A Case for Action: Countering Misguided Reform Initiatives with a Plan to Transform Education in America!

Educational reform initiatives that have evolved since President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” Legislation have been gaining momentum and seem to be driven by the belief that public education in the U.S. is in a state of unprecedented crisis. These reformers insist that this crisis results, primarily, from of bad teachers and bad schools, all under the administrative control of local school districts that are poorly managed and unable to respond to the growing challenges for public education in Twenty-first Century America. Further, that even in school districts blessed with capable leadership, the efforts of these professionals are thwarted by teacher unions that make it difficult to respond to the performance issues of classroom teachers.

We believe that these reformers are wrong about everything except the existence of a crisis in public education, but it is a crisis of which these reformers seem to understand neither its nature nor its genesis. But still, they wield a big stick and the impact of the strategies and reforms initiated by these powerful leaders continue to reverberate throughout public-school classrooms, corridors, faculty lounges, and district board rooms; all driven by the mystifying assumption that if only we would run our schools as effectively as we run our businesses, quality education would prevail and expectations, everywhere, would rise.

What the actions of these reformers demonstrate, at least to this observer, is a minimal level of understanding of the forces that contribute to academic success and failure and a blatant lack of insight into the consequences of their actions.

On the other side of the conflict we have professional educators and administrators, men and women who have devoted their lifetimes to public education, who have responded to the legions of reformers by choosing to defend the honor of public education in America. Even the most renown and articulate spokespersons for professional educators have chosen to respond by defending the record of education in America, citing the progress that has been made over the last couple of decades. In this they are wrong, as the evidence will demonstrate.

These ardent advocates insist that the quality of education in America is better than it has ever been and that our students are learning more than they have ever learned. They argue that reformers grossly undervalue the critical role that poverty and racial segregation play in driving down the academic performance of America’s underprivileged children.

The warning that is shouted out by these advocates, is that the actions of the reformers threaten to destroy the very systems of education they have vowed to transform. The strategy of choice of the advocates of education in the U.S. is to complain loudly, voicing their predictions of the havoc being wreaked on our nation’s most vulnerable students and their schools.

 

Analysis and Recommendations

 

The reform initiatives of the government and corporate reformers of education are a runaway train that does, indeed, threaten to destroy our system of public education and our schools in communities all over the nation, to the great disadvantage of American children.

The reformers are correct, however, that public education in the U.S. is in a state of crisis that has ominous implications for the future of our nation.

It is the conclusion of this observer that the combined impact of this unprecedented crisis in public education in America and the misguided actions of the self-ordained reformers of education will be catastrophic for our children and for the American way of life, the future of which will soon rest upon the shoulders of these same children. We also suggest that the progression of this catastrophe is aided and abetted by the intransigence of our professional educators.

It is this author’s belief that our only hope for viable future for the United States of America, the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, is for the professional educators throughout these United States to stop complaining and take action. Complaints are the useless weapons of the weak and the unimaginative. The principles of positive leadership suggest that, rather than complain, powerful leaders offer constructive alternatives.

It is imperative that professional educators unite behind an alternate plan of action designed to fix the real problems with public education and work relentlessly to sell it to the American people.

Our next post will be focused on three objectives;

1)      We will examine evidence proving that the crisis in education is real;

2)      We will demonstrate how the professional educators working in our public schools are as much victims of a dysfunctional system as are the children whom they teach; and,

3)      We will identify the specific components of our systems of public education, and the educational process that works within the system, that compel us to action.

In subsequent posts we will begin, item by item, to outline the specific action strategies that, if implemented and properly executed, will transform public education in the U.S. These action strategies were first introduced in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. As is always the case in a dynamic environment, I have learned much since the book was published a year ago and the strategic action plan we will be presenting will benefit from the wisdom and knowledge that has been gained.

That process of learning and adapting is relentless and self-perpetuating and the plan will continue to evolve as our teachers and principals come on board and begin adding their own wisdom and knowledge to the equation. Strategic action plans are very much like organizations and human systems in that they are living, breathing entities that evolve, incessantly.

Ongoing review of Reign of Error, by Diane Ravitch, Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of Reign of Error is focused on the performance gap that exists between white students and their minority classmates. There seems to be little doubt that the achievement gap is real and that it is particularly egregious with respect to African-American students.

