One of the nation’s leading voices against charter schools sent her two sons to an elite Manhattan private school — and downplayed her decision as a “nothing-burger.”
Diane Ravitch, a retired NYU education historian professor who is closely aligned with🎶 the anti-charter United Feder𝓀ation of Teachers, has joined the ranks of hypocritical leaders who’ve fought against charter expansion in New York — despite choosing to have their own kids attend private institutions.
“Of course, it’s hypocrisy,” said Ed Cox, who🌠 co-chaired the SUNY committee that authorizes charter schools in New York.
“Anyone who sends their kids to private school while opposing charter schools is doing a great disservice to inner city parents who want to give their children a good education,” added Cox, a former state Republican Party chairman.
Ravitch’s ex-husband, Richard Ravitch, confirmed to The Post that their two sons, who are now adults, attended The Dalton School on the Upper East Side. runs $57,970.
Diane Ravitch, 84, used to be a conservative who backed charter schools before becoming a fierce critic of them, writing several anti-charter books and derisively describing them as part of the “school choice/privatization cult” that’s undermining traditional public education.
Asked Friday about her sons’ education in light of her newfound stance on charters, she referred The Post to — that blamed their attendance on her ex, a former New York lieutenant governor and MTA chairman.
“After college, I married a New Yorker in 1960 whose family had a long tradition of attending private schools. Our sons went to private schools,” Diane Ravitch said.
She also said, “I enrolled my youngest child in a private school in 1965 and my second child in 1970 because I was a conservative. A lot happened to me in the years between 1965 and 2023, more than I can put into a tweet. I hope you understand why today I am a passionate advocate for public schools and an equally passionate opponent of public funding for private choices.”
She added, “The question of where my middle-aged sons went to schools is a nothing-burger.
“For the past decade, my blog bio has said that my two sons went to private school … It was never a secret that my sons went to private school.”
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Diane Ravitch defended her sons’ education in the Feb. 3 blog post after Christina Pushaw, a top aide to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and conservative school choice advocate Christopher Rufo denounced her anti-charter tweet du💛ring National School Choice𝄹 Week in late January.
“The best choice is your local public school,” . “It welcomes everyone. It unifies community. It is the glue of democracy.”
She then got hammered by pro-school choice conservatives for advising parents to do one thing — send their kids to traditional public schools — despite her own kids’ private-school background.
the row.
The expansion of charter schools in New York is front and center in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget for fiscal 2024. Hochul wants to lift the cap to allow more charters in New York City — where predominantly black and Latino students fare bett𝐆er than their cꩲounterparts in traditional public schools on the state’s standardized English and math exams.
City charters also spend less per student than regular public schools — $17,626 versus $35,941, respectively, according to data.
This week, The Post highlighted severa♛l New York stat🐎e lawmakers who hate charters but have also seen no issue with sending th💮eir kids to $60,000-a-year private o🥀r Catholic schools.
Diane Ravitch recently slammed Hochul’s plan to lift the cap, siding with liberal Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx middle school teacher.
“He is a strong voice in Congress for public schools,” she .
“He issued a press release calling on New York Governor Kathy Hochul to withdraw her budget proposal to increase the number of charter schools in New York City. He knows the damage this will do to the vast majority of students, who are in public schools.”
On her popular blog, Diane Ravitch also described the sea change in her thinking, saying she started out “conservative.”
“I opposed affirmative action, identity politics, and the Equal Rights Amendment. I believed, like Governor DeSantis, that the law should be colorblind,” she wrote.
Diane Ravitch served as assistant secretary in the US Education Department under then-President George H. W. Bush before joining the conservative Thomas Fordham Foundation, the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, and the Hoover Institution — all groups that support school choice and particularly charter schools.
“I even went to Albany on behalf of the Manhattan Institute and testified on behalf of charter legislation in 1998,” Ravitch said, referring to the law allowing the publicly funded charters that was approved by then-Gov. George Pataki.
But she said she turned against charter schools and the “corporatist school reform agenda” about 15 years ago after concluding that they were not better than traditional public schools “unless they cherry-picked their students” and complained, “that clever entrepreneurs and grifters were using some of them to make millions.”
She also went from backer to foe of standardized tests as “not valid measures of learning.”
“From my life experiences and many years as a scholar of education, I have concluded that the public school teaches democracy in a ‘who sits beside you’ way; it teaches students to live and work with others who are different from them,” Diane Ravitch wrote.
“The public school, I realized, is the foundation stone of our diverse society. It deserves public support and funding.”
