On January 20, 2012, Professor Diane Ravitch spoke at the Sacramento Convention Center. The School of Education hosted a private reception for the speaker. Dean Harold Levine helped to introduce the speaker. Read the story about her speech in the Davis Enterprise.

Ravitch is a professor at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. She served as a Assistant Secretary of Education under the H. George Bush and the Clinton administrations. She is widely considered the leading spokesperson for public education in the United States.