Randi Kaye is an American television news journalist for CNN. She is an investigative reporter for Anderson Cooper 360° and weekend morning anchor for the network.

Early life and career[link]

Kaye graduated cum laude from Boston University with a degree in broadcast journalism.^[1]

She began her television career at ABC, working for Nightline and then Peter Jennings. She then moved to KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas. Kaye also worked for WFAA-TV in Dallas as a reporter and anchor, KMSP-TV in Minneapolis where she hosted Everyday Living, WWOR-TV in New York/New Jersey and WCCO-TV in Minneapolis as anchor of the 5pm and 10pm newscasts.^[1]

CNN[link]

Kaye joined CNN in December 2004. In addition to being a national correspondent,^[2] she is an investigative reporter for Anderson Cooper 360°.^[1] She is also temporarily anchoring the 1:00–2:00 pm ET weekday slot on CNN Newsroom and will take over as permanent weekend anchor.^[3]

Awards[link]

Kaye won an Emmy for Outstanding Coverage of a Current Business News Story for her reporting on black market infertility in 2006. The story, which was broadcast on Anderson Cooper 360°, covered how infertile couples chose risky and illegal ways to have babies due to the soaring cost of in-vitro medications.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• CNN - Biography
• Randi Kaye on Twitter
• Randi Kaye CNN on Facebook

Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is an historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education

Career[link]

Ravitch began her career as an editorial assistant at the New Leader magazine, a small journal devoted to democratic ideas. In 1975, she became a historian of education with a Ph.D. from Columbia University. At that time she worked closely with Teachers College president Lawrence A. Cremin, who was her mentor.

She was appointed to public office by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Secretary of Education Richard Riley appointed her to serve as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which supervises the National Assessment of Educational Progress; she was a member of NAGB from 1997 to 2004.

She has participated in a "blog debate" called "Bridging Differences" with Steinhardt School colleague Deborah Meier on the website of Education Week since February 26, 2007.^[6]

Writings and statements on education[link]

Ravitch critiqued the punitive uses of accountability to fire teachers and close schools, as well as replacing public schools with charter schools and relying on superstar teachers, in The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education (2010). The book became a surprise best seller a month after its release. One reviewer wrote "Ravitch exhibits an interesting mix of support for public education and the rights of teachers to bargain collectively with a tough-mindedness that some on the pedagogical left lack."^[7]

While she originally supported No Child Left Behind and charter schools, Ravitch later became "disillusioned," and wrote, "I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for." In the major national evaluation, 17% of charters got higher scores, 46% were no different, and 37% were significantly worse than public schools, she said. High-stakes testing, "utopian" goals, "draconian" penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn't work, she concluded. "The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers."^[8]

Ravitch said that the charter school and testing reform movement was started by "right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation," for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers' unions.^[9] She reviewed the documentary Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim, as "propagandistic" (pro-charter schools and anti-public schools), studded with "myths" and at least one "flatly wrong" claim.^[10] Of Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program, Ravitch said in a 2011 interview it "is an extension of No Child Left Behind ...[,] all bad ideas." She concluded "We are destroying our education system, blowing it up by these stupid policies. And handing the schools in low-income neighborhoods over to private entrepreneurs does not, in itself, improve them. There's plenty of evidence by now that the kids in those schools do no better, and it's simply a way of avoiding their - the public responsibility to provide good education."^[11]

Her book The Language Police (2003) was a criticism of both left-wing and right-wing attempts to stifle the study and expression of views deemed unworthy by those groups. (See political correctness and multiculturalism). The Amazon.com review summarizes Ravitch's thesis as "pressure groups from the political right and left have wrested control of the language and content of textbooks and standardized exams, often at the expense of the truth (in the case of history), of literary quality (in the case of literature), and of education in general."^[12] Publishers Weekly wrote: "Ravitch contends that these sanitized materials sacrifice literary quality and historical accuracy in order to escape controversy."^[13]

Ravitch's writings on racial and cultural diversity were summarized by sociologist Vincent N. Parrillo:

[Ravitch] emphasized a common culture but one that incorporated the contributions of all racial and ethnic groups so that they can believe in their full membership in America’s past, present, and future. She envisioned elimination of allegiance to any specific racial and/or ethnic group, with emphasis instead on our common humanity, our shared national identity, and our individual accomplishments.

