This paper discusses the misuse of historical data in attacks on educational revisionism and describes the contributions made by revisionists. Maintaining that the works of historical revisionists must be critically analyzed and their inadequacies recognized if they are to have lasting value, the author presents a textual criticism of a recent work which contains all of the complaints which conservative scholars generally level against works by revisionists. The book, by Columbia education professor Diane Ravitch, is entitled "The Revisionists Revised: Studies in the Historiography of American Education." The review describes Ravitch's technique as one which discovers presumed errors in the works of revisionist authors and attempts to discredit them on grounds of poor scholarship and/or incorrect interpretation. The author maintains that Ravitch clouds issues raised by revisionists by refusing to recognize contributions made by progressive writers on social and occupational mobility, IQ scores, capitalist imperatives, racism, access to higher education, and class analysis. The conclusion is that Ravitch's critique is obscurationist, constitutes a political attack on the revisionists is not in the spirit of academic freedom of inquiry, and is reactionary rhetoric rather than collegial criticism. (Author/DB)