The corporate reformers and other advocates of charter schools, vouchers, more testing and accountability, and privatization of education cite the data as irrefutable evidence that we need to rescue as many kids as possible from our underperforming schools. Rarely do they acknowledge any responsibility to help the schools that are being abandoned or to reach out help the people who seem unable to escape. The reality from the perspective of the poor is that they are being written off once again. How can they think otherwise?

Ravitch acknowledges that the gap is unacceptable but insists that much progress has been made in closing the gap over the past two decades. I suggest the progress has been too little, too slow.

While the reformers say that education is failing, Ravitch and other defenders of traditional education say that test scores and other measures of student performance, including graduation rates, are higher they have ever been. This may be true but neither the progress nor the data is good enough! The results are simply unacceptable. It is comparable to a president boasting that unemployment has dropped from 25 to 22 percent on his or her watch.

As we have noted in prior sections, we concur that the educational system is failing but believe that it is the educational process that is failing, not schools and their teachers.

While reformers call for what amounts to wholesale abandonment of traditional public education in America, Ravitch and her defenders suggest that we cannot fix education until we address the societal problems that cause the failure; specifically poverty and racial segregation. Once again, both sides of the argument totally misinterpret the forces that influence all that is taking place in our public schools.

One of the issues with which we agree totally with Ravitch is the importance of preserving the links between our schools and the communities they exist to serve. We agree that privatization of public education, the crippling of unions and the establishment of for-profit schools “inevitably means deregulation, greater segregation, and less equity with minimal oversight by public authorities.” Then Ravitch adds “Privatization has typically not been a friend to powerless groups.”

I find it remarkable that Ravitch has sufficient insight to recognize that many of the citizens and their communities who depend on public education are powerless yet she fails to grasp the role that this “powerlessness” plays in our educational crisis and she is not alone. Few people seem to recognize that unlike poverty, which is a condition over which we have been able to exert almost no control, “powerlessness” is a state of mind that is within our power to do something about. As we have said so often, we need to attack powerlessness and hopelessness relentlessly.

Rather than developing strategies that will help people learn how to begin exerting control over the outcomes in their lives we promise to take care of them; a promise we have yet to keep. Such promises do not help alleviate this sense of powerlessness rather they create dependencies to which the powerless can cling.

What the reformers do not seem to realize is that the farther you remove the community from the decision-making process the more powerless the citizens of those communities become. If we take away a community’s schools we effectively deprive the community of its ability to bridge the performance gap, themselves. In other words we increase their level of powerlessness and, therefore, their sense of hopelessness.

Ravitch states emphatically that African-Americans are making great progress and cites NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) results that show a reduction of the number of students scoring “below basic” in math and reading.

My interpretation would suggest that Improvements between 2007 and 2011 have been marginal, at best. The numbers speak for themselves. NAEP results show that, in 2011, 49 percent of black students scored below basic in 8th grade math and 41 percent in 8th grade reading. In other words, virtually half of African-American eighth graders scored below basic in Math and 4 out every 10 scored below basic in reading. Hardly cause for celebration. Most importantly, “basic” is not an acceptable for which to strive.

The NAEP defines basic, which is one of its three achievement levels, as “denoting partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work. Think about what that means. It is partial mastery, not mastery. And, it is not even partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work but rather partial mastery of the “prerequisite” knowledge and skills.

NAEP’s definition of “proficient”, on the other hand, is “demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real-world situations, and analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter.” [The emphasis is mine.]

So, when one is proficient by this definition, it means they possess the ability to actually apply what they have learned to real life situations. “Basic,” on the other hand, implies that the knowledge and skills are not sufficient for utilization in solving “real life” situations. In other words, the gap between “proficiency” and “below basic,” as defined by NAEP, is as cavernous as the gap between the performance of white and black students.

In the business world, one would never send an employee out in the shop, plant, field, or office to do a job if they could only demonstrate partial mastery of prerequisite skills. They have to be able to apply their knowledge to “real-life situations” or they are of no use to their employer and pose a risk to customer satisfaction. Clearly, the performance bar needs to be raised to “proficient” and what we are doing now is blatantly inadequate.

Here, the data is every bit as disturbing. From 2003 to 2011 the percentage of black students who have achieved the level of “proficient or above” in math has risen from 8 percent to only 14 percent. In reading, during same time span, the percentage of African-American students who have achieved “proficient or above” has risen only from 13 to 15 percent. During this period, the percentage of white students who have achieved “proficient or above” in math and reading has risen to 43 and 44 percent, respectively.

