Diane Ravitch: The Big Idea -- it's bad education policy

[tonysam]

Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.

Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.

Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we're finally turning the corner. What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn't we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?

Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.

Lots more

[zazen]

1. the equivalent of blaming Obama for the current economic depression

I'm glad Ravitch has seen the light, but she seems to be using it as an opportunity to give Republicans another club with which to bash Obama, as if they weren't the primary drivers of this accountability-obsession (joined by many Dems over the past 15 years, to be sure).

She makes it sound like Obama dreamed up the entire system, and the right wing demagogues will just twist this to be "proof" that the gubmint is forcing our children into a standardized, gubmint run socialist curriculum.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. I'm reading her book and she isn't saying that at all

She does an excellent job of tracing the history of the school reform movement and NCLB. She also takes responsibility for problems this law has created. Never once does she place more blame on Obama.

She does point out however that there is ample research pointing to the flaws in the legislation and Obama seems to be ignoring that.

[mzteris]

2. she also said,

""I am not opposed to testing, but to the misuse of testing to punish people and close schools.

What did I abandon? The hope that choice and accountability could magically achieve the ends that I believe in. I am not opposed to choice—everyone should be free to choose another school if the school their child attends is not right for the child. And I do not oppose accountability, so long as it is used to help teachers, principals, and schools do a better job, not to punish them."

[4_TN_TITANS]

3. She's an idiot.

Now that she sees the miserable failure of NCLB that she trumpeted when * was in office, she's in full back-pedal mode.

[tonysam]

4. No she isn't. Her "backpeddling" is sincere.

What's Obama's excuse for continuing NCLB in a more punitive version?

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. She's incredibly courageous

She talks about the moment she realized NCLB was not working. She was a panelist at a conference at the American Enterprise Institute. As she listened to the other experts present, she realized there were deep problems in this legislation. That's when she began to speak out and eventually wrote her book.

That's not the least bit idiotic. It's admirable.

[Fire1]

8. Absolutely. n/t

[Catshrink]

9. But rather than lie and obfuscate like Rove and other

Bushies, she wrote a book documenting the failures of NCLB. Back-pedaling would have been lying, e.g. Rove's claims that no one in the Bush Administration said anything about Iraqi oil revenues, but she doesn't do that.

[Fire1]

7. "Charter schools are no panacea." Couldn't have said it

better, myself.:thumbsup: