Ravitch, the education historian, former Bush administration official (the elder Bush), and dean of the Joel Klein critic pool, offers a name for the nameless reformers at her Ed Week blog: Republicans.
She writes:
The Republican education experts and conservative think tanks have always wanted more accountability, more choice, merit pay, and a tough anti-union stance. Thus, it is one of the amusing ironies of our time that the people who now espouse this agenda call themselves “reformers” and are acclaimed as such by the national media. They are reformers indeed, but the reforms they are advocating and implementing come right out of the Republican playbook.
Update: An earlier version of this post suggested that Ravitch herself used to be a Republican. That’s not true; she was a Democrat when serving in the Bush administration and has been a registered Independent for the past 15 years.