The Obama Education Agenda

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http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/11/09/obama-education-president-oped-cx_dr_1109ravitch.html

The Obama Education Agenda
Diane Ravitch 11.10.08, 12:00 AM ET

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A recent article in Science by researchers funded by the National Science Foundation predicted that by 2014, fully 100% of all elementary schools in California would be failing schools.

With the stakes so high, NCLB has turned every school into a test-preparation factory, focused solely on reading and mathematics. They are the only subjects that count in a school's ranking, so teachers routinely reduce attention to history, science, foreign language, literature, geography, the arts and other non-tested subjects. With this narrowing of the curriculum, students may be getting dumbed down even if their scores go up. Do we really want a society where our fellow citizens know nothing of history, literature, science and the arts?

Never before has the heavy hand of the federal government reached so intrusively into every classroom in the nation. And there is little to show for this intrusion.

The Obama administration can get off to a good start by revising NCLB. First, it should eliminate the goal of universal proficiency by 2014, because it is unattainable. Period. No state or nation has ever achieved 100% proficiency. Second, it should recognize that the federal government is best at providing accurate information, such as what children in each grade need to know to be abreast of international standards (that is known as the curriculum) and whether our children are meeting those standards (that is, testing); third, the administration should expect states and districts to fashion appropriate reforms and remedies in their schools.

One thing we have learned since the passage of NCLB nearly seven years ago is that Congress is not the right place to decide how to fix our schools. Furthermore, if we don't have the right vision for improving education, more money won't help.


Diane Ravitch is a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.