Tag Archive for 'Diane Ravitch'

The Best and Wisest Parent

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 27, 2009 in Educational Policy. 6 Comments

Invoking John Dewey’s maxim that a community should want for all children what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, Diane Ravitch wants small classes and the presence of the arts in schools that are physically attractive and well-maintained.  At Bridging Differences, she notes none of these ideas are driving education policy at present.

The president’s Department of Education will dispense nearly $5 billion, not to reduce class sizes, not to expand access to the arts, and not to improve the beauty and functionality of our public schools, but to incentivize the workforce with merit pay; to increase the privatization of struggling schools; and to compel teachers to teach to admittedly poor tests by tying teacher pay to students’ test scores.

If we’re making lists, I want my child to attend a school that sees itself as a place of learning first and foremost, with a rich, well-rounded curriculum; a view of reading as a means to academic achievement rather than an end in itself; and teachers and administrators who are not afraid to be grownups.

Why Send Kids To School?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 27, 2009 in Educational Policy and accountability. 5 Comments

“The single biggest problem in American education is that no one agrees on why we educate,” observes Diane Ravitch. ”Faced with this lack of consensus, policy makers define good education as higher test scores.”  Ravitch’s comments come in a forum published by the New York Times Magazine, which also features input from Tom Vander Ark, Geoffrey Canada, Charles Murray and others.  Ravitch writes:

Why do we educate? We educate because we want citizens who are capable of taking responsibility for their lives and for our democracy. We want citizens who understand how their government works, who are knowledgeable about the history of their nation and other nations. We need citizens who are thoroughly educated in science. We need people who can communicate in other languages. We must ensure that every young person has the chance to engage in the arts.

Reflecting on the theme of “How to Remake Education,” Vander Ark stumps for more attention to technology.  “By 2020, I believe most high-school students will do most of their learning online,” he writes.  “It shouldn’t take that long, but it will.”  Charles Murray argues we should “discredit the bachelor’s degree as a job credential”; while Canada believes we should lengthen the U.S. school year, which is “one of the shortest school years in the industrialized world.”

I’m with Diane. There is a clear failure of vision in American education at present, especially in poor, urban schools.  We have narrowed the definition of what it means to be educated in America.  When affluent parents choose a school for their children—when they enroll in a private school or buy a home near specific schools–reading scores are simply not part of their calculus.  It is assumed that in a good school every child will learn to read, and then read to learn.  That’s simply what schools do. When policy makers, education reformers and even teachers and administrators evaluate what makes schools in poor, urban neighborhoods good or bad, however, a single litmus test applies: performance on standardized reading tests.  For the children of the poor, a good grade on a state reading test has become what it means to be educated.  The contrast could not be clearer:  we set the finish line for other people’s children where we set the starting line for our own.

Plus ça Change

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 15, 2009 in Education Practice. 5 Comments

Diane Ravitch takes to the op-ed page of the Boston Globe to urge Bay Staters not to be seduced by 21st century skills hucksterism.   Her singular contribution to education is historical memory in a field where it’s famously lacking.  Whether it’s the “Project Method” of the early 20th century, the “Activity Movement’ of the 20s and 30s, the “Life Adjustment Movement’’ of the 1950s, or  “Outcome-Based Education’’ in the 1980s, Ravitch reminds us that we’ve seen this movie before. 

None of these initiatives survived. They did have impact, however: They inserted into American education a deeply ingrained suspicion of academic studies and subject matter. For the past century, our schools of education have obsessed over critical-thinking skills, projects, cooperative learning, experiential learning, and so on. But they have paid precious little attention to the disciplinary knowledge that young people need to make sense of the world.

“For over a century we have numbed the brains of teachers with endless blather about process and abstract thinking skills,” Ravitch concludes. ”We have taught them about graphic organizers and Venn diagrams and accountable talk, data-based decision-making, rubrics, and leveled libraries. But we have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically without quite a lot of knowledge to think about. Thinking critically involves comparing and contrasting and synthesizing what one has learned. And a great deal of knowledge is necessary before one can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanations.”

My neck hurts. Must have injured it nodding vigorously in agreement.

Ravitch Redux

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 9, 2009 in Education News. 14 Comments

Bridging Differences returns from summer hiatus today.  Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch’s blog resumes with a Ravitch post that takes issue with the $5 billion “Race to the Top” fund.  “As I predicted on this blog, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now the spear carriers for the GOP’s education policies of choice and accountability,” Ravitch writes. 

What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power. Under normal circumstances, the Department of Education would need congressional hearings and authorization to launch a program so sweeping and so sharply defined. Instead, they are using the “stimulus” money to impose their preferences, with no hearings and no congressional authorization.

