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BY PAT SUMMERS
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
If the growing groundswell against the country’s so-called “education reformers” has a philosophical leader, it is Dr. Diane Ravitch, a gray-haired, soft-spoken and mightily armed education historian and author.
Earlier this week in New Brunswick, Ravitch — now research professor of education at NYU and author most recently of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" — brought her audience to its feet more than once as she quietly, but with deadly force, demolished the cause and case of “education reform” in America.
In Thursday's annual “Education Justice Lecture” jointly sponsored by the Education Law Center and the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy of Rutgers University, Ravitch spoke on “What Is School Reform?”. Questions from a panel and audience members followed.
In discussing the state of public education today — attacked and demonized by ”reformers” — Ravitch assured that virtually no issue was left behind: student testing and teacher evaluation, charter schools, merit pay, teacher tenure and the two federal laws that engendered “reform,” No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
Before beginning her low-key evisceration of education “reform,” Ravitch rejected its first premise, that American public education is failing, as “nonsense.” She detailed how the current graduation rate is now the highest in history, and achievement rates are going up, even given mainstreaming of special needs students and growing numbers of pupils who speak English as a second language.
Tracing the drive for education reform to President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law, Ravitch said that thanks to it, more than half of our schools are deemed “failures” because the proficiency levels they were supposed to achieve were impossible. “Schools have been turned into testing factories,” she said. “We’re confusing testing with teaching,” while “the ideas of joy and learning seem hopelessly antique.”
Describing NCLB as “the death star of American education,” Ravitch pointed out that testing has become a financial bonanza for everyone involved in test making. It holds kids accountable, she said, while President Barack Obama’s “Race To The Top,” picking up where NCLB left off, holds teachers accountable.
“No one has explained why we are racing or what the top is.”
On today’s education “reformers,” Ravitch was emphatic. They are factually wrong, she said. Their approach employs corporate language, with “turnaround” and “transformation” among their euphemisms and schools are seen as businesses. Rather than offering help, they close schools and turn them over to private enterprise.
“Corporate reformers are never discouraged by evidence; they’re believers,” she said.
Charter schools are one thing education “reformers” (including NJ Governor Chris Christie and Chris Cerf, Acting Commissioner of the Department of Education) believe in and promote.
