Diane Ravitch fails again

Dr. Diane Ravitch has a new opinion piece in the New York Times of March 15, 2005 entitled, “Failing the Wrong Grades”
Ravitch is the former Under Secretary of Educaion during the Reagan Administration when the current wave of neo-conservative school reform was launched with A Nation at Risk. She is also the lead author of the History Social Science Framework for California Public Schools which sets out the broad lines of history preparation in California high schools.

In her new piece Diane Ravitch says, “It is true that American student performance is appalling. Only a minority of students - whether in 4th, 8th or 12th grade - reach proficiency as measured by the Education Department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. On a scale that has three levels - basic, proficient and advanced - most students score at the basic level or even below basic in every subject. American students also perform poorly when compared with their peers in other developed countries on tests of mathematics and science, and many other nations now have a higher proportion of their students completing high school.”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/opinion/15ravitch.html)
This paragraph provides a central thesis in neo-conservative school reform. It is also substantially inaccurate. ( See Gerald W. Bracey, On the Death of Childhood and the Destruction of the Public Schools, 2003)

The problem comes in dealing with the averages. The U.S., and California have highly divided school populations. As Bracey points out, averages are used to mislead.
If I am standing in front of you barefoot. And, I have one foot in a fire and the other foot on a block of ice, on average I am comfortable.

We do not have a general education crisis in California and the nation, we have a crisis for Black, Latino, some Asian and poor white kids. As the recent Williams court settlement points out, we are not providing the children of these communities with ," a fairness of a start which will equip them with such an array of facts and such an attitude toward truth that they can a real chance to judge what the world is and what its greater minds have thought it might be." ( Du Bois, The Freedom to Learn)

Ravitch argues that schools should not be as concerned with the recent spat of proposals about reforming high schools. The issue she argues is to focus on earlier grades rather than high school.
What seems to be happening here is that Ravitch’s earlier generation of Right Wing “reformers” and their reforms have run their course ( as codified in No Child Left Behind). The heart of this strategy was standards and more testing. It is sort of like assuming that you can improve a person who is ill by taking their temperature, but not giving any anti biotics. They have not produced the dramatic school improvements promised. (See Bracey and Valenzuela)
Now, a new generation of Right Wing “reformers” want to make a name for themselves and boost their own careers. So, they have proposed a Business Roundtable view of high school reform. A place for the new generation to create careers and seek funding from conservative think tanks. Politicians and pundits, who do not work in schools, regularly invent some instant solutions to school problems. This creates new career opportunities ,and grabs headlines, but does not help educate children. We haven’t improved the elementary schools so lets change the subject before writers catch on.


Schools do not exist in a vacuum. They are not isolated from their neighborhoods and communities. Inequality in schooling is a product of inequality in society.
Most parents and most teachers care about their kids. And, the parents in urban areas are increasingly angered, offended, and frustrated when public officials refuse of offer a decent opporutnity for their children. Some see a racial conspiracy, some blame teachers' unions. Many have given up on democracy and public life and turn to cynicism or dispair. Others have been sold on vouchers as an alternative.
A progressive left exists among teachers. The excellent journal Rethinking Our Schools, (circulation over 40,000) and the web site (www.rethinkingschools.org) created by some teachers in and around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, engages, stimulates, validates, and inspires teachers who recognize the central role of urban schools to the anti racism struggle in our nation, and who choose resistance to the anti teacher, Republican, corporate agenda in schools.
So, while schools should be a site for building democracy and equal opportunity, this opportunity can only be created with significant new investment in schools in low income areas. Investment requires a political decision. Our elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans have refused to make this decision each year in most local, state, and federal budgets. As state after state faces the current budget crisis, they are cutting education funding rather than improving funding.


WE need to invest in our schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and recruit a well prepared teaching force that begins to reflect the student populations in these schools. The settlement of the Williams case in California is a small start in the right direction.
Rather than invest money in reform, governor Schwarzenegger and his Republican allies have followed the lead of the Business Roundtable, Ravitch, and conservative foundations and the Clinton and Bush administrations and increased emphasis on testing to improve scores. This is the heart of school reform advocated by Ravitch, passed by the Bush regime in PL 107-110 , the misnamed, No Child Left Behind Act.
This drive for improved test scores on very limited and inadequate tests , ignores that in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic, A fundamental purpose of schools is to prepare future citizens to be stakeholders in society. Public schools are one of the few institutions designed to produce a public, civic community. Schools distribute knowledge. Unequal schools distribute knowledge unequally. When schools distribute knowledge unequally, as they do, they contribute to the social stratification of the economy, racism, and the decline of democratic opportunity.
And, this strategy has failed. Just look closely at the data. There has been no significant improvement in test scores. The small improvements registered are on California tests, where the curriculum can be adjusted to teach children to improve their scores by a few percentage points. On national tests, like NAEP, there is no significant improvement.
California has a crisis in many of its schools, described again by the Rand Corporation (www.rand.org). We have been under investing in our schools for the last twenty years, and in higher education for the last 15 years. As a consequence, our children are falling behind children in other states. If you have a school system funded like Louisiana and Mississippi, we will soon have an economy like Louisiana and Mississippi.
Rather than responding to this real funding crisis in education, the governor proposes ballot measures to teacher pay, teacher tenure, and to end the Prop.98 guarantees of educational funding. These proposals do not respond to the real problems as described by the Rand study .
Why would politician like Arnold introduce these less important issues rather than respond to the real problems, like class size and teacher preparation? It looks to me as if he is trying to protect his high income tax avoiding friends, his special interest group.

WE face a political deadlock on school improvement and school funding. As long as this deadlock continues, we will have one segment of the society well educated in well funded schools and universities, and another segment will continue to fail school and to drop out. This is primarily a political problem, not a pedagogical problem.
Duane Campbell,
Professor of Bilingual/Multicultural Education, California State U. Sacramento
Author, Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education. (Merrill/Prentice Hall. 2004)
Education blog. http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com