The gap is alarming but why would we ever be satisfied that less than 45 percent of our children are achieving “proficiency or above.” We must raise our targets and change the way we do things.

We need to reinvent the educational process to one that is focused on success and that is structured in a way that it supports teachers and students in what they do. And, we need to create a nation-wide campaign to resell the American dream and engage parents from all demographic groups as full partners in the education of their children. The good news is that such a reinvention is well within our power to do if only we will open our minds to new ideas and to the possibility of a desirable outcome.

Ravitch’s assertion that blacks and other minorities are making real progress is difficult to accept given the facts. Possibly Ravitch and others are referring to the many middle class and professional blacks who have risen to the corporate boardroom, the operating room, and even to White House; but this population is an exception. The gap between uneducated blacks in our poor rural and urban communities and more accomplished middle class African-Americans is, itself, cavernous. The accomplishments of so many is clear evidence that African-American students can excel.

So we are left with the question “why do so many fail?” And let us not forget that many of the most accomplished African-Americans and other minorities rose from the same neighborhoods as their underperforming classmates.

Diane Ravitch is correct that “Achievement gaps begin long before children start kindergarten.” She is also correct that the variance with respect to preparation and motivation of students as they arrive for their first day of school is as disparate as the population is diverse. It is also true that where families fall on the affluence continuum, the degree to which education is valued in a given culture, and the availability of quality healthcare all play a role in determining how motivated and well-prepared a child is upon arrival for their first day of school.

The most important influence on the relative preparation and motivation of children is the level of hopelessness and powerlessness that surrounds the child from the day of their birth and up until they head off for their first day of school. Where I disagree with Ravitch is not the relative scope and scale of the challenges these children face but with our perceptions about what we have the power to do in response. Most Americans have the attitude that only our government bears responsibility for bringing about such changes and has the power needed. Because of that attitude, we go about our business as usual and we sit back and wait for the world to change around us.

The reality is that we are not powerless and we need not be hopeless. We need a plan of action; we need to work together as a community; and, we need to do that which is in our power to do, even if it is one step at a time or one family, school, or community at a time.

The reference to the work of Thomas B. Timar’s (University of California), I thought, was particularly helpful. Timar wrote, as quoted by Ravitch,

“One reason [why there was so little progress in closing the achievement gap] is that although schools can be held accountable for some of the disadvantages these students experience, they have been given the entire responsibility for closing the achievement gap. Yet the gap is the symptom of larger social, economic and political problems that go far beyond the reach of the school. . . . While schools are part of the solution, they alone cannot solve the problems of educational disparities.” (Timar, Thomas B. and Julie Maxwell-Jolly, eds., Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Perspectives and Strategies for Challenging Times, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Education Press, 2012, page 230).

According to Ravitch, Professor Timar also suggests that “policy makers have invested for thirty years in strategies that are “misdirected and ineffectual,” managing to keep urban schools in a state of “policy spin,” bouncing from one idea to another. . . .”

The most salient points by Timar are:
• Schools can’t solve the problem alone. . . .
• The value of local initiatives without which, Timar suggests, reforms cannot succeed.
• Creating social capital that exists between schools and their community. He describes them as built on a “sense of community, organizational stability, and trust. Leadership has a shared vision and a “sense of purpose, a plan, and individuals with responsibility for coordination and implementation.
• Teachers working collaboratively to improve teaching and learning
• The need to think in terms of long-term, comprehensive strategies.
• That American policymakers haves grown too politically conservative and are unwilling to address structural issues.
• “bureaucratizing the process of school improvement and turning it into a chase for higher test scores” have not worked.
• Federal programs like NCLB and Race to the Top have made schools less stable, encouraged staff turnover, promoted policy churn, and undermined professionalism.

The best chance, Timar implies and we which I suggest in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream, lies with grass roots models of change.

Where Timar strays off course is the traditional view that until we can address the issues of poverty there will always be achievement gaps but he redeems himself by saying that we need to “work vigorously to improve conditions” of families and communities. I would exchange the word “conditions” to “states of mind,” suggesting that we need to address hopelessness and powerlessness.

Ravitch writes, in reference to Timar’s point of view, “Rather than regulation and mandates we need professional collaboration, community building, and cooperation that require that schools have authority to design their own improvement plans and act without waiting for instructions or permission from Washington or the state capital [sic].”

