From McCarthyism to public school desegregation to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs, and now to another Trump administration, Diane Ravitch, a Houston native, has witnessed and written about the history of education. She served as assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, before joining New York University as a research professor of education from the 1990s through 2020. As a professor, Ravitch changed her opinions on high-stakes testing and school privatization through charter schools and voucher programs, and she criticized W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” in her book Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. She also founded Network for Public Education, a national public education advocacy group. Ravitch spoke to the Texas Observer about attending Houston’s public schools during McCarthyism and about how Trump’s second administration could impact public schools and students.
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