• Listen to this segment with Diane Ravitch

• Listen to the entire program with Host Sonali Kolhatkar

While most people believe that our public education system is in need of an overhaul, many are unsure about how to go about it. Now, American children are once again guinea pigs in yet another plan to improve the quality of their education. This year, The Common Core State Standards Initiative was launched in 46 states plus the District of Columbia. Common Core, which was created in 2009 by a group of education related professionals funded by the Gates Foundation, offers a new set of Math and English standards for K-12 public school students.

Bill Gates, an avid supporter of the Common Core standards donated at least $75 million* to fund the curriculum’s development claiming that American students are currently lacking the skills to prepare for college. Critics of Common Core like my guest Diane Ravitch, argue that the curriculum is “untested and will continue to disadvantage poor students.” Many of the states that have agreed to implement the curriculum are unsure of its effectiveness and have even made efforts to dismantle the program.

GUEST: Diane Ravitch, Education Historian and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, and her latest best-seller, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools

*NOTE: Our guest noted that overall expenditures by the Gates Foundation on Common Core’s production, dissemination and advocacy amounts to over $2 billion.

Read Ravitch’s blog at www.dianeravitch.net.