My response to that is “RIGHT ON, DR. RAVITCH!”

Ravitch concludes this chapter by saying, “What we know from these scholars makes sense. The achievement gaps are rooted in social, political, and economic structures. If we are unwilling to change the root causes, we are unlikely ever to close the gaps. What we call achievement gaps are in fact opportunity gaps.”

She continues, “The schools did not cause the achievement gaps, and the schools alone are not powerful enough to close them.”

I think the point Ravitch is really striving to make, here, is that schools did not cause the gaps and should not be blamed for our lack of success in closing them. In Reinventing Education, I suggest that schools provide the perfect vehicle with which to attack the “root causes,” which I define as “powerlessness and hopelessness” rather than “poverty, segregation et al,” and that if parents and schools can be brought together in partnership, we have more than enough power to transform public education.

Finally, Ravitch says:

“So long as society is indifferent to poverty, so long as we are willing to look the other way rather than act vigorously to improve the conditions of families and communities, there will always be achievement gaps.”

The unfortunate but sublimely subtle truth—and the reason why poverty and deteriorating communities remain a reality—is our fixation on the idea that changing these realities is society’s or government’s responsibility. At no time do Ravitch and the legions of well-meaning professional educators, policy makers, and social scientists recognize the subtle but profound truth that these conditions exist because we have robbed the poor and the disenfranchised of a sense of responsibility for their own circumstances and we have enabled their sense of hopelessness and powerlessness.

We cannot change the economic conditions in which people live without addressing their dependency and helping them recognize the power that they have to begin changing their own lives. We can be of great assistance in helping people shed their sense of powerlessness and hopelessness but we cannot do it for them. What we must do is teach them that success is a process that even they can master and then help them deal with the obstacles that stand in the way of their children.

Excerpt # 2 from the Preface of Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream

Page 10 -12

America’s schools, both public and private, are the grounds upon which a battle is being waged for the very future of the United States and we are losing the battle. Many communities throughout the nation are perceived to have exemplary schools yet in cities across the United States the percentage of students unable to pass state competency exams ranges from twenty to over eighty percent. More often than not, the lowest passage rates are found in urban public schools. While outperforming their urban counterparts; even our best schools, whether public, private, parochial, or charter are not performing well enough to propel the U.S. into the top-twenty list of developed nations with respect to the performance in math and science. That we rank as high as 15th in language literacy is hardly cause for celebration. That China, arguably our biggest competitor in the international marketplace and also our nation’s largest creditor, ranks first in all three categories should be cause for alarm if not outright panic.

The consequence of this systemic indifference is that the number of children exiting our public schools with little in the way of marketable skills and who are functionally illiterate is growing at an untenable rate. Under the misguided belief that greatest problems with public education in America are poverty, bad schools, and bad teachers and in the wake of such federal initiatives as President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) legislation and President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” our educational leaders and policy makers are under great pressure to reverse the declining performance of American school children.

Under the leadership of what are thought to be the best and brightest minds from the world of business and public policy think tanks, and with the backing of billionaires and private foundations we are in the midst of a rush toward privatization of our schools, Common Core, charter schools, holding schools and their teachers accountable on the basis of standardized competency examinations, minimizing if not eliminating the role of teachers unions, and the expansion of voucher programs. With full support of federal and many state governments, the sentiment is that private enterprise can do a better job of educating our children than community-based school corporations.

It is even suggested that, with the application of business principles such privatization can even bring an end to poverty, which is widely believed to be the root cause of the problems of education and almost every other social problem in America.

That poverty is an outcome of the evolution of our free-market economy, along with the federal government’s ineffectual tampering, begs the question of why we would ever think privatized schools will somehow create different outcomes. The one thing we can say with certainty is that free market forces will follow the money. This will remain true whether the marketplace is producing goods and services or educating our children. We can also say with some certainty that there “ain’t no money” in the poorest neighborhoods of urban or rural America.

Review of “Reign of Error,” by Diane Ravitch, Chapter 4

[My apologies to my readers for the delay in fulfilling my commitment to review Reign of Error, by Diane Ravitch, chapter by chapter. My holidays were sandwiched by bouts of illness that played havoc with all of my efforts to achieve a long list of goals and objectives.]

