| THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education Diane Ravitch New York: Basic Books, March 2010 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-465-01491-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-465-01491-7 | 283pp. | HC | $26.95 | |
Public education has long been a bone of contention in America. Politicians give it lip service, but seldom show a genuine commitment to fostering true quality in education. Taxpayers often resent it, especially if they have no children in school or if they choose to place their children in private schools. (In the latter case, the resentment arises because they are still taxed for public education.) Ideologues attack public education for subverting American ideals. (What they really mean is that it exposes the subversive nature of their own ideals.)
And educational experts frequently seem to be vying with one another to propose the most hare-brained scheme for school reform. Over the decades, a kaleidoscopic medley of reform fads has cropped up to catch the fancy of the leaders of the day in government or business. As Diane Ravitch documents convincingly in Left Back, most of these reforms benefit those who propose and promote them, while any benefit to the students involved is purely coincidental. (There are exceptions, of course; but they tend to remain local in extent — for the excellent reason that quality in teaching requires attention to many variables, both tangible and intangible; among the most important is community involvement. There is no formula for a quality educational system. As Euclid might have put it, there is no royal road to pedagogy.) As she makes clear, achieving good education is not child's play. It is an arduous endeavor that requires long-term support from administrators, local communities, and governments at all levels. Above all it needs a clear guide to what should be taught in each subject, at each grade level. This is the core element that most American schools today lack.
In this book, the author cites a cascade of statistical studies to support her condemnation of the latest fad: NCLB. To summarize these, I can safely say that the impressive gains in school performance proclaimed by so many school districts are not matched in the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP.) Investigation commonly reveals that the touted performance gains were obtained by either lowering the bar (the so-called "cut score") or by coaching the students intensively in how to do well on the test. (Less ethical tactics also are found; they include falsely classifying students as needing special education, so they aren't counted, or suspending them just before test day. Outright cheating also occurs, but rarely.) Here are some data (from page 161) showing the wide gaps between claimed and actual results.
| Reading Proficiency, Grades 4 & 8 | ||
|---|---|---|
| State | Local Claim | NAEP 2007 |
| Texas | 85.1% | 28.6% |
| Tennessee | 90.0% | 26.2% |
| Nebraska | 90.5% | 34.8% |
Officials tend to go on the defensive when problems are uncovered: when test score gains are found to be inflated, even when actual cheating is detected. New York City's Department of Education responded to NAEP findings of no significant gains in math or reading, 2003-2007, with a PR blitz touting its "impressive gains" (page 88.) The Dallas Morning News reported pervasive cheating on the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test, mostly in Houston and Dallas. (Charter schools cheated at roughly 4 times the rate of TPS.) In response to the story, Dallas public school officials beefed up testing security, but Houston officials accused the newspaper of trying "to dismiss the real academic progress in Texas schools" (page 155.) The Golden State was not immune: "In California, dozens of schools reclassified students by their race or English fluency or disability status, moving them from one category to another to improve their school's standing under NCLB..." (page 156.)
The picture is perfectly clear: The NAEP measures actual knowledge, and cannot be gamed. It should be the benchmark of progress in education for this country. But NCLB has locked our system into a counterproductive mode. If school principals were prospectors, they would be bringing home pyrite and doubling down when told it was worthless "fool's gold." If your school is ordered to steadily produce rising test scores, it's your good fortune if your student body becomes steadily more motivated and capable. But this does not mean that overall improvement in American students has been achieved.
"Whereas the authors of A Nation at Risk concerned themselves with the quality and breadth of the curriculum that every youngster should study, No Child Left Behind concerned itself only with basic skills. A Nation at Risk was animated by a vision of good education as the foundation of a better life for individuals and for our democratic society, but No Child Left Behind had no vision other than improving test scores in reading and math. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its "success." It ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant." (Emphasis added.) – Page 29 |
And resistance was futile, since NCLB is a federal law. It says every school must be 100% proficient by 2014. Traditional schools would be assimilated.1 Here is the nation's overall reading proficiency, as measured by the NAEP in 2007 (data from pages 102-103):
| Reading Proficiency Levels | Percent at Level (2007) 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Fourth Grade | Eighth Grade | |
| Below Basic (cannot meet grade standards) | 33% (25%) | n/a (26%) |
| Basic (Meets some grade standards) | 34% (42%) | n/a (43%) |
| Proficient (Meets all grade standards) | 25% (25%) | 28% (28%) |
| Advanced (Exceeds grade standards) | 8% ( 8%) | 3% ( 3%) |
The disastrous unintended consequence of NCLB's mandated reliance on reading and mathematics test scores, and its requirement that any school failing to make AYP (adequate yearly progress) in raising its overall scores should be closed, is that administrators and teachers will make those test scores their first priority (and often their only priority.) Students in such a situation get a good education by accident, if they get one at all. Also, NCLB fosters the attrition of traditional public schools, because deliberate or incidental selection of students happens in schools operating under innovative rules, and they do better at AYP. The traditional schools, with higher and higher percentages of lower-performing students, cannot make the grade. Eventually they are shuttered. NCLB was enacted under George W. Bush, and follows his plan for schools in Texas. That seemed to improve educational outcomes, but close scrutiny reveals this to be an illusion. The same is true of NCLB. In at least one case, Kearney Elementary in Philadelphia, the gains were real enough but dated from before NCLB became law.
