Diane Ravitch's Mistaken Understanding of Markets

Teacher "accountability" is the latest craze around which education "reformers" aim to improve the public schools; but, accountability to whom? Teachers should certainly be accountable for the quality of the education they provide. But accountability to government is entirely different from the accountability a true free market demands.

I addressed this point in my latest TOS Blog post, Teacher Accountability Follows from Genuine Market Activity. Here is the opening paragraph:

In her paper “The Teacher Accountability Debate,” Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University, took critical aim at a new Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff public school study. The study, she says, purports to prove a direct correlation between teacher quality and the likelihood of student personal and financial success in life, such as avoiding teenage pregnancy, going to college, and earning money in adulthood. The study, writes Ravitch, “reinforced the message [that] Teachers are to blame for the ills of American society.”

Read the rest here.