Ravitch notes that students of forty to fifty years ago did not get the “high quality of education that is now typical in public schools with Advanced Placement courses or International Baccalaureate programs or even in regular courses offered in our top city and suburban schools.” She goes on to note the increase in special needs students, students that do not speak English, and children who from troubled families. . . . “

Ravitch is correct that the world has changed and I have no doubt that the schools of fifties and sixties would never be able to respond to the challenges with which present day public schools must contend.

In response to the claim of critics who say that our public schools are in decline, Ravitch notes “there is a tendency to hark back . . . to the mythical good old days. But few people realize that there was never a time when everyone succeeded in school.

She continues, “. . . corporate reformers insist that the public schools are in an unprecedented crisis. They tell us that children must be able to ‘escape’ their ‘failing public schools.’ They claim they are “for the children,’ unlike their teachers, who are not for the children.”

In almost all of this, Ravitch is absolutely correct and we concur with her that all of the things these reformers say they want to do for our children are based upon a flawed understanding of what is really happening within our schools. The contention of these reformers that they possess some magical insight and tools and resources that will transform our schools is blatantly false and the unbridled enthusiasm and zeal with which they will rush forward will not change the reality that they are simply wrong. What is very clear, and I concur with Ravitch. is that these reformers can do great harm to our children and to our communities.

The reformers are correct, however, when they say that our “public schools are in an unprecedented crisis.” Here it is Ravitch who is wrong and the enthusiasm and the zeal with which she counters these reformers will not change this reality. Her powerful advocacy also masks the reality that our current schools, policy makers, administrators, and teachers have no more clue what must be done to salvage education in America than do the reformers.

While “corporate reformers play to our anxieties” in claiming that our society and future is at risk, Ravitch and her supporters, which includes the overwhelming majority of public school educators, play to our defensive mechanisms and our blind prejudices. They fight the battle in much the same way opponents of healthcare reform do when these ardent advocates cite the “dangers of socialized medicine” with the full knowledge that mainstream Americans will salivate, in response, with Pavlovian predictability.

While the reformers “scare us with warnings of dire peril [and] mask their agenda with rhetoric that is soothing and deceptive” according to Ravitch, “preservers of the status quo” lull us with the soothing and deceptive elixir of “traditions and stability.”

Let us not, however, be too critical of Ravitch who details, in point after salient point, the fallacy of the reformers agendas. She is so very right in so many cases that one almost feels disloyal to challenge the other half of her argument.

Here are just a few:

“When they speak of ‘reform’ what they really mean is deregulation and privatization.

    Ravitch is correct.

When they speak of ‘accountability’ what they really mean is rigid reliance on standardized testing as both means and the end of education.

    Ravitch is correct.

When they speak of ‘effective teachers’ what they mean is teachers whose students produce higher scores on standardized tests. . . not teachers who inspire their students to love learning.

    Ravitch is correct.

When they speak of ‘innovation’ they mean replacing teachers with technology to cut staffing costs. Here Ravitch is incorrect in defending the assertion that innovations utilizing technology pose a threat to the teaching profession.

    This plays on the fears and misconception on the part of teachers who struggle to envision that such technology can, if properly designed, empower them to do more for their students. Such technological advancements arm educators with powerful tools. The reader is reminded to think about how smartphones have empowered Twenty-First Century people, allowing them to do so much more with less effort.

When they speak of ‘no excuses’ they mean a boot-camp culture. . . .

    Again Ravitch is incorrect. While a few of the most ardent advocates may envision a “boot-camp culture,” most are addressing the compelling need to rid American classrooms of disruptive behavior that diminishes the quality of the classroom experience as well as the quality of the outcomes. This can be accomplished without resorting to drill instructor tactics.

When they speak of ‘personalized instruction,’ they mean putting children in front of computers with algorithms that supposedly adjust content and test questions to the ability level of the student but actually sacrifice human contact with a real teacher.

    As noted above, Ravitch demonstrates her own inability to envision a utilization of technology that can actually enhances the interface between teachers and students because they are not distracted by activity that that eats up valuable time while contributing no instructional value. If one of our most accomplished advocates for quality education cannot open her mind to new possibilities, how can we expect open-mindedness from the men and women who must stand at the head of our classrooms?

When they speak of ‘achievement’ or ‘performance’ they mean higher scores on standardized tests.

    Here Ravitch is correct even though the problem is with standardized test scores and not with ever-rising expectations, the performance against which can be measured in any number of creative and positive ways if we arm teachers with the right tools.

