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I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but please maintain some perspective on the sales of Ravitch's book. The Washington Post article you linked to doesn't quote numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if its unit sales to date were less than 25,000. It doesn't take gangbuster sales to even make it to the top of the non-fiction best-seller lists. The biggest-selling non-fiction release so far this year, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's trashy election history Game Change, was only moving 50,000 copies a week at its peak. The sell-outs simply reflect the fact that the publisher and retailers underestimated early demand, which given the book's subject, is hardly that surprising. You can probably count the number of copies most stores ordered on the fingers of one hand. It ain't Harry Potter or Twilight, or even The Closing of the American Mind (at least not yet).

Also keep in mind that national media people and upper-level government officials (past and present) all know each other socially. (The cliqueish nature of the Manhattan-DC media crowd is also why they're almost always on the same page with regard to education issues.) I wouldn't be surprised if Valerie Strauss, the author of the Post article, was friends with Ravitch and put that up there as a favor. The failure to quote hard sales numbers is a pretty good indication that the intent of the piece was to hype the book.

This certainly isn't to say that Ravitch's book is not of considerable interest. She's been on both sides of the education debate, and she probably knows more about the issues involved than anyone in the country. Anyone with an interest in education issues and policy would be remiss in not picking it up.

Robert Stanley Martin,

I'm not sure what your point is here. That it isn't really a bestseller? That Valerie Strauss may have hyped the book as a personal favor?

If your point is the first, it has been a bestseller, both on Amazon and on other lists. I believe it was #10 on the Washington Post's nonfiction list earlier this month, before it sold out. (And that list is based on sales.)

Your second suggestion--that Strauss may have hyped the book as a personal favor--is unfair to both Strauss and Ravitch. Strauss has read the book closely and thoughtfully, as her commentaries and C-SPAN interview show. Whether or not they are friends (I don't know), her response to the book is genuine, informed, and insightful.

As for your suggestion that people in education all know each other and are therefore biased, well, then bias is everywhere, not only in education but in other fields. One hopes, however, for honesty from friends and colleagues. Good friends and thoughtful colleagues not only praise each other when praise is due, but also call each other out (and are often quite skilled at this, as they know each other so well). And many people, no matter who their acquaintances and colleagues may be, do not let social cliques or other groups decide their views for them.

As Claus points out, there is an awful lot of note-cribbing in the media--people just repeating what others have said without questioning the underlying terms and oppositions (such as "reformer" vs. "establishment"). But there are those who do not do this, and Ravitch and Strauss are among them.

I'm planning on reading Ravitch's book (backordered like everyone else) not because I think her book is going to knock Twilight off the Best Sellers list, but because I think her perspective is important. Though I disagree with her, she represents an important set of voices in the conversation.

In many ways, she represents a counter revolution to the push from both the Bush and Obama administrations for greater accountability for adults (are you doing your JOB?), better measurement of progress for kids, and a general reduction in the number of job protections that exist for educators that are present usually only in socialist countries (and I do not mean "socialist" with any pejorative vitriol usually reserved for this term in the US, I really mean socialist countries!). I mean, where else in the U.S. do you get a practical lifetime guarantee of employment? As someone "in the trenches" on this front, I can tell you that even if you have a five foot stack of documents showing incompetence it takes months and six figures worth of school budget dollars to remove a poor teacher.

In some ways I think Ravitch's approach to accountability, tenure reform, and performance pay is the same as the current Republican leaderships approach to health care - a big "NO" carved in stone.

If folks like Ravitch, hardcore teachers' union leaders, and others who pine for the good old days (when schools really weren't that good in my opinion) don't find some way to be constructive in this conversation, they may find themselves in the same boat as the Republicans on health care - left behind and rudderless when the larger wave of reform rolls out and leaves them.

Claus is right in saying that we need to find ways to engage all these powerful voices in how we can make education better. We absolutely should be looking at tenure, accountability, and compensation reforms and in finding ways to work together on what these look like and its extremely important to recognize that in the end we all want the same things, great schools and great kids.

This is difficult when one side seeks a slash and burn complete revolution of the existing system and the other seeks an unyeilding and ultimately exhausting defense of the status quo.

Surely there is a better alternative.

I think the observation that Claus offers is a good one. If you're paying attention to what educators respond to positively right now, (and if you're willing to allow an oversimplification), it's Ravitch, not Duncan. I just have yet to find a teacher, in personal connections or online reading, who says "Arne Duncan speaks for me. He's taking us in the right direction."

Duncan has said the right thing any number of times. He knows that he should say "multiple measures" in a speech, and knows that we want less punitive uses of test scores, and things like that. Then he praises the firing of an entire school staff, citing their test scores as evidence to justify the move.

If the so-called reformers really care about serving students well, wouldn't you think they would want to work more closely with the people who actually serve students?

Ravitch appeals to readers across the political spectrum because she presents a rock-solid core wisdom on what good education should be about. She's a little like Obama in how she appeals to our better angels and taps eloquently in core American values. By contrast, the "reformers" present only a palid vision of increasing student test scores on international comparisons. They have money and power, and they may be earnest, but they cannot ignite the spark, as Ravitch can, when our head connects with our heart. That moral authority makes her a powerful force. If Obama were smart -- and I think he is -- he would very quickly make her a key advisor.

Robert, I think you offer a very useful caution about the word "bestseller." It is good to keep that in mind. I think Diana did a better job than I did of putting the book's sales in true context. Suffice it to say that it has had a very robust early response, exhausting a printing in less than a week. That pattern, it seems to me, suggests a lot of early interest. Does this mean millions are hanging on Ravitch's every word, as I may have suggested in my posting? No. But there are quite a few people out there looking for an alternative narrative to the one most common in the media.