What Ravitch Gets Wrong, Part I

Almost a year ago a close colleague gave me a copy of Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.  He had just read this book and was enthusiastic about it, and knowing that I was a proponent of school choice, my colleague thought my perspective might be enriched by hearing Ravitch's argument.

I was aware of the basic outline of Ravitch's work, and her public shift from identifying with the "education reform" movement to becoming its ardent foe.  Over the year that it's taken me to read the book and gather my thoughts about it, I've become much more familiar with Ravitch, even wrangling with her publicly on the pages of my blog and hers.  What I have found is that, while she makes some thoughtful and powerful arguments that definitely need to be aired in our on-going national discussion about education, ultimately Ravitch misunderstands the point of school choice, mistakenly conflates it with the industry's testing obsession, and ultimately mischaracterizes her opponents in a way that poisons the possibility for meaningful dialogue on one of the most important issues of our day.

In this post I'll mostly discuss why Ravitch's book is important and what it has to offer, and in a subsequent post I'll discuss what's missing in her argument, and is even hostile, to real school reform.

While I disagree with Ravitch profoundly on many points, I do recommend this book.  Informed educators and parents will benefit from Ravitch's insights and her rich, narrative history of education reform in the United States.  The Life and Death of the Great American School System:

• Presents a succinct, clear, and mostly fair account of the origins of the school choice movement, and the admittedly mixed research on outcomes from students who attend voucher or charter schools. 
• Accurately recounts the myriad failures of NCLB, which will be familiar and affirming to frustrated educators everwhere. 
• Describes in great detail the frequently clumsy attempts by various urban school districts to improve teaching and learning, experiments that often involved rigid, autocratic approaches that alienated teachers and parents, and often garnered meager results.
• Identifies a core group of fantastically wealthy philanthropists who have contributed millions of dollars to fund some of the most sweeping school reform initiatives.
• And makes a compelling case for why standardized testing is an extremely limited measure of student learning.

It is this last point that, above all others, makes Ravitch's entire argument worth hearing, both in this book and in her writing as a whole.  Ravitch explains how using simple test scores to make judgments about the performance of individual teachers and schools is a patently unfair misuse of these assessments, and how the test-driven culture of schools contributes to cheating, an intense narrowing of the curriculum, and ultimately the demise of rigorous instruction.

In light of all this, Ravitch advocates an about-face in terms of education policy.  She rejects federal school accountability measures as they have been configured under the last two or three presidents and all school choice schemes (education reforms use test scores to bash public education in an effort to ultimately privatize schooling in general - or something like that).  Instead, Ravitch calls for a renewed focus on standards, improved instructional practice, higher salaries for teachers, and more money for struggling schools.

I find myself nodding in agreement to many of her agruments.  As I've written elsewhere, standardized tests are one of the least instructionally sensitive measures of student learning and teacher performance, and schools' perpetual testing obsession frequently leads to disastrous consequences.  I agree wholeheartedly that improving schools depends, in large part, on our ability to establish a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and in improving teaching practice in the everyday classroom. 

But for all of the flaws in current education policy, there is still a compelling need for school choice and for the wholesale remaking of American education.

Ravitch rarely acknowledges that our schools are, by nearly any measure (not even including test scores) failing vast swathes of American children.  And states (like Kentucky) have been busy trying to standardize curricula and improve teaching practice for decades now, often with very little to show for their efforts.  Many schools seem impervious to change or improvement and throwing vast sums of money their way is simply not working.  Ravitch is essentially a defender of the educational status quo: unions and tenure are not the problem; our schools would just be fine if politicians left us alone, if we paid teachers better and gave them a good curriculum, and if we poured more money into helping these poor kids who have such a difficult time learning. 

Where is the evidence this would lead to improved schools?  Ravitch is adamant that there is no empirical data to suggest that school choice would improve student learning.  Where is the empirical evidence that her proposals would either?

Just yesterday, Kentucky education commissioner Terry Holliday issued a scathing indictment of the Jefferson County Schools, the state's largest district, where 16 of 18 low-performing high schools have essentially made no progress after years and years of intensive supports and millions of dollars in school improvement money.  Note that this assessment is not based on test scores, but rather on a comprehensive audit of the school's culture, curriculum, instruction, and leadership capacity.  These schools have had every opportunity to improve the way Ravitch thinks they could and should and they have failed.

And what is to happen to the children who are forced to attend these schools?  Commissioner Holliday called it "academic genocide."  And that is the status quo in far too many schools.

In a follow up post, I'll respond further Ravitch's ideas, arguing that school choice is not incompatible with some of her points, and that it is, in fact, the only viable way to bring innovation, efficiency, and lasting change to the school improvement process.