When they speak of ‘data-driven instruction,’ they mean that test scores and graduation rates should be the primary determinant of what is best for children and schools.

    Ravitch has a point but, oddly, relies on test scores and graduation rates to support her own argument that school performance is improving.

When they speak of ‘competition,’ they mean deregulated charters and deregulated private schools.

    Once again, Ravitch is correct, up to a point. Sadly, the advocates of privatization do envision that competition will result in a clear delineation between schools that are effective and those that are not. What is odd, is that traditional educational practices are set up in a way that students must compete with their classmates, to the great disadvantage of the majority of American public school students and most educators, apparently Ravitch included, seem oblivious to the fact.

When they speak of ‘a successful school,’ they refer only to its test scores, not to a school that is the center of its community, with a great orchestra, an enthusiastic chorus, a hardworking chess team, a thriving robotics program, or teachers who have dedicated their lives to helping students with the highest needs (and often the lowest scores).

    Ravitch is correct.

The reformers define the purpose of education as preparation for global competitiveness, higher education, or the workforce. They view students as ‘human capital’ or ‘assets.’ One seldom sees any reference in their literature or public declarations to the importance of developing full persons to assume the responsibilities of citizenship.

    While Ravitch is correct that the “reformers” to whom she refers may seem to be placing too much emphasis on students as a “resource-in-development” for American producers of goods and services, traditionalists seem oblivious to the reality that American society, including the commercial segment, is the end customer of our schools. Schools would do well to be more cognizant of the importance of one’s customer. The reality is that while standardized test scores may be a poor assessment of student performance, employers that depend on our young people to be able to read, apply mathematical and scientific principles competently, and write coherent sentences are the ultimate judges of the performance of our educational systems.

Of equal importance are the topics that corporate reformers don’t talk about. Seldom do they protest budget cuts, no matter how massive they may be. They do not complain when governors and legislatures cut billions from the public schools while claiming to be reformers. They do not protest rising rates of child poverty. They do not complain about racial segregation. They see no harm in devoting more time and resources to standardized testing. They do not complain when federal or state or city officials announce plans to test children in kindergarten or even prekindergarten. They do not complain about increased class size. They do not object to scripted curricula or teachers’ loss of professional autonomy. They do not object when experienced teachers are replaced by recruits who have only a few weeks training. They close their eyes to evidence that charters enroll disproportionately small numbers of children with disabilities, or those from troubled homes, or English-language learners (in fact, they typically deny any such disparities, even when documented by state and federal data). They do not complain when for-profit corporations run charter schools or when educational services are outsourced to for-profit businesses. Indeed, they welcome entrepreneurs into the reform community as investors and partners.

    While Ravitch’s criticisms, here, are fair overall; she misrepresents the value, or lack thereof, of testing children in Kindergarten or pre-kindergarten. The advocacy of such testing, at least on the part people like myself, is not to judge the effectiveness of early educational programs and teachers, rather it is to assess the level of preparedness of children as they approach their first day of school and to help the school prepare an appropriate and unique educational plan for each child.

While Ravitch is often right, she paints everyone who wants to challenge conventional wisdom into the same corner and suddenly the word ‘reform’ takes on the same pejorative connotations as socialized medicine in the context of healthcare reform and triggers a shutdown of the minds of the majority of Americans educators and taxpayers.

Ravitch writes:

The central theme of this movement is that public schools are in decline. But this is not true. The public schools are working very well for most students. Contrary to popular myths, the scores on the no-stakes federal tests—the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—are at an all-time high for students who are white, black, Hispanic, and Asian. Graduation rates are also at an all-time high.

This may be the most inexplicable of Ravitch’s statements. In our review of Chapter 5 of her Reign of Error we will examine her analysis of test scores and challenge many of the conclusions she draws from her own evidence.

The “Reign of Error” by Diane Ravitch, Chapter 3 – The 4th Installment of my Journaled Review

This chapter is devoted to a discussion of what Ravitch and others refer to as the “Corporate Reform Movement.” She notes that this movement has its roots in Milton Friedman’s 1955 introduction of the concept of school vouchers that enable parents to choose where the public funds can best be spent relative to the education of their children. Ravitch charts the path of this “privatization of education movement” through President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation, and President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative.

