News Release

Photo: To download a photo, see end of story.

Education reformer Diane Ravitch
to discuss No Child Left Behind

CHAPEL HILL - Education reformer Dr. Diane Ravitch will discuss "The Past and Future of No Child Left Behind" at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 20 in Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ravitch, a former presidential education adviser, will deliver UNC's 2006-2007 Frank Porter Graham Lecture, free and open to the public.

An admirer of Graham, Ravitch has worked to improve American education for more than 30 years. She is considered an architect of the move towards national standardized testing, which has become a cornerstone of the federal No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002.

Ravitch will discuss historical antecedents of No Child Left Behind, its connection to the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, its implications for children in poverty, national goals of the 1990s and where we go from here.

No Child Left Behind requires mandatory testing in grades three through eight and at least once in grades 10 through 12. The federal government uses the test scores to evaluate teachers and schools as well as to determine students' progress.

"The educational reforms enacted by No Child Left Behind directly impact the lives of thousands of North Carolina students, parents and educators," said Dr. Randi Davenport, executive director of UNC's James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence - part of the College of Arts and Sciences and sponsor of the lecture. "Dr. Ravitch's research explores the benefits and potential pitfalls of these testing standards."

Ravitch was an assistant secretary of education from 1991 to 1993 during the administration of President George H.W. Bush. She served on the National Assessment Governing Board from 1997 to 2004 - spanning the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The 26-member board, created by Congress in 1988, sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as the Nation's Report Card.

Today, Ravitch is a faculty member at New York University, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Her books include "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" (2003) and "Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms" (2000).

The Frank Porter Graham lecture series honors the late U.S. Senator and president of the University of North Carolina, a champion of freedom, democracy and the disadvantaged. Taylor McMillan, a 1960 graduate of UNC, established the Frank Porter Graham Lecture Series to honor the late university president. For more information, contact the Johnston Center at (919) 966-5110 or visit http://www.johnstoncenter.unc.edu.

- 30 -

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/ravitch_diane2006FPGlecture.jpg

College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Weaver Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu