Ever since Sputnik it’s been common knowledge that the American educational system is on the verge of disaster. Yet after half a century of government reports, polemical bestsellers, data-driven miracle cures, and alphabet-soup programs, why aren’t our perpetually failing public schools fixed? According to education historian Diane Ravitch, we’re letting the interests of politicians, businessmen, and other adults get in the way of what children really need: not more testing but a better curriculum; fewer privatized “choices” but stronger neighborhood public schools; less intrusion from non-educators but more support for those who choose a profession she sees as crucial to preparing the next generation.

Ravitch, who teaches at New York University and chairs educational policy at the Brookings Institution, has occupied both sides of this perennially polarizing issue. She served in the US Department of Education under the first President Bush and helped found an education task force at the right-leaning Hoover Institution; from its inception, she was a vocal proponent of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation. In “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,’’ Ravitch changes sides, skewering Bush’s education plan, whose relentless focus on testing and Draconian deadlines for success she now sees as a “timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States.”