Last night, I heard Diane Ravitch speak at Boston College for an audience of about 200 teachers and local politicians. True to form, Ravitch was brilliant. She clearly and concisely put forth the major streams of her critique of education reform, and she spelled out her recipe for change.
In Ravitch’s view, NCLB set the stage for our current problems in education because of the goal that all students would be proficient in reading and math by 2014 — an unrealistic goal that the architects of the legislation knew was unrealistic. When Ravitch asked about this goal at the time, she was told – "yes, it’s unrealistic, but you have to have goals."
NCLB was intended to address the achievement gap, but the problem is that the sources of the achievement gap are not int he schools – they have to do with the fact that 20 percent of children live in poverty (some estimate that the figure is now 26 percent, said Ravitch).
NCLB has led directly to a narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test.
As far as Race to the Top is concerned, Ravitch said, "My regrets to you [Massachusetts], you won." She believes that the Race to the Top money is fool’s gold, because for every dollar a state will get, they will need to spend much more to comply with federal mandates.
Race to the Top requires states to:
raise the cap on privately managed schools
evaluate teachers based on test scores
use test score based merit pay for teachers
and turn around schools using federal models (a. fire the principal; b. fire the principal and fire the teachers; c. turn the shcool into a charter school; d. close the school).
None of the current education erform efforsts are supported by educational research. They are supported by the work of economists, who look at test scores and data points, not the complexity of teaching and learning.
She clarified that she is not against charter schools per se; rather, she is against what charters have become (which is far removed from the intent of the charter school legislation).
Ravitch calls for a serious national conversation about improving the lives of children. This includes:
access to social and medical services so that children arrive at school ready to learn
improvements to the education profession (recruiting and retaining excellent teachers, supporting teachers who need help, and valuing experience — experienced teachers, principals who have teaching experience, superntendents who are educators)
ending high stakes testing – using tests as diagnostic tools only
offering a broad, rich, balanced curriculum at every school (including the arts, history, geography, literature, foreign languages, and physical education to all students)
There are no shortcuts for this work.
She advised us, "Don’t agonize, organize!"
I could not agree more with Ravitch on all of these points. Rather than blaming teachers (like so much of today’s education rhetoric does), Ravitch understands that education is a complex area that currently suffers from systemic problems. She clearly sees not only what the problems are, but what needs to be done to address them.
I sincerely hope that more and more people – and particularly the policymakers — will listen to her. It was a privilege to do so last night.
