Author Archive for Diane Ravitch

The Partnership for 19th Century Skills

Published by Diane Ravitch on July 6, 2009 in No category. 12 Comments

I for one have heard quite enough about the 21st century skills that are sweeping the nation. Now, for the first time, children will be taught to think critically (never heard a word about that in the 20th century, did you?), to work in groups (I remember getting a grade on that very skill when I was in third grade a century ago), to solve problems (a brand new idea in education), and so on.

Let me suggest that it is time to have done with this unnecessary conflict about 21st century skills. Let us agree that we need all those forenamed skills, plus lots others, in addition to a deep understanding of history, literature, the arts, geography, civics, the sciences, and foreign languages.

But allow me also to propose a new entity that will advance a different set of skills and understandings that are just as important as what are now called 21st century skills. I propose a Partnership for 19th Century Skills.

This partnership will advocate for such skills, values, and understandings as:

  • The love of learning
  • The pursuit of knowledge
  • The ability to think for oneself (individualism)
  • The ability to stand alone against the crowd (courage)
  • The ability to work persistently at a difficult task until it is finished (industriousness, self-discipline)
  • The ability to think through the consequences of one’s actions on others (respect for others)
  • The ability to consider the consequences of one’s actions on one’s well-being (self-respect)
  •  The recognition of higher ends than self-interest (honor)
  •  The ability to comport oneself appropriately in all situations (dignity)
  • The recognition that civilized society requires certain kinds of behavior by individuals and groups (good manners, civility)
  • The willingness to ask questions when puzzled (curiosity)
  • The readiness to dream about other worlds, other ways of doing things (imagination)
  •  The ability to believe that one can improve one’s life and the lives of others (optimism)
  • The ability to believe in principles larger than one’s own self-interest (idealism)
  •  The ability to speak well and write grammatically, using standard English

I invite readers to submit other 19th century skills that we should cultivate assiduously among the rising generation, on the belief that doing so will lead to happier lives and a better world.

(Ed’s Note:  Diane Ravitch wrote the above for the blog of Common Core, which advocates for comprehensive education in the liberal arts and sciences.  She is the organization’s co-chair.  It is published here as well, with her permission.)

Diane Ravitch on Teacher Evaluation and Value-Added

Published by Diane Ravitch on November 18, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, No category, Teaching and accountability. 2 Comments

In his post, “Getting Value-Added Right,” Robert raises excellent questions, and his restaurant metaphor is apt. The value-added growth model, as Dan Willingham notes in the comments section and his post on the Britannica Blog, is not ready for prime time. There are too many intervening variables to hold teachers solely accountable for the test-score growth of every student. Given high rates of mobility, there is a large fluctuation in the student population in schools. As Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger point out in one of their papers, their inherent volatility make test scores a poor basis for an accountability system.

The imprecision of test score measures arises from two sources. The first is sampling variation, which is a particularly striking problem in elementary schools. With the average elementary school containing only sixty-eight students per grade level, the amount of variation stemming from the idiosyncrasies of the particular sample of students being tested is often large relative to the total amount of variation observed between schools. The second arises from one-time factors that are not sensitive to the size of the sample; for example, a dog barking in the playground on the day of the test, a severe flu season, a disruptive student in a class, or favorable chemistry between a group of students and their teacher. Both small samples and other one-time factors can add considerable volatility to test score measures.

There are many, many reasons why one-year changes in scores are not reliable. There are many reasons why it is hard to give credit or blame for students’ test score gains and losses from year to year. Until we have better tests and have ironed out many of the confounding variables, it is unfair to make credible inferences about teacher performance from test scores, let alone use such data to dispense rewards and punishments.

There is another reason to worry about value-added growth models that determine a teacher’s fate and compensation. If we turn teaching into an activity whose sole purpose is to produce gains on tests that we know are mainly low-level and dumbed-down, we will not make education better. We may succeed in destroying it altogether. We better find ways to emphasize the quality of curriculum (think Core Knowledge) and to de-emphasize the number of times that kids are asked to check off a box on standardized tests in the course of a month. Or our education system will be far worse than ever.

