Intro: "Diane Ravitch poses a dozen piercing questions on education and school policy. Some of them turn conventional thinking on its ear, and each could be a starting point for reporting on elections, from the presidency on down to local school boards."
Jasmin Garces, 7, along with other second graders, watches as President Obama delivers a back-to-school address to school children in Denver, Colorado, 08/08/09. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images North America)
Do Politicians Know Anything About Schools and Education? Anything?
08 February 12
Diane Ravitch poses a dozen piercing questions on education and school policy. Some of them turn conventional thinking on its ear, and each could be a starting point for reporting on elections, from the presidency on down to local school boards.
1. Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of charter schools - that is, schools that are privately managed and deregulated. Are you aware that studies consistently show that charter schools don't get better results than regular public schools? Are you aware that studies show that, like any deregulated sector, some charter schools get high test scores, many more get low scores, but most are no different from regular public schools? Do you recognize the danger in handing public schools and public monies over to private entities with weak oversight? Didn't we learn some lessons from the stock collapse of 2008 about the risk of deregulation?
2. Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of merit pay for teachers based on test scores. Are you aware that merit pay has been tried in the schools again and again since the 1920s and it has never worked? Are you aware of the exhaustive study of merit pay in the Nashville schools, conducted by the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, which found that a bonus of $15,000 per teacher for higher test scores made no difference?
3. Are you aware that Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students since 1990, and now state scores in Wisconsin show that low-income students in voucher schools get no better test scores than low-income students in the Milwaukee public schools? Are you aware that the federal test (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) shows that - after 21 years of vouchers in Milwaukee - black students in the Milwaukee public schools score on par with black students in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana?
4. Does it concern you that cyber charters and virtual academies make millions for their sponsors yet get terrible results for their students?
5. Are you concerned that charters will skim off the best-performing students and weaken our nation's public education system?=
6. Are you aware that there is a large body of research by testing experts warning that it is wrong to judge teacher quality by student test scores? Are you aware that these measures are considered inaccurate and unstable, that a teacher may be labeled effective one year, then ineffective the next one? Are you aware that these measures may be strongly influenced by the composition of a teacher's classroom, over which she or he has no control? Do you think there is a long line of excellent teachers waiting to replace those who are (in many cases, wrongly) fired?
7. Although elected officials like to complain about our standing on international tests, did you know that students in the United States have never done well on those tests? Did you know that when the first international test was given in the mid-1960s, the United States came in 12th out of 12? Did you know that over the past half-century, our students have typically scored no better than average and often in the bottom quartile on international tests? Have you ever wondered how our nation developed the world's most successful economy when we scored so poorly over the decades on those tests?
8. Did you know that American schools where less than 10% of the students were poor scored above those of Finland, Japan and Korea in the last international assessment? Did you know that American schools where 25% of the students were poor scored the same as the international leaders Finland, Japan and Korea? Did you know that the U.S. is #1 among advanced nations in child poverty? Did you know that more than 20% of our children live in poverty and that this is far greater than in the nations to which we compare ourselves?
9. Did you know that family income is the single most reliable predictor of student test scores? Did you know that every testing program - the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP, state tests and international tests - shows the same tight correlation between family income and test scores? Affluence helps - children in affluent homes have educated parents, more books in the home, more vocabulary spoken around them, better medical care, more access to travel and libraries, more economic security - as compared to students who live in poverty, who are more likely to have poor medical care, poor nutrition, uneducated parents, more instability in their lives. Do you think these things matter?
10. Are you concerned that closing schools in low-income neighborhoods will further weaken fragile communities?
11. Are you worried that annual firings of teachers will cause demoralization and loss of prestige for teachers? Any ideas about who will replace those fired because they taught too many low-scoring students?
12. Why is it that politicians don't pay attention to research and studies?
Add end And another question that came to mind after the initial posting of this article:
13. Do you know of any high-performing nation in the world that got that way by privatizing public schools, closing those with low test scores, and firing teachers? The answer: none.
Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a distinguished historian of American education.
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Comments
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Doesn't matter. Charter schools are exempt from so-called Union interference. They were originally sold as being laboratories where new educational theories could tested before unleashing them on the public system. When has that ever happened?
Even when they have to accept all students, they are still self selecting. A proven indicator of achievement not only is a families wealth, but also their involvement in their child's education. By merely going through the process of applying, potential achievers are the vast majority of the mix.
The real reason for Charter Schools is simple. First get rid of Unions. Next on the agenda is to eliminate teachers that will teach students to challenge the status quo. Also it forces teachers into a standard set of lessons. And creates a standard set of resulting students.
The result, less creativity, original thinkers are held back until they conform. Human progress slows to a crawl.
Just so we can fire teachers when they say something their new corporate masters don't like. And it is soo very easy to measure how well teachers, students, and administrators are performing. How else can we do it since everyone's ability to think will be drained out of them?
The persons that complain the most about our public education system, especially those that fantasize that 'back in the day we knew way more than kids today'; would not last a month in an average public school environment.
I am not talking about the trivia that passes for knowledge on "Are you Smarter Than a Fourth Grader" or whatever the grade level. Even with all the time and money wasted on teaching to the test, many teachers do squeeze in critical thinking, reading with comprehension, and why you need labels in arithmetic and that the number line is your friend.
There are always ways to improve our schools, but making them more like the 19th century is the road to cultural ignorance.
Only offering beyond adulation would be additional citations of the source studies suggested.
Hope your testimony was heard
Schooling is not educating. It is programming. Children tune out. It is time to change. Read "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto. Our children will flourish in their own genius if they can learn by doing real things. They are brilliant! If they have not experienced the knowledge being taught in a real way, the test cannot reveal what children know .
I agree with Diane Ravitch. Schooling should never be a "for profit" business. Giving our children a chance to discover who they are and to blossom as individuals is reward enough for any society. They will give back a thousand-fold to the community, and the world will be a better place. We need the genius of our children to be valued and respected, not destroyed in a programmed, curriculum-cont roled "school".
Reasonable, executable policies will not be forthcoming until politicians and administrators are forced to consult with classroom educators and to observe the educational process first hand.
A few weeks or months in the substitute teachers pool would be a great wake up for many legislative gas bags.
16. Why don't teachers receive the tools, books, and equipment they need to do their job? While we are on the topic of tools etc., just how much out of pocket money is spent by teachers on their classroom and students?
My parents paid $$ to the Catholic school we attended. They felt it was up to them to pay for that choice, and they didn't complain about paying taxes for Public schools so every child had access to education. Is it time to end those credits? which were presented as temporary for the charter school experiment. Shouldn't that be part of reducing government spending?
Obama's buddy Rahm Emmanuel wants to shut down these schools and forcibly bus these kids. His main goal is to make all schools "charters" and to break the teachers union.
The public schools in wealthy neighborhoods (where parents actually pay for tuition) are doing great and I imagine what Ms. Ravitch presents is true. These schools probably have the highest test scores.
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