to Diane Ravitch

I have always admired you, Diane, as a scholar and clear-headed thinker, even when I disagreed with you. Now? I am saddened by your Manichean view of the education reform world. You now consistently write and speak as if all would-be reformers have nothing but selfish or devious motives for advocating significant changes in public schooling.

In the opening pages of Reign of Error, for example, you write: “Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining.  Public education is in crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has de-stabilized it.”

Yet, a few pages back you also write:

“I do not contend that the schools are fine just as they are. They are not. American education needs higher standards for those who enter the teaching profession. It needs higher standards for those who become principals and superintendents. It needs stronger and deeper curriculum in every subject…”

I agree. However, the latter angle never appears again in the book…