Quick thoughts on Reign of Error

Diane Ravitch doesn’t seem to be super generous with the opposite side she’s arguing against, so sometimes specific claims I’m not 100% onboard with.

Overall though, I buy the following arguments

• Many think schools are failing

• Socio-economic factors impact student success more than most in-school factors

• Existing school and teacher incentive systems are severely flawed

I appreciate the take downs of Bill Gates, as far as I know this is the least “data-driven” thing their Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation|Gates foundation pushes on.

For philanthropists and policy makers (and “rationalists”, “spaced repetition fanboys”, etc, people I see online that are like me), education systems and classrooms Many are tempted to reform education systems and classrooms|seem to be a tempting place to target improvements but the actual impacts of that appear to be more marginal than most people intuit, at least for overall outcomes.