Dana Goldstein profiles education historian Diane Ravitch:
Ravitch says she’s particularly offended by the suggestion—implicit in the media’s celebration of Teach for America, the organization that launched Rhee’s career—that perhaps teaching should not be a lifelong profession at all, but a bleeding-heart diversion for elite 20-somethings.
“To me, it’s like saying that we’re going to build up the Peace Corps so at some point we can replace the senior diplomats,” she says. “That’s ridiculous.” Ravitch—who says she’d probably apply for TFA if she were leaving college today—nonetheless thinks that instead of letting the much-publicized program suck up all the “psychic energy,” there should be college loan forgiveness for people who become teachers. “Then you would have so many people applying to join this field that you could select the top 10 or 15 percent,” she says.
Goldstein follows up at her blog:
People are always fascinated by political intellectuals who publicly change their minds. In Ravitch's case, after spending several hours speaking with her one-on-one about her beliefs, and immersing myself in her writing, I believe she is motivated very much by a desire to defend the idea of public schools as a shared societal institution. She rightly points out, I think, that many free market school reformers do not share her bedrock commitment to the idea that every neighborhood deserves a high-quality, government-run, publicly-accountable school.
The Dish 