Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Grawemeyer Award in Education. The award is one of five Grawemeyers given out annually by the University of Louisville. The award includes a $100,000 prize.
Professor Ravitch served as an assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush. She then held the Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution before being appointed by President Clinton to the National Assessment Governing Board.
Dr. Ravitch had been a strong advocate for standardized testing, universal educational standards, charter schools, and school choice. But in a 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, she stated that she had been wrong and that the education reforms of the past decades have not worked.
Professor Ravitch is a graduate of Wellesley College. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.