From neocon Irving Kristol to anti-communist crusader Whittaker Chambers, there’s been a history of true believers turned full-throated denouncers. Now, education has a celebrated convert, Diane Ravitch.

Before an approving audience of union teachers in San Jose on Saturday, the education historian , respected author and blogger (“Bridging Differences) denounced all of what she once believed in: pay for performance, the school accountability movement, standardized tests, public school choice.

The New York University education professor and fellow affiliated with the Hoover and Brookings institutions especially laid into her erstwhile allies: think tanks and foundations  that are “demonizing unions, scape-goating teachers and undermining education.”

Teachers, she said, need to stand up to the forces that are “steamrolling over American education,” led by President Obama, with his push for charters schools through the Race to the Top competition, which she calls “No Child Left Behind on steroids.”

“There has never been time when public education was in greater peril than today,” she said, lashing out at a takeover of public education by “private entrepreneurs, amateurs and profit-making businesses.”

The speech was a taste of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” which will be released tomorrow. (Go here for a review of the book by education columnist Peter Schrag.)  It’s an unbridled retraction of beliefs.  But for all her over-the-top criticism of reformers, she offered on Saturday not a hint of criticism of her host – and defender of the status quo – the California Teachers Association.

Ravitch was an assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration. When No Child Left Behind became law in 2002 under George W Bush, she joined the chorus advocating merit pay and standardized testing. “I thought NCLB was good idea and applauded it when it was enacted.”

But we’re now seeing that “choice and accountability are leading American education in the wrong direction, she said. “Just because something is called reform doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Just because someone calls himself a reformer doesn’t mean he knows what he is talking about.”

Accountability gone awry

Accountability  became driving force, and American education became data-driven not mission driven. Instruction was suspended for weeks, if not longer, she said, to prepare for the all-important test. States lowered standards  to escape penalties, and districts narrowed their curricula to only what was tested. Scores on the nation’s report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP have stagnated – evidence that NCLB has failed, she said.

The Obama administration, recognizing problems of narrowed curriculum, is offering states and school districts hundreds of millions of dollars to design new assessments and is pressuring states to adopt common-core standards in math and English language arts. But Ravitch denounced Obama for standing behind charter schools and for advocating basing teacher pay on the results standardized tests.

She dismissed studies that showed charter schools outperform traditional schools, saying that charters enroll fewer handicapped and English learning students – “academic apartheid” for those left out. And tests, she said, should be used for diagnostic purposes and to evaluate programs – not against teachers and principals.

She denounced the president for saying he wants to close 5,000 of the worst performing schools. “Managing schools shouldn’t be treated like a stock portfolio,” she said. “It should be more like helping a family in trouble. Educational euthanasia is not a good idea.”

Obama and Duncan have actually given districts four options to turn around failing schools; closure is just one of the options – and the one least likely to happen.

When leaping from black to white,  greys — and sometimes facts — get in the way. That’s a problem with full, public conversions, in education, politics or religion.

By John Fensterwald on February 28th, 2010