Diane blogs on education at Bridging Differences — ed.

The Sharpton-Klein Education Reform Agenda

Published by Diane Ravitch on June 23, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Educational Policy. 3 Comments

I have been a supporter of Core Knowledge from its beginning. Indeed, as Don Hirsch will testify, I urged him to write the book that eventually became Cultural Literacy, after I heard him speak iat a conference in 1983. Like Don, I believe that children need a firm command of not just vocabulary and skills, but background knowledge that will help them understand new words and new ideas.

Over the years, I have come to understand that children need a strong, rich, coherent curriculum, filled with the amazing ideas, experiences, discoveries and people that awaken children’s passion to learn and keep on learning.

Will America’s achievement gap really be eliminated by testing kids more?

But I have discovered something else. It is very difficult for children to become deeply engaged in learning when they come to school hungry; when their eyesight is so poor that they can’t read; when their hearing is impaired but no one knows it; when their family moves from place to place because they don’t have a decent home; and when their family income is so uncertain that their home is filled with anxiety about meeting basic needs.

Continue reading ‘The Sharpton-Klein Education Reform Agenda’

A New Advocate for Core Curriculum

Published by Diane Ravitch on February 27, 2008 in Core Knowledge, Education Practice and Educational Policy. 1 Comment

Common CoreTuesday I went to the launch of a new organization called Common Core. Its primary goal is to advocate for a rich, coherent, content-based curriculum, one that includes the full range of liberal arts and sciences.Common Core will seek to fill the vacuum that was created by the demise several years ago of the Council for Basic Education. That organization, founded by giants like Clifton Fadiman, Arthur Bestor, and Jacques Barzun, was an eloquent voice for history, literature, mathematics, sciences, the arts, geography, and civics.

Common Core will seek to persuade states and school districts, as well as federal officials, that students will be better educated and perhaps even do better on tests if they have a broad education. We are betting that schools with curricula like Core Knowledge produce better educated students, and that they don’t need to spend a disproportionate amount of time preparing to take content-free standardized tests.

Toni Cortese, executive vice-president of the American Federation of Teachers, and I are co-chairs of Common Core. The board includes an outstanding array of practitioners and scholars (more about that later, as I want to be sure when I list their names that I didn’t leave anyone out). Our executive director is Lynne A. Munson, who has labored for over a year to bring the organization to life and get it off to a good start.

We hope to sponsor research, conduct conferences, publish reports, and do similar things to change the climate and to move our schools away from the current unhealthy obsession with testing. We are not opposed to testing, but don’t think that tests are the be-all and end-all of education.

I certainly hope that the efforts of Common Core will help to strengthen and promote Core Knowledge, as our goals are closely aligned. Core Knowledge, of course, differs from Common Core in that CK supports schools across the nation. Common Core won’t do that. Instead, it will advocate for the goals and mission that we all share: a richly educated student, a coherent and thoughtful content-based curriculum.

More about Common Core as it takes shape.

Why I Resigned From Education Next

Published by Diane Ravitch on February 13, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Curriculum. 0 Comments

New York SunThe New York Sun (Feb 13) reported that I resigned from the editorial board of Education Next because that magazine has just published an article implicitly endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg for President. That is not entirely right. I was not thrilled about the endorsement, inasmuch as the editorial board had not been consulted. But my reason for resigning was that the article was a puff piece for reforms that thus far are not working.

NYC is hardly a paragon of education reform. Annual spending has increased from $12.5 billion to nearly $20 billion under Mayor Bloomberg. Yet NAEP scores showed no gains in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade mathematics.

The school system devotes inordinate resources to testing and preparing for tests, to constant measurement and evaluation, while paying negligible attention to curriculum and instruction. This strategy has not worked, has not even produced impressive test score gains. Saddest of all, even if it did produce large test score gains, the students would still not be getting a good education.

 Update:  You read it here first, but Diane Ravitch has more to say in an op-ed in this morning’s (Feb 15) NY Sun –rp.