An opaque view of Eugene Genovese across a smoke-filled seminar room was my first encounter with a living, breathing Marxist. His Roll, Jordan, Roll had won the Bancroft Prize for its analysis of slaveholding. He became the Organization of American Historians' first Marxist president, introduced many to an appealing application of Antonio Gramsci's theories, and edited Marxist Perspectives. But this brilliant thought-leader made a 180-degree turn, and by the 1990s had become a famous former Marxist. Instead of praising the Viet Cong, Genovese was supporting traditional conservatism and the need to understand sin. He even became a Catholic.

Such major shifts by authors leave some readers scratching their heads and others thanking God. But regardless of writers' changes in outlook over the years, their books assume their own lives. J. R. R. Tolkien (had he so desired) could no sooner reel in Bilbo Baggins from the public pond than J. K. Rowling can Harry Potter and Hogwarts.

And that's where Diane Ravitch finds herself in today's educational morass, attacking the very school reform movement she helped launch. Ravitch, a prolific author, incessant blogger, and former U.S. Assistant General Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush, has also done a 180. She was a strong advocate for No Child Left Behind, pushing for its aggressive implementation, and had a firsthand view of the data behind this initiative from her seat on the National Assessment Governing Board (1997-2004). Her shift to an unrelenting attack on both the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs is seismic. She now promotes year-round pre-K, stronger teachers unions, tenure, and prohibiting licensure for for-profit privates, and she has launched verbal blitzkriegs against private schools.

In her new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, Ravitch continues her campaign. The would-be reformers, she charges, are fatally compromised by their association with predatory capitalism. But she fails to make any sustainable argument that philanthropists like the Gates and the Waltons are joined in a conspiracy to close public schools—or that they even agree on key reform issues. Often, in fact, they're not even in the same "giant echo chamber" she alludes to, and certainly are not "talking only one to another, dismissing the concerns of parents, teachers and communities."

Those dang private schools, especially the charter type, Ravitch laments, will be the demise of the public school-based communities she evokes with rosy nostalgia. She cites the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores in noting that most charter schools are on par with publics, not superior, and in some cases, especially among the rapacious for-profits, the cost per student is $40,000 versus similar results at publics for only $10,000. However, while she is helpful in gaining an overall perspective on stalled charters, she repeatedly ignores evidence that contradicts her own claims. Ravitch claims that public schools are performing "at an all-time high," yet any gains she cites on the NAEP charts are in the lower grades, and graduates have remained at best at the same level (on charts she herself includes, on p. 346), showing no significant improvement. Pointing to improved high school graduation rates without also acknowledging the ever-growing need for remedial classes at U.S. colleges, she dodges hard questions about the value of those diplomas.

In her concluding chapter, "Privatization of Public Education Is Wrong," where we might expect a summation of carefully developed arguments, we find instead a flurry of rhetorical flourishes:

There is nothing creative about closing a school that is a fixture in its community. If it is struggling, it needs help. It may need extra staff, extra resources, and expert supervision. It doesn't need to be shuttered like a shoe store. No school was ever saved or improved by closing it.

Should we have kept open all the one-room school houses that were shut down when progressives wanted to consolidate? Imagine the thousands of schools that have closed over the decades because of lack of students due to migrations or economic downturns. Or imagine a school with a few students receiving grossly disproportionate resources simply to keep it open, perhaps taking funding from schools in low-income areas that Ravitch herself wants to bolster. Communities are also riddled with closed churches, libraries, lodges, and, in my old Indiana stomping grounds, grain elevators. Public schools are not uniquely insulated from the manifold circumstances that bring such changes about.

Ravitch's selective use of evidence, lack of intellectual humility, and Bill Maher tone will put off many readers, but whether or not you share her assumptions, if you are interested in the challenges facing parents, children, schools, and educators today, you should read Reign of Error. From Abelard forward, liberal educators have highlighted the need to have the information before us, and the need for educated citizens to consider sic et non data for decisions. Thanks to the data she presents, Ravitch can help us with this process, prompting us to think deeply about the choices before us.

Her own solutions, alas, aren't tethered to fiscal reality. Consider, for example, her call for a wave of new teachers, highlighted in "Class Size Matters for Teaching and Learning" (Chapter 25). Contrarily, Malcolm Gladwell's newest release, David and Goliath, asks how adding additional new ("poor") teachers instead of helping current good ones makes any sense. He builds on considerable research, including an economist's study of every elementary school in the state of Connecticut (a state that was among the top NAEP performers). The economist concluded, "I got a precise zero. In other words there is no effect" [that is, student learning didn't correlate with class size]. Ironically, the thrust of Ravitch's chapter is based on studies funded by the Gates Foundation, support from the very billionaires she derides throughout her text for blindly fueling the reform movement, masking "their agenda with rhetoric that is soothing and deceptive." Unlike Gladwell's economist's study, the Gates' studies are based on teachers' perceptions of class size—qualitative research, that is, not the hard data Ravitch claims drives her book.

Chameleon logic loses worthy adherents. The newest NAEP scores, released in June 2013, evidently surfaced after her bold endorsement of this yardstick as the "gold standard." The new scores showed lower performance levels for high school students. Ravitch has reacted to these inconvenient results by deriding their validity. When the NAEP scores (selectively interpreted) supported her argument, she was happy to cite them. Now she is singing a different tune. In her blog for November 11, 2013, she said "it makes me uneasy to see this maniacal national and international race to get the highest scores … . [T]he NAEP scores are like shadows on the wall, interesting but a distraction from the more important factors that create the conditions for a good life, including a respect for and love of learning."

Too many 180s give the impression of spinning one's wheels.

Jerry Pattengale directs the Green Scholars Initiative. He is assistant provost at Indiana Wesleyan University and Distinguished Research Scholar at Baylor University. His most recent book is Buck Creek: True Stories to Tickle Your Mind (Dust Jacket Press), a selection from his newspaper column.

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