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Diane Ravitch has seen the end of the U.S. system of public schools. And it's likely to happen in 2014.
In her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Ravitch provides the narrative arc for how the demise of American public schools may come to pass at the hands of market-driven "reformers" who are using a nefarious scheme of testing and choice to take control of schools away from educators, parents, and the public.
The book sweeps across more than 50 years of American education, pivoting on key events that forever changed the landscape of our nation's schools: from 1950's-era segregation, through the 60's and 70s' years of experimentation and its backlash during the Reagan Presidency, through the promulgation of No Child Left Behind legislation, and up to the current education policies of the Obama administration. Ravitch, a historian by trade, describes a ruthless power grab, carried out ostensibly "for the children," that is bent on dismantling our national education system. The cast of characters is surprisingly small but immensely powerful, including a Nobel Prize economist, influential think tanks on the right and left, five U.S. Presidents (Democrat and Republican), deep-pocketed education philanthropists, and a raft of bullying and dictatorial mayors and school chiefs. The recurring theme throughout the story is that a "great hijacking" of American public education is putting education at risk to "the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs."
What's perhaps more startling than the message of the book is the nature of the messenger. Ravitch, a self-avowed "conservative," was an early and eager advocate for market-based, NCLB-implemented approaches to education reform. She was Assistant Secretary of Education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H.W. Bush and appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board under President Clinton. She also co-founded an influential task force at the conservative Hoover Institution that advocated for "education reforms based on principles of standards, accountability, and choice." In her own words,
"I was attracted to the idea that the market would unleash innovation and bring greater efficiencies to education. I was certainly influenced by the conservative ideology of the other top-level officials in the Bush administration who were strong supporters of school choice and competition . . . . Like these reformers, I wrote and spoke with conviction in the 1990s and early 2000s about what was needed to reform public education, and many of my ideas coincided with theirs."
But when Ravitch went beyond the rhetoric of reform and actually looked at the reality of what choice and competition were doing to public education, she experienced an "intellectual crisis." The ideas she had been promoting so passionately were not working, and in fact, were becoming powerful weapons of destruction.
In this two-part diary I argue that the moment of truth that Diane Ravitch describes is a clarion call for progressives to forcefully push back against the Obama administration's misguided education policies. In part one, I specify the talking points that Ravitch arms progressives with in the fight to reclaim public education. In part two, coming next Sunday, I put the book into the broader context of what's driving a "Washington consensus" on education that is being pushed by politicians and mainstream media.
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Diane Ravitch's moment of truth occurred on November 30, 2006. She writes: (emphasis added)
"I went to a conference at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. - a well-respected conservative think tank - to hear dozens or so scholars present their analyses of NCLB remedies. Organized by Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn Jr., the conference examines whether the major remedies prescribed by NCLB - especially choice and after-school tutoring - were effective. Was the 'NCLB toolkit' working? Were the various sanctions prescribed by the law improving achievement? The various presentations that day demonstrated that state education departments were drowning in new bureaucratic requirements, procedures, and routines, and that none of the prescribed remedies was making a difference.
Choice was not working . . . . free after-school tutoring fared only a bit better . . . . As I listened to the day's discussion, it became clear to me that NCLB's remedies were not working."
The "most toxic flaw" of NCLB, Ravitch came to realize was the "legislative command that all students in every school must be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014." She writes, (emphasis added)
"The goal set by Congress of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is an aspiration; it is akin to a declaration of belief. Yes, we do believe that all children can learn and should learn. But as a goal, it is utterly out of reach. No one truly expects that all students will be proficient by the year 2014, although NCLB's most fervent supporters often claimed that it was feasible. Such a goal has never been reached by any state or nation. In their book about NCLB, [Chester] Finn and [Frederick] Hess acknowledge that no educator believes this goal is attainable; they write, 'Only politicians promise such things.' The law, they say, is comparable to Congress declaring that 'every last molecule of water or air pollution would vanish by 2014, or that all American cities would be crime-free by that date.' I would add that there is an important difference. If pollution does not utterly vanish, or if all cities are not crime-free, no public official will be punished. No state or municipal environmental; protection agencies will be shuttered, no police officers will be reprimanded or fired, no police department will be handed over to private managers. But if all students are not on track to be proficient by 2014, then schools will be closed, teachers will be fired, principals will lose their jobs, and some - perhaps many - public schools will be privatized.