"Ironically, President George W. Bush visited Kearney on January 8, 2009, to mark the anniversary of the signing of the No Child Left Behind act and to hail the school as proof of the law's effectiveness. But a teacher at the school told a reporter that the law had not changed the school, which was already recognized as a model school before NCLB was enacted." – Page 198 |
The recent crusade for "unfettered markets" as the solution to every problem under the sun has made headway in the field of education. Some schools, faced with a budget crunch, have been persuaded to contract with for-profit food providers. This tended to cause controversy when the provider pushed junk food. In the 1990s, Channel One offered a daily 12-minute news broadcast to schools. The commercials and the "infotainment" nature of the broadcast brought criticism.3 Recently, several nouveau riche foundations have gotten involved, attempting to apply business methods and get improved educational outcomes. However well these methods might work in the world of commerce, they are not suited for the provision of a public good like education.
"Some left-wing critics think the Waltons are pushing privatization so they can make money in the education industry, but that does not seem credible. It simply doesn't make sense that a family worth billions is looking for new ways to make money. But why should it be surprising that a foundation owned by one of the richest families in the United States opposes government regulation and favors private sector solutions to social problems? Why should it be surprising that a global corporation that has thrived without a unionized workforce would oppose public sector unions? Nor should it be surprising that the Walton Family Foundation has an ideological commitment to the principle of consumer choice and to an unfettered market, which by its nature has no loyalties and disregards Main Street, traditional values, long-established communities, and neighborhood schools." – Page 203 |
With all due respect to Ms. Ravitch's experience and expertise, I have no trouble believing rich people can be obsessed with getting richer. As for the ideology of free-market fundamentalism, it is clearly in the ascendency today and intruding into areas of life where it does not belong. Privatizing our military, privatizing our government, privatizing our public schools are themes that have been extant since the Reagan administration; and they are trends which have made too much headway. Anyone who doubts this conclusion should study the histories of the Koch Brothers and the security firm formerly known as Blackwater. They should recall Warren Buffett's statement about class war.4
Charter schools are another recent development. The idea was first proposed in 1988 by Ray Budde, a professor of educational administration in Massachusetts. Charter schools began to become popular in the early 1990s, well before NCLB was enacted. The basic idea is that a state agency authorizes a given school to operate under relaxed rules for a fixed period, usually five years. In exchange for this extra freedom, the school would be expected to try new methods that improved education outcomes. Albert Shanker (1928-1997), then president of AFT, proposed a similar idea that same year. His concept was that they would be proving grounds for fresh approaches and innovative methods in education. In practice, however, most charter schools do little innovation and achieve their improved results (when they have any) by selectively admitting high-performing students — a luxury traditional public schools (TPS) do not enjoy.5 Also, in the main, charter schools do not produce better results than TPS when their test scores are compared on the basis of comparable student demographics.
A common effect of charter schools is that they "skim off the cream" — pull the best students away from regular public schools in the district. Those traditional schools are left with higher percentages of students who need special help, who come from less affluent families, or whose primary language is not English. Thus the performance of the traditional schools, as measured by test scores, drops steadily, and eventually the rules of NCLB force them to close. The ultimate result of this trend, if it is allowed to continue, is that the grand and vital ideal of universal education will wither, leaving oases of good schooling for children of the well-to-do while the rest are consigned to the bleaching bones of once-vibrant school buildings languishing on schoolyards overgrown with weeds.
But it is easy to issue blanket condemnations of the whole public school system, and that is frequently a tactic of reformers with some new nostrum to push. But it overstates the case: America's public schools are far from being a lost cause. Yet it remains true that Americans are less well educated than students in most other developed nations, and less capable than colleges and businesses demand. Some 30 percent of college freshmen typically need remedial instruction, and business leaders continue to protest the large sums they must spend to train their new employees in basic skills. And when it comes to the duties of citizenship, it is clear that many American citizens are poorly prepared.6 Suffice it to say that our system of education needs improvement. If I had to grade it on the essentials today, the report card (purely arbitrary) would look like this.
| STRONG CURRICULUM | F |
| EXPERIENCED TEACHERS | C |
| EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION | C |
| WILLING STUDENTS | C |
| ADEQUATE RESOURCES | D |
| COMMUNITY SUPPORT | D |
When so many within the system (educators and parents) understand what is needed to do a good job of teaching, when our system has been doing a reasonably good job for so long, and when so much depends on it doing a good job, it is a puzzlement why there are so many impediments to getting that good job done. However, as a close reading of Left Back will show, there is one damnably convincing motivation for those impediments. Having a large population of undereducated citizens helps the elite "awe the masses" and maintain their privileged position. I wish I could laugh that suspicion away; but given recent developments I cannot. Therefore I do not see much hope for a revival of excellent general education for this country.
"The great challenge to our generation is to create a renaissance in education, one that goes well beyond the basic skills that have recently been the singular focus of federal activity, a renaissance that seeks to teach the best that has been thought and known and done in every field of endeavor." – Page 224 |
We once had a nationwide system of schools that produced generally well-educated citizens, able to run their own lives and meet the demands of employment and citizenship. We can have it again — but we won't get it until we demand it.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.