What has resulted can best be described as a “mob rush” toward privatization of education in which test results are utilized to hold public schools and their teachers accountable. This movement designs to break what they believe to be the stranglehold that unions have on public education in America and create a scenario in which schools and school districts must compete on the basis of the performance of their students in an environment where parents, using vouchers to break down economic barriers, are free to choose what they believe to be the best choice for their children.

Somehow, it is believed, that the magic of the free market will somehow transform public education and, in the process, begin to reduce the poverty in which so many Americans must live. The irony could not be more graphic.
To suggest that competition between schools in a free market environment can somehow cure the poverty that has resulted as a consequence of the imperfections of a free-market economy is nothing short of absurd.

Inevitably, a free market system will gravitate toward the money and making money available to parents through the utilization of vouchers is not sufficient to divert the system from its relentless search for deep pockets.
Free markets require much more than the wherewithal of the consumer. For a free market to function effectively it also requires that the products and service it provides must meet the needs of the consumer (demand). Even this is not sufficient, however. The consumer, also, must be sufficiently knowledgeable to discern which products and services are most likely to fulfill their requirements.

This is where the misinterpretation of the reasons why our systems of education fail such a large percentage of American children comes into play. We mistakenly assume that the greatest problem with public education in America is poverty. On the basis of that assumption we conclude that the poor are motivated to act in what “we” perceive to be in “their” best interests. We envision that parents living in poverty will rush to take advantage of school vouchers to give their children an opportunity for a quality education so that they can enjoy a better life.

The unfortunate reality, to which we are so absurdly blind, is that the problem with public education in America is not poverty. It is the hopelessness and powerlessness of a people who have given up on the American dream. Many parents in our most challenged schools do not elect to take advantage of vouchers simply because they are not motivated to do so. They do not believe in our systems of public education and they do not believe an education will provide any benefit to their children.

As a result, our most challenged schools and their teachers are left with the least motivated students, the least supportive parents, and less resources with which to work with them.

Schools that are the recipients of the voucher boom, on the other hand, find themselves with unexpected revenue that proves to be insufficient to deal with a new population of students with minimal motivation to learn and parents who demonstrate minimal commitment to the education of their children.

This privatization movement will not bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots, it will only deepen the rift. It also gives parents from all but the most influential demographic strata even less control over the education of their children as education will not be truly accountable to the people of a given community.

Diane Ravitch is absolutely correct when she says that “privatizing our public schools is a risky and dangerous project. . . . It will hurt children, shatter communities, and damage our society.”

Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch; the 3rd Installment of my Journaled Review

In her second chapter of this monumental work, Ravitch begins by providing an historical overview of Federal initiatives in response to what many believe to be an urgent need for massive reforms in our systems of public education,leading up to the George W. Bush administration. Under Bush’s administration the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) legislation was introduced and it was to have a far-reaching adverse impact on our systems of education, according to Ravitch, many others in the field of education, and of this author/blogger. The NCLB declared that all students in grades 3 – 8 should be tested annually; that states were to monitor schools re: their performance; and, that “failing” schools were to be labeled and face consequences up to and including closure. She notes that, given the unreasonable standard many schools, even some of our very best, failed year after year. She also notes that schools with high proportions of poor and minority students “were the likeliest to be labeled as failing.”

Ravitch writes “Let’s be clear: 100 percent proficiency is an impossible goal.” She makes a wonderful comparison to applying this standards to an expectations that cities were to become crime free and that cities that failed to rise to such expectations would see the closing of police stations and the firing of police officers. She writes “the first to close would be the police stations in the poorest neighborhoods, where crime rates were the highest.”

As I stated in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope and the American Dream, referencing teachers, “it’s like blaming the soldiers for the war they were asked to fight.” What it shows is just how dreadful is the understanding of legislators and policy makers with the problems facing education in America.

What seems to most concern Ravitch is that NCLB demands utilization of testing to assess the performance of both schools and their teachers and also that it “opened the door to huge entrepreneurial opportunities . . . .” It also “encouraged the growth of the charter sector by proposing that charter schools were a remedy for failing schools.”

She notes that when the concept was first introduced, charter schools were envisioned as a way for teachers to find “innovative ways to ignite the . . . Interest in education” speaking specifically of “lowest performing students, the dropouts and the disengaged.” She points out that it was also envisioned that the lessons learned in charter schools were to have been applied to our most challenging public schools.

