As a historian who takes the long view, Diane Ravitch, author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," is rightly skeptical of "easy solutions" to the problems of American education. In her visit to The Bee's offices on Jan. 20, she showed she has little tolerance for quick fixes, panaceas or miracle cures.

In education, she says, "there are no shortcuts, no utopias and no silver bullets" – and recalling Dumbo, "no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly."

What most draws her historian's ire is boasting and hyperbole – charter schools (or school choice or testing) are the solution, teachers unions (or ineffective teachers) are the problem, Teach for America teachers are the best, poverty is not a problem. On and on.

She's right that we should question those who think they have all the answers and demonize anyone who thinks otherwise.

But Ravitch herself is not immune from exaggeration or "black and white" categorization. She lumps education reformers in one basket – which she labels as "corporate reformers" dominated by a "billionaire boys' club" (Bill Gates, Eli Broad and others) – and claims they are in the thrall of free markets and seek to privatize public education.

Where do Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller fit in? Or civil rights leaders trying to improve their communities and public schools?

As a nation, it seems to me we've got to find a way to stop talking past each other and get to some common ground. We all have an interest in seeing that public schools are engines of opportunity and that disadvantaged children are not neglected.

Would Wendy Kopp of Teach for America or Michelle Rhee of StudentsFirst or Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Free Zone or David Levin and Michael Feinberg of the KIPP charter schools or Bill Gates really disagree with the core of Ravitch's message?

That message is:

• Testing of basic math and reading skills has a place in determining whether student performance is moving forward, sliding backward or standing still, but it should not be everything. The curriculum should be broad-based and balanced, including the arts, physical education, science, history and civics.

• Teachers should be evaluated with observations and peer evaluations, in addition to measures of student progress.

• A good accountability system includes many measures of student achievement, not just test scores – attendance, graduation rates, student work, teachers' evaluations.

• Poverty matters. Children who have grown up in poverty need extra resources – such as small classes and extra learning time. They need preschool. They need medical care.

• Unionization per se does not cause high student achievement, nor does it cause low achievement.

• Bringing in young, idealistic teachers for two to four years of public service helps but is not a substitute for producing a steady infusion of well-educated teachers with a long-term commitment to the profession.

Ravitch notes that parents "should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program."

Well, yes. But what should happen when year after year, decade after decade a neighborhood school is not meeting the needs of individual students and its community?

Ravitch believes that charter schools have a place in reaching students who are not thriving in traditional public schools, though she fears they are drawing only the most motivated students.

She believes that closing a school should be a last resort. True enough. But we should be able to acknowledge that in some cases a new school would be better in building the continuity and traditions that children and families need as an anchor in their neighborhoods.

Ravitch has been a longtime advocate for a national curriculum, citing Finland as an example. In the 1980s she helped write a history curriculum framework for California that still today is considered among the best in the country. She is watching with interest the states' voluntary effort to create Common Core Standards.

She also believes the United States should be much more selective in recruiting who gets into teaching.

In her book, published in 2010, she recounts how she changed her mind on how much school choice and accountability can accomplish, thus bringing an effective voice of humility to our latest efforts at reform.

From the divergent voices, sometimes shouting at each other across great divides, we should be able to rekindle a broad-based commitment to public schools as an engine of mobility and common civic connection.

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