Diane Ravitch on No Child Left Behind

[Anonymous]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html



Scholar’s School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate

By SAM DILLON
Published: March 2, 2010

Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.

“School reform today is like a freight train, and I’m out on the tracks saying, ‘You’re going the wrong way!’”

Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education.

(snip)

She told school superintendents at a convention in Phoenix last month that the United States’ educational policies were ill-conceived, compared with those in nations with the best-performing schools.

“Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect,” she said. “They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the way to ensure good education. We’re on the wrong track.”

The superintendents gave Dr. Ravitch a standing ovation.

[Anonymous]

What's interesting to me about Diane Ravitch is that as far as I can tell, she was never a classroom teacher.

I see she was superintendant of schools, and big in policy/think tank places -- but never an actual teacher??

I think anyone in charge of making any kind of educational policy should have a minimum of 5 years classroom teaching experience.

[Anonymous]

Ravitch has finally come to see the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

To those who say wisdom only comes with age, well listen to the tons of adults
well-versed in every imaginable profession who are trooping to gurus to satisfy their hunger for more than meanings beyond facts -- moderne Metaphysics--- and end up just as often on the sweatlodge tour enriching modern Elmer Gantrys.

[Anonymous]

Oh no, will you please go hang out on your "Curriculum Content" trippy-dippy thread?

Ravitch is calling for MORE knowledge (learning about history, civics, geography, science) not less -- and she's *not* calling for classes on Plato and the Orgins of Promiscuous Love. Just plain old, regular, fact-based information-type learning.

[Anonymous]

Ummmm "trippy-dippy" thread.

When you take a couple of tirade-free minutes you might see that the progeny of Plato are
every extremist plague that has ever descended upon mankind (and in some scholars minds that called reall History --beyond the dates and facts.
As for instance -- nationalism, romanticism (Hitler came out of german romanticism) aryanism, all the forms of transcendentalism that embody the promiscuous use of the good things of this life in favor of the quick passage to the next for beatific bliss.
There is not subject more important, none, if civilization as we know it is to be both understood and preserved.
And that is "trippy-dippy"?

Also, the Grad students challenged to write the essays zeroed right in on "promiscuous" meaning careless throwaway valueless, to be used, abused, then discarded. . .
In an interesting aside --the plight of women down through the centuries, the regarding of women as seductive distractions standing in the path of men's path to purification--even to the point of their demise as obstructions goes right back to ol' Plato. . . .Just interview the women in the middle east who live under fanatical religious mysticism --the place where Plato was revered, and yet is.

It is interestig that Thoreau, an American Romantic chided Emerson "Never to let go of the huckleberry bushes" knowing "idealists" were sometime promiscuous with the real in search of the ideal. But Aquinas said it best __"In search of the Ideal Good are apt to sacrifice the Real Good." And don't perfectionists do that everyday.. .even to the point of escapism of all sorts to assuage the failure to be perfect.
"Trippy-dippy" --try watching some Intervention episodes. . it's all there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's interesting to me about Diane Ravitch is that as far as I can tell, she was never a classroom teacher.

I see she was superintendant of schools, and big in policy/think tank places -- but never an actual teacher??

I think anyone in charge of making any kind of educational policy should have a minimum of 5 years classroom teaching experience.

I applaud your suggestion and wish that it could become a requirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's interesting to me about Diane Ravitch is that as far as I can tell, she was never a classroom teacher.

I see she was superintendant of schools, and big in policy/think tank places -- but never an actual teacher??

I think anyone in charge of making any kind of educational policy should have a minimum of 5 years classroom teaching experience.

I take it back. She was never superintendent of anything. Just a thinker/policy maker/historian.

If she had actually worked as a teacher, ever, I'd have a lot more respect for anything she has to say now or then.

[Anonymous]

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences

Accountability and choice are now the official strategies for school reform, as they have been since the passage of No Child Left Behind. I look at the evidence for their effectiveness and conclude that we are on the wrong track. The emphasis on accountability is leading to lowered standards (which inflate results), dumbed-down tests (which inflate results), gaming the system (which inflates results), and cheating (ditto). What we have today is a system that borders on institutionalized fraud, where we tell ourselves lies about progress. The emphasis on choice promotes privatization, turning over public school children to private managers who may use screening mechanisms to skim the best students and/or get rid of the weakest, and then trumpet their "results." This way does not lead to a quantum improvement of American education.

It'd be nice to hear her explanation as to why she didn't see this coming, years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's interesting to me about Diane Ravitch is that as far as I can tell, she was never a classroom teacher.

I see she was superintendant of schools, and big in policy/think tank places -- but never an actual teacher??

I think anyone in charge of making any kind of educational policy should have a minimum of 5 years classroom teaching experience.

I take it back. She was never superintendent of anything. Just a thinker/policy maker/historian.

If she had actually worked as a teacher, ever, I'd have a lot more respect for anything she has to say now or then.

Most of the people discussing education policy, including Bill and Melinda Gates, members of the Business Roundtable, the Broad Foundation, members of Congress, etc., have never taught and that doesn't keep them from spouting off on what schools and teachers should do. I appreciate it when folks like Diane Ravitch admit when they've been wrong. She's smart, knows a lot about education reform, and as a former NCLB supporter and standardisto, her message resonates.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate her being willing to say she has changed her mind, too. It does mean something; I just was surprised when I looked at her bio.

[Anonymous]

And I think all those folks who like to spout off about education reform should be required to teach a class of 22 second graders in a working class, public school setting for two years -- and make at least a year's worth of progress in math and reading with them -- before the "experts" are allowed to be let loose on society with their opinions.

[Anjelica]

Anonymous wrote:And I think all those folks who like to spout off about education reform should be required to teach a class of 22 second graders in a working class, public school setting for two years -- and make at least a year's worth of progress in math and reading with them -- before the "experts" are allowed to be let loose on society with their opinions.

agree

or teach a class of 10th graders reading at a 5th level who need to pass the high school assessment to graduate

And we wonder why teachers leave the profession w/in the first five years . . .

[Anonymous]

Anjelica wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And I think all those folks who like to spout off about education reform should be required to teach a class of 22 second graders in a working class, public school setting for two years -- and make at least a year's worth of progress in math and reading with them -- before the "experts" are allowed to be let loose on society with their opinions.

agree

or teach a class of 10th graders reading at a 5th level who need to pass the high school assessment to graduate

And we wonder why teachers leave the profession w/in the first five years . . .

Successfully teach.

[Anonymous]

I guess the analogy is having lawyers in charge of medical reform (instead of people with MDs and experience as physicians).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's interesting to me about Diane Ravitch is that as far as I can tell, she was never a classroom teacher.

I see she was superintendant of schools, and big in policy/think tank places -- but never an actual teacher??

I think anyone in charge of making any kind of educational policy should have a minimum of 5 years classroom teaching experience.

She's not a policymaker. She's a scholar who has studied and written extensively on the history of education policy in the U.S. And her views are not anti-teacher. She's concerned about the effects of NCLB on the educational opportunities offered in U.S. schools.