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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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