—Vincent N. Parrillo, Diversity in America^[14]

Personal life[link]

Ravitch was born in 1938 in Houston, Texas, where she went to public schools. She is one of eight children. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn, New York City. She married Richard Ravitch (who later served as Lieutenant Governor of New York) in 1960 and they divorced in 1986. They have two sons; a third son died of leukemia at the age of 2.^[15]

Ravitch lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Her longtime companion is Mary Butz,^[16] a New York City public school principal who founded a small, highly-rated non-selective public high school and subsequently administered a progressive principal-training program until her retirement in 2003.

Memberships[link]

• International PEN
• American Academy of Political and Social Sciences
• National Academy of Education
• Society of American Historians
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Albert Shanker Institute

Published works[link]

Books[link]

• The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (1974, reissued 1988, 2000) ISBN 0-8018-6471-2
• The Revisionists Revised: A Critique of the Radical Attack on the Schools (1978) ISBN 0-465-06943-6
• The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (1985) ISBN 0-465-08757-4
• The Schools We Deserve (1985) ISBN 0-465-07236-4
• Schools in Cities: Consensus and Conflict in American Educational History (1983) ISBN 0-8419-0850-8
• Against Mediocrity: The Humanities in America's High Schools (1984) ISBN 0-8419-0944-X
• Challenges to the Humanities (1985) ISBN 0-8419-1017-0
• What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know: A Report on the First National Assessment of History and Literature (1989) ISBN 0-06-015849-2
• The American Reader : Words That Moved a Nation (1990) ISBN 0-06-016480-8
• National Standards in American Education: A Consumer's Guide (1995) ISBN 0-8157-7352-8
• New Schools for a New Century: The Redesign of Urban Education (1997) ISBN 0-300-07874-9
• City Schools: Lessons from New York (2000) ISBN 0-8018-6341-4
• Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform (2000) ISBN 0-684-84417-6
• The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003) ISBN 0-375-41482-7
• Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society (2003) ISBN 0-300-09917-7
• Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America's Children (2003) ISBN 0-8018-7327-4
• Forgotten Heroes of American Education: The Great Tradition of Teaching Teachers (2006) ISBN 1-59311-448-6
• The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know (2006) ISBN 0-19-507729-6
• EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon (2007) ISBN 978-1-4166-0575-1
• The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010) ISBN 978-0-465-01491-0

Ravitch has published more than 500 articles in scholarly and popular journals.

Awards[link]

Delta Kappa Gamma Educators' Award

1975, for The Great School Wars, New York City, 1805-1973

1984, for The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945- 1980

Ambassador of Honor Award, English-Speaking Union,

1984, for The Troubled Crusade

1985, for The Schools We Deserve: Reflections on the Educational Crises of Our Times

Other[link]

• Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar, 1984–85
• Henry Allen Moe Prize, American Philosophical Society, 1986
• designated honorary citizen, State of California Senate Rules Committee, 1988, for work on state curriculum
• Alumnae Achievement Award, Wellesley College, 1989
• Medal of Distinction, Polish National Council of Education, 1991
• Literary Lion, New York Public Library, 1992
• Award for Distinguished Service, New York Academy of Public Education, 1994
• Horace Kidger Award, New England History Teachers Association, 1998
• Award of Excellence, St. John's University School of Education, 1998
• John Dewey Education Award, United Federation of Teachers, 2005
• Guggenheim fellowship, 1977 http://www.gf.org/fellows/12014-diane-s-ravitch
• Honorary Life Trustee, New York Public Library
• John Dewey Award, United Federation of Teachers, New York City, 2005
• Gaudium Award from the Breukelein Institute, 2005
• Uncommon Book Award, Hoover Institution, 2005
• NEA Friend of Education, 2010
• American Association of School Administrators, American Education Award, 2011
• Outstanding Friend of Education Award, Horace Mann League, 2011
• Distinguished Service Award, National Association of Secondary School Principals, 2011
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award, American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 2011

