Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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and find links and other information related to today's conversation.

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Today is April 2nd, 2020, and I guess this is a story and an author, Diane Ravich of New York University.

This is her second appearance on e-contalk. She was here in April of 2010,

talking about her book, The Death in Life of the Great American School System,

her latest book and the subject of today's conversation is Slaying Goliath.

I want to thank Plan Tronics for providing down with the Blackwater 52220 headset.

Diane, welcome back to e-contalk. Well, thank you, Russ, for inviting me.

This episode is a continuation of recent episodes on the charter school movement.

Conversations I had with Terry Moe, Robert Pondicio, and Sarah Carr.

I encourage listeners to listen to those episodes as well as earlier ones related education

and maybe some ones yet to come.

Diane, you have a very different perspective from some of these previous guests.

You call the proponents of charter schools disruptors and those that oppose them, the resistance.

What is your criticism of the disruptors, the people who promote charter schools?

Well, the promise of charter schools, and I was there at the beginning,

the beginning being the late 1980s, and was a proponent of charter schools.

I was in the George H. W. Bush administration, and we were very much in favor of the idea,

...