Ravitch is also troubled by the administration’s push to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores.

I commend to our readers the response to the RTTT regulations by Professor Helen Ladd, an economist who has studied teacher evaluation for many years, as well as the one by Paul Barton, who has studied education issues for many years. What both of these responses clearly demonstrate is that there is no research basis for the priorities favored by Secretary Duncan.

“This will be an interesting year,” Ravitch concludes. ”But also a very dangerous year for American public education.”

More Diane Ravitch:  She weighs in on the NYC school report card controversy in today’s New York Post

Ready, Fire, Aim

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 21, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and Educational Policy. 7 Comments

At The Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey attempts to take on Diane Ravitch’s criticism of Race to the Top, accusing her of…well, I’m not sure exactly. But his criticism of Ravitch’s take on tying teacher evaluations to test scores is noteworthy. 

No state has ever really tied teacher evaluations to test scores in a methodologically valid way and made those evaluations meaningful in terms of compensation, hiring, tenure, and other things people care about. So Ravitch is just engaging in garden variety chicken-and-egg obstructionism: you can’t prove X works because nobody’s ever tried it; you can’t try X because nobody’s ever proved it works.

Well, no.  It’s not that it’s never been tried.  It’s that there is not a way to evaluate teachers fairly by using test scores.  I guess I’m obstructionist too, since like Ravitch I don’t see the benefit of coming to vast conclusions based on half-vast data.  Commenter Ceolaf nails the problem precisely: 

“It is not merely a case of banning a practice or allowing it. Rather, it is a case of mandating it. Require — or pressuring very strongly — states to adopt policies that are unproven is the issue. We knew that seat belts save lives, so requiring states to adopt seatbelt laws made sense. We knew that lowering speed limits saved gas, so requiring states to lower theirs to 55mph made sense. But that is not the case here.”

Just so.  But argue that this well-intentioned idea has too many problems to be taken seriously and you’re immediately a status quo loving, running dog lackey of the teachers unions, or as Carey describes Ravitch, the ”go-to name-brand anti-Obama quote on K–12 issues.”

Oy.

Maybe we can make this simple and unambiguous:  Accountability?  Good.  Figuring out if a teacher is competent or incompetent? Very good. Using tests to determine the difference?  Not very good.  In fact, not possible.  Forcing states to do it anyway? Not very smart.  Being incurious about the impact such a move will have on education?  Unforgivable. 

When did “not very good but it’s the best we can do” become a way of making policy?  When did suggesting we can do better become heresy?

Achievement Gap or Proficiency Gap?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 15, 2009 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Education News and accountability. 5 Comments

Lots of coverage of the latest NAEP scores and what it means for efforts to close the achievement gap.  Results show efforts to close the gap “may have a limited shelf life for kids,” notes USA Today’s Greg Toppo. 

“Since the early 1990s, schools have helped minority elementary schoolers close the achievement gap in basic math and reading skills, with real progress showing up recently on a federally administered test given to thousands of kids around the time they’re in fourth grade. But by the time they get to middle school, it seems, their progress all but vanishes.”

“Some of the scores are higher than ever, some show no gains over time,” observes Diane Ravitch, a former member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees and sets policy for NAEP.  “A closer look reveals that the rate of progress is no greater than–and in some cases, less than–the pre-NCLB years.

In the New York Times, Sam Dillon fixates on evolving regional differences.  “The nation’s most dramatic black-white gaps are no longer seen in Southern states like Alabama or Mississippi,” he notes, “but rather in Northern and Midwestern states like Wisconsin, Nebraska, Connecticut and Illinois.

Why does the achievement gap persist?  “African-American students are less likely than their white counterparts to be taught by teachers who know their subject matter,” Ed Trust’s Kati Haycock tells the Associated Press.  “They are less likely to be exposed to a rich and challenging curriculum,” she said. Meanwhile Richard Whitmire, citing Haycock,  points out that states that focus on early literacy skills are making more progress. 

In a non-NAEP post over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli tosses off an interesting and provocative comment on what we mean — or what we should mean — when we say “achievement gap.”  Mike’s eyebrows went up when he heard DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee say that if present trends continue “within six years we will have completely eliminated the achievement gap between black and white students in the District.”  Says Petrilli:

Now that’s quite a statement. To the man on the street, it surely sounds miraculous. You mean black students in the District of Columbia, most of whom live in abject poverty in places like Anacostia, are going to be learning at the same level as the handful of white students in the system, most of whom come from affluent, well-educated families clustered on Capitol Hill and the upscale neighborhood of Chevy Chase, where houses start in the $750,000 range? Wow! Except that’s not what she means