Is Ravitch wrong?
*Bumped for final update*
Stuart Buck, over at Dr. Jay P. Greene's blog, takes on Diane Ravitch - an NYU professor who has turned against education assessments and school choice, which she supported previously, to become a darling of the far left, which opposes those reforms. Recently, Ravitch released a book ("The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education") attacking charters, vouchers and testing. She has written numerous columns, and her opinons have been covered by the Las Vegas Sun and Vegas PBS.
But Stuart Buck gives five good reasons why Ravitch is wrong: She 1) ignores or selectively cites scholarly literature; 2) misinterprets the scholarly literature that she does cite; 3) caricatures her opponents by using strawman arguments, rather than taking the best arguments head-on; 4) tenders logical fallacies; and 5) engages in a double standard, such as holding a disfavored position to a high burden of proof while blithely accepting more problematic evidence that supports her own position (or not looking for evidence at all).
