Diane Ravitch Makes a 180
RSSBy Lauren Barack
Diane Ravitch's latest book, The Death and Life Of The Great American School System (Basic Books, 2010) takes a hard look at public school reforms currently rippling through the United States. The former Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush explains why she's done an about-face on standardized testing, charter schools, and other education reforms, like No Child Left Behind (NCLB). If you were appointed U.S. Secretary of Education, what would be your first act? The first thing I would do is to recognize that high-stakes testing is corrupting education and would therefore remove any penalties and sanctions from the federal law. Then I would request that future versions of the law include a requirement that all schools receiving federal funding must teach a balanced curriculum that includes not only the basic skills of reading and mathematics, but the arts, history, geography, science, civics, and physical education. Then I would go to Congress and urge the full funding of special education, which would relieve every district of a huge unfunded mandate and free up money for schools. Do you believe national standards can help schools better serves its students? We should strive to improve the curriculum in all the aforementioned subjects so that every American student gets access to a good education. I have always thought that it was a good idea to offer the same quality of education in every district and state. We are far from that goal. Should private foundations be involved in shaping or funding K-12 schools? I don't believe that private foundations should shape school policies. That is the job of the democratically selected school board. Of course, private foundations should help to fund good ideas, trials, demonstrations, and research. I would hope that in the future the foundations might try ideas and programs that were different from what the government is funding. At present, there is a convergence between the biggest foundations-like Gates-and the federal government that has the unintended effect of stifling innovation because the most powerful forces are in the same camp. Is teaching a profession, a calling, both, or neither? Teaching should be both a profession and a calling. Trying to distinguish between them might be a matter of semantics, rather than reality. To be a profession, teachers should collaborate in designing the standards by which they are evaluated, rather than having legislatures and politicians determine how to assess teachers' effectiveness. At present, there is all too much political meddling in the work of teachers by uninformed outsiders, who know little about the daily work of teachers, or how to judge good teaching. How can K-12 school libraries and school librarians help to shape curriculum? Libraries and librarians are crucial to good schools. A school without books and media resources is like a doctor's office without medical supplies. Books remain one of the primary means by which children and adolescents are able to travel to other worlds and imagine different futures for themselves. In hard times, libraries are considered expendable. This is bad judgment. Libraries are essential. Reading is essential to intellectual freedom. Is K-12 student achievement and student learning the same thing? These days, policymakers and researchers define achievement as synonymous with test scores. This is a big mistake because so many districts invest heavily in test prep materials that corrupt the value of the tests as measures of learning. Many children can get good scores yet remain ignorant; they are "prepared" for the test, but they are not good at either reading or math, and they know little of other subjects. This is not good education. Do parents and families play a critical role in a child's education? It is clear that families are children's first educators. Before their first day of school, children have learned vocabulary, everyday knowledge, attitudes and values that predispose them to learn--or not. Parent participation and parent education are crucial to children's success in school. Supportive parents give children a huge advantage in school. Lack of family support may reduce children's readiness to learn. Should K-12 students be tested on a state or national level at all? Yes, testing is valuable, but only if it is used for informational and diagnostic purposes. When it is used to reward or punish teachers and schools, it undermines education and incentivizes adults to game the system, to cheat, to teach to the test, to narrow the curriculum. Where do K-12 students fit into educational reforms and plans? In current educational reform plans, students are widgets. They are an afterthought. All the emphasis now is on organizational change (charters, privatization, choice, mayoral control) or on accountability, with specific rewards or sanctions for educators and schools. Have you ever located a time in the history of the U.S. public school system and seen when it's been deemed "successful" and not in need of reform? Our schools have always had critics, but in the past the critics wanted to make public schools better. Never before was there a powerful movement to hand control of public schools over to private entrepreneurs. Nor has there ever been the single-minded focus on punitive accountability that is now central to "reform." Never before have teachers been held to blame for students' low performance, without regard to other issues and conditions in the school and the community. Does personal responsibility play a role in public education? Of course, students must take responsibility for their learning, and families should take responsibility for teaching their children to behave appropriately in a social setting. Teachers must take responsibility for good instruction. Yet every one of these actors works within a larger context and interacts with others. Even if everyone else does their part, so must the district leadership, by providing adequate resources and wise policies. And so must the community, by taking responsibility for educating the younger generation. It is hard to see what is to be gained by the present mood of casting blame. All of us must do our share. No scapegoating, no finger pointing. The U.S. Dept of Education has said it's investing funds into research on the effectiveness of online learning. Do you feel this is an effective teaching tool? Certainly the Department should research the utility of online learning. My hunch is that this is unlikely to be a productive avenue because young children need to interact with a teacher, face to face, not to interface with a computer screen. We need to learn more about what technology can do, but also about what it can't do. My hunch is that it will prove useful for repetitive or rote tasks, but not for independent thinking. I think we need more of the latter, and perhaps less of the former.
Photo: By Jack Miller
