Renowned author and education historian Diane Ravitch has been named the 2005 recipient of the United Federation of Teachers' prestigious John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education. A Hoover distinguished visiting fellow, Ravitch is a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Ravitch, the Research Professor of Education at New York University, and an outspoken critic of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's stewardship of the New York City public schools, will be honored on May 14 at the UFT's annual spring education conference.
"Diane is one of the only voices out there other than us supporting teachers," UFT president Randi Weingarten said. "There has been no stauncher ally of teachers being treated as professionals and the union being a partner for—not an obstacle to—genuine reform."
In addition to the Dewey presentation, the spring conference, titled "Lost Opportunities," will feature the popular Operation Soapbox session, to which all of the mayoral candidates have been invited.
Ravitch, who was an assistant secretary of education in the administration of President George H.W. Bush and an appointee to the National Assessment Governing Board under President Bill Clinton, joins an impressive list of Dewey Award winners. They include Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, Norman Thomas, and President Clinton.
She is the author of eight books, including The Language Police, Left Back, The Troubled Crusade, and The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973. She also has edited fourteen books and written nearly 400 articles and reviews for scholarly and popular publications.
She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1996 to 2005, Ravitch held the Brown Chair in Education Policy at the Brookings Institution and edited the Brookings Papers on Education Policy.
Ravitch also is a member of the board of the Albert Shanker Institute and has contributed several articles to the American Educator. She also sits on the board of the New America Foundation, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Common Good, the James B. Hunt Leadership Institute, and the Center for Education of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ravitch has been a friend of the UFT and the AFT since the mid-1970s, when she first became friends with Albert Shanker and Sandra Feldman.
"We don't always agree with her, but she is a true friend of teachers," Weingarten said.
A native of Houston, Ravitch is a graduate of the Houston public schools. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1975.