But the most dangerous potential effect of the 2014 goal is that it is a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States. The goal of 100 percent proficiency placed thousands of public schools at risk of being privatized, turned into charters, or closed. And indeed, scores of schools in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other districts were closed because they were unable to meet the unreasonable demands of NCLB. Superintendents in those districts boasted of how many schools they had closed, as if it were a badge of honor rather than an admission of defeat."
Convinced that the Obama administration is hurtling down the same destructive policy pathway of his predecessors, Ravitch is determined to stand astride the rails of the oncoming train and yell "Stop!" "In view of the money and power now arrayed on behalf of the ideas and programs I will criticize," she writes, " I hope it is not too late."
The books' message to progressives is that current education policies being advocated by political leaders on all sides are usurping democracy and endangering the future wellbeing of our country's children. Key points to take away from the text:
1. The politics of education has undergone a radical transformation that has been aided and abetted by mainstream media. By 2008, "slogans long advocated by policy wonks on the right had migrated to and been embraced by policy wonks on the left." Only advocates who herald market-driven competition, choice, and accountability are anointed as "reformers" by the media.
2. There is no managerial "silver bullet" that will cure the woes of all our dysfunctional schools. "When a school is successful," according to Ravitch, "it is hard to know which factor was most important or if it was a combination of factors . . . . Certainly schools can learn from one another, but school improvements - if they are real - occur incrementally, as a result of sustained effort over years."
3. Current policies being promoted by Arne Duncan have virtually no track record of producing success in public schools. "Neither Congress," Ravitch writes, "nor the U.S. Department of Education knows how to fix low-performing schools."
4. Relegating schools to "the forces of the marketplace" is a prescription for disaster. "Markets have winners and losers," Ravitch reminds us. It's fine for consumers to choose how they purchase goods and services based on a competitive market. But it's appalling to design a system to purposefully abandon some children to worse outcomes.
5. The argument for "school choice" is really an argument for elitism. "During the 1950s and 1960s," Ravitch informs us, "the term 'school choice' was stigmatized as a dodge invented to permit white students to escape to all-white public schools or to all-white segregation academies." It was a "conscious strategy to maintain state-sponsored segregation."
6. The true purpose of vouchers is to destroy public schools. Invented by Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, vouchers are the chief mechanism in a "shock doctrine" approach to education reform. Plus, the track record for vouchers is not good. Research studies of the district that has had the most experience in using vouchers, Milwaukee, have found that there is no evidence that vouchers improve the academic experiences of students, even those who are the most needy.
7. Charter schools do not compete with mainstream public schools on a level playing field. Because attendance is determined by lottery, charter schools usually siphon off the more motivated students. They have higher attrition rates for teachers and students, with students who quit tending to be the lower performing students. And they are more apt to enforce discipline codes that would likely lead to court challenges if they were adopted by a regular public school. Yet even with these advantages, charter schools are not statistically more apt to produce higher achievement than ordinary public schools.
8. Albert Shanker, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, is not the "father of the charter school movement" as many politicians and pundits maintain. His proposal for teacher-led autonomous schools within schools was never intended to lead to separate education enterprises run by outside corporations. And Shanker withdrew his endorsement of charter schools in 1993 and became a vociferous critic.
9. The current approach to evaluating schools by test scores is a mistake. Standardized tests are not precise enough, state legislators and school leaders will always figure out how to game the system, and scores are subject to measurement error, statistical error, random variation, and a host of environmental factors and student attributes.
10. "The most durable way to improve schools," Ravitch proposes, "is to improve curriculum and instruction and to improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn."
Along with these essential lessons learned, Ravitch questions why is Obama, who was elected on a "promise of change," picking up the same banner of choice, competition, and markets" that had been the hallmark of the Bush administration? Without answering the question directly, Ravitch provides plenty of clues, which I'll explore in part two, next week. |
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