Diane Ravitch
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
August 2007
As anyone who's ever attended a Fordham Institute event knows, conversations about K-12 education can quickly turn inscrutable. They become tangled in jargon, so for the lay person unfamiliar with the mishmash of acronyms, Diane Ravitch offers a rather comprehensive new book. Now, when friends start musing at cocktail parties about the particulars of the "Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504)," a quick turn to page 182 resolves any lingering ambiguities that might kill the mood. Much is here. But no glossary of EdSpeak can ever be complete. There's just too much of it. This reviewer discovered several omissions. "Gadfly," for example, is inexplicably missing in action. One trusts that subsequent revisions and editions will tidy up such minor quirks in a swell book that your reference shelf now craves. Look for it this August.