• Honorary degrees from

Williams College

Reed College

Amherst College

State University of New York

Ramapo College

Saint Joseph's College (New York)

Middlebury College Language Schools

Union College

Siena College

References[link]

See also[link]

• The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

External links[link]

• Diane Ravitch official website
• Diane Ravitch - Faculty Bio NYU profile
• Diane Ravitch - Brookings Institution Brookings profile
• Podcast interview
• Kakutani, Michiko (April 29, 2003). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Young Minds Force-Fed With Indigestible Texts". New York Times: p. E7. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/books/books-of-the-times-young-minds-force-fed-with-indigestible-texts.html. Retrieved 2009-05-16.  (Review of Language Police)
• "Textbooks Distort History, Critic Says". Los Angeles Times. April 26, 2003. http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/26/local/me-ravitch26. 
• Diane Ravitch: No Child Left Behind Has Left US Schools with Legacy of "Institutionalized Fraud" - video by Democracy Now!
• Education after the Culture Wars - in which Ravitch skewers the "contentless curriculum" of controversy-wary textbook publishers.
• Waiting for Superman: Fact or Fiction? BAM! Radio podcast discussion.
• Booknotes interview with Ravitch on Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, October 8, 2000.

Kathleen Parker (born 1951)^[1][2] is an American syndicated columnist. Her columns are syndicated nationally by The Washington Post. Parker is a consulting faculty member at the Buckley School of Public Speaking, and is a regular guest on television shows like The O'Reilly Factor and The Chris Matthews Show. Parker describes herself politically as "mostly right of center"^[3] and was the highest scoring conservative pundit in a 2012 retrospective study of pundit prediction accuracy conducted using 472 predictions made by 26 pundits during 2008[1].

Biography[link]

Parker grew up in Winter Haven, Florida, graduated from Winter Haven High School in 1969, and attended Converse College before transferring to Florida State University where she majored in Spanish Literature. She also holds a Master's degree in the subject from Florida State.

She is married to an attorney, has three sons, and currently resides in Camden, South Carolina.^[4]

Career[link]

Parker is the author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care (New York: Random House, 2008). A columnist since 1987, she has worked for five newspapers, from Florida to California, and is the 1993 winner of the H.L. Mencken writing award presented by the Baltimore Sun. She has written for several magazines, including The Weekly Standard, Time, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan, and Fortune Small Business.

She also serves on the Board of Contributors for USA Today's Forum Page, part of the newspaper's Opinion section. She is also a contributor to the online magazine, The Daily Beast. The Week magazine named her one of the nation's Top Five columnists in 2004 and 2005. In October 2010, Parker became co-host of Parker Spitzer along with Elliot Spitzer.

In April, Kathleen Parker won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary with a selection of political opinion columns.^[5]

Starting in the fall of 2010, Parker co-hosted the cable news program Parker Spitzer on CNN with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.^[6] On February 25, 2011 CNN announced that Kathleen Parker was leaving the show to focus more on her writing.

Controversies[link]

Parker made news during the 2008 U.S. presidential election when she called on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin, to step down from the party ticket, saying that a series of media interviews showed that Palin was "clearly out of her league."^[7][8][9] Parker received over 11,000 responses, mostly from conservatives criticizing her.^[10]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Kathleen Parker

• Parker's column archives at Jewish World Review website
• Parker's column archives at The Washington Post website
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Parker, July 6, 2008