New Book Release and Webinar with Renowned Educational Historian and Public School Advocate, Dr. Diane Ravitch

 

Public School First NC

Dr. Diane Ravitch discusses her new memoir on Wednesday, October 22.

The changes in my worldview are real and deep. In this book, I try to explain.”

— Diane Ravitch

RALEIGH, NC, UNITED STATES, October 21, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Dr. Diane Ravitch, renowned education historian and public education advocate, has just released her latest book, a memoir. Join Public Schools First North Carolina in a webinar with Ravitch to discuss her new book, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else, published by Columbia University Press.

The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, October 22 from 7-8 p.m. Registration is open.

With honesty and grace, Ravitch retraces her journey from her Houston childhood to her service in the government, including a stint in the Department of Education under George H.W. Bush and her eventual transformation into one of our fiercest defenders of public schools.

Blending personal reflection with a historian’s rigor, Ravitch explains how she came to embrace equity, professional teachers, and democratic public education, becoming an inspiring activist whose life’s work continues to uplift the promise of our public schools.

For many years, Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. She believed that the cure for what ailed the nation's public school system was clear: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and she changed her views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She rejected privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality.

Ravitch’s many books include Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools (2020); Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (2013); and The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (2010).

Ravitch was assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and served on the national testing board during the Clinton administration. She is cofounder and president of the Network for Public Education.