Ravitch Admits Errors, Then Repeats

This is a review of Diana Ravitch's recent Washington Post Op-ed. Full text available at PrometheusInquiry.blogspot.com

** Partial Script **

Education historian Diana Ravitch has been getting press lately over her new book _The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education_ [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465014917?ie=UTF8&tag=concthefutu-20&am...­=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465014917], especially played up in such accounts is her repudiating the policies of No Child Left Behind--the Bush Administrations education reform initiative. However, it is presumptuous to cite this as a significant change in her positions or that the new specific policies that she advocates are any more palatable to the critics of NCLB.

In her prior book _Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms_ [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684844176?ie=UTF8&tag=concthefutu-20&am...­=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0684844176], Ravitch begins her conclusion by writing:

If there is a lesson to be learned from the river of ink that was spilled in the education disputes of the twentieth century, it is that anything in education that is labeled a movement should be avoided like the plague. What American education most needs is not more nostrums and enthusiasms but more attention to fundamental, time-tested truths. It is a fundamental truth that children need well-educated teachers who are eclectic in their methods and willing to use different strategies depending on what works best for which children. It is another fundamental truth that adults must take responsibility for children and help them develop as good persons with worthy ideals.

Massive changes in curricula and pedagogy should be based on solid research and careful field-tested demonstration before they are imposed on entire school districts and states. There has been no shortage of innovation in American education; what is needed before broad implementation of any innovation is clear evidence of its effectiveness. Schools must be flexible enough to try new instructional methods and organizational patterns, and intelligent enough to gauge their success over time in accomplishing their primary mission: educating children.

In a new Washington Post op-ed, Ravitch outlines her new agenda for school reform. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040101468­.html] Why new? As she previously stated, data should drive decisions; she cites the lack of significant improvement in reading and math test scores as evidence that the current policy has failed. She states that idealistic goals of 100% proficiency have corrupted education by dumbing down standards as a means of defrauding the process. Further, she states that parental choice through charter school programs has failed to create improvement in public schools, while these alternatives do not outperform them.

The focus of her new agenda is fixing failed public school management. First, she advocates enhanced standards for teacher certification, including rigorously testing teachers for competence in their core subject, literacy, and numeracy. Second, she advocates a shift in the expertise of principals and superintendents from administration to experience as excellent teachers. Third, she calls for more effective and substantial tools for assessing student knowledge. Finally, she repudiates the practice of identifying and closing schools that fail to improve, and instead calls for additional investments in solutions tailored to those schools specific demographic challenges.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Ravitch
• The
• Death
• and
• Life
• of
• the
• Great
• American
• School
• System:
• How
• Testing
• Choice
• Are
• Undermining
• Education
• Left
• Back:
• Century
• Failed
• Reforms
• Pragmatism
• Rationalism
• Privatization

[cxa011500]

Government is force? By that simplistic logic you should support anarchy. By the same token, the ultimate goal of private business is profit, not reason, and not even the benefit of students. As Ravitch pointed out in another lecture, when private organizations are put in charge of schools they often exclude "undesirable" students whose low performance would take away from their bottom line. Public education DOES work for many students, just not enough.

[jwoodswce]

@cxa011500

I have written and posted a reply at prometheusinquiry(dot)blogspot­(dot)com/2010/05/to-public-sch­ool-apologist(dot)html

[texshelters]

Like the statistics point out, some charter schools are good, some are bad, most are no better than the public schools. Some schools need more funding for things like, uh, roofs, heating and cooling, functioning toilets, and so forth. Without those infrastructure basics, these schools have no chance. Read Savage Inequalities for more.

Peace,

Tex Shelters

[jwoodswce]

@CrossTheGrigori

How much money do we spend now per child? How much should we spend? How will those additional funds achieve a gain? Is the waste and inefficiency in the current system monetarily larger than your proposed increase (and does your proposed increase account for these)?

I find that more time and money given to public schools increase the bad, see results of Missouri v. Jenkins. As an positive alternative, see YT vids by Children's Literacy Initiative on teacher training.

[jwoodswce]

@nubbybongwater

As soon as your hallucinogens kick in, you will see all kinds of crazy stuff that will match with your utterances.

[jwoodswce]

@nubbybongwater

How baked are you?

If you want to hear her, an excerpt is posted on C-SPAN YT channel and the full interview is available at both BookTV and C-SPAN's archive site.

However, when you come to my channel, then you get to hear me and what I have to say.

Do you understand now, or do you need a picture...or maybe an interpretive dance?

[buisyman]

@cxa011500 isn't that exactly what Ravitch is talking about doing? Closing schools that have bad students? Just where, exactly, would those schools be? Probably in the inner city, which is predominantly black. Therefore, she is talking about denying black Americans a good formal education.

[buisyman]

The "no child left behind" program was put in place because the liberal way of educating wasn't working. The more liberal our education system gets, the lower we go in the world education system. That's why we're not #1 in education in the world anymore. The liberals killed it. Perhaps the conserrvative education system should be given a try.

[qtronman]

Video response coming! This video inspired me! :-)