She notes that the earliest proponents of charter schools never “imagined a charter school sector that was 90 percent non-union or one that in some states presented profit-making opportunities for entrepreneurs.”

The federal government, Ravitch tells us, promoted the concept of charter schools as a way to “compete with neighborhood public schools for higher test scores. . .” absent any evidence that the concept would work.

What has resulted, she suggests, is that the “incessant” focus on testing, creative ways to incent and fund charter schools, the use of vouchers, and privatization have had and continue to have a devastating impact on our neighborhood public schools, the teachers that populate those schools and the most vulnerable population of American school children that is served by those schools and their teachers.

Ravitch argues that, just as “this unnatural focus on testing produced perverse but predictable results; it narrowed curriculum; many districts scaled back time for the arts, history, civics, physical education, science, foreign language, and whatever was not tested.” She cites the widespread cheating that we are seeing; wasting huge sums of money on test preparation and administration; and “teaching to test” by teachers who feel pressure “to save their jobs and their schools.”

As a substitute, I have seen this occur where teachers are introducing material as “these are the kind of questions or problems you are likely to find on ISTEPs (the State of Indiana’s student competency examinations).

Anyone who does not agree with Ravitch’s concerns about the fraud and mismanagement of funds as a result of the privatization of education should think for a moment about Medicare and Medicaid fraud where doctors (supposedly the most trusted professionals in all of American society) and other health professionals and institutions are being charged for manipulating the system for their own financial interests. When there are big dollars at stake it seems to bring the greed and larceny out of even the best of us, and as Ravitch shows, dollars amounts being utilized to provide incentives and grants for these reforms are enormous.

The election of President Obama, Ravitch suggests, raised hopes of new directions in federal education policy that were quickly dashed. She cites what amounts to little more than a feeding frenzy as states and others compete for huge sums as a result of Obama’s Race to the Top, Common Core, et al.

Ravitch writes, “By picking a few winners, the Race to the Top competition abandoned the traditional idea of equality of educational opportunity, where federal aid favored districts and schools that enrolled students with the highest needs.”

We have seen it in other venues where the sudden availability of incentives through federal funding has spawned spectacular growth in the number of consultants and other for-profit entities that carve out enormous chunks of scarce dollars that will never, ever be spent in the direct benefit of a single American boy or girl.

Ravitch is absolutely correct that “reformers support testing, accountability and choice.” and that this blind commitment to unproven ideas is leading to the destruction of the public school systems on which Americans have depended for generations.

She concludes this chapter by saying that “the debates about the role of schooling in a democratic society, the lives of children and families, and the relationship between schools and society were relegated to the margins as no longer relevant to the business plan to reinvent American Education.”

Her last line is an unfortunate choice of words, from the perspective of a writer who has entitled his own book about educational reform as Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream; The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. I suspect that just the word “reinventing” has rendered my book as valueless in her mind, assuming she has even glanced at the correspondence I have sent inviting her to read the book or at the comments I have made in response to posts on her blog, as well as the posts on my own blog.

I agree with her completely that the direction of these national reform efforts is placing the very future of our nation and its children at risk. We seem to disag

The reinventing that I advocate is designed to come from inside of our schools reaching out to our community not the other way around. They are ideas that demand that the links between our schools and their teachers and the communities that they serve are strengthened rather than weakened. They are ideas that cherish the vital role that teachers play in the lives of their children and that are meant to improve the ability of those teachers to make a difference in those lives.

They are ideas that reject reliance on standardized competency assessments as a dangerous intrusion that not only distracts teachers from their purpose but puts emphasis on the “timed regurgitation of facts, figures, and formulas” rather than on sustained, meaningful mastery of subject matter that the men and women whom these children become will carry and utilize throughout their lives.

They are ideas that borrow from things we have learned, from an operational perspective, in a business environment and not from the boardrooms and their focus on financial incentives, investments, and entrepreneurialism. The lessons from which I challenge educators to learn have to do with things like problem-solving, teamwork, integrating quality assessment into the learning process, and giving the people on the production line the tools and resources they need to help them do the best job of which they are capable.

They are ideas at risk of being branded as more of the same by the real educators who are being forced to defend themselves and the important work they do when, in fact, these ideas will empower educators rather than bind and restrict them.

The author and the readers of Reign of Error are urged to have faith that not all re-inventers are out to do them harm and to give Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream a chance to open their eyes to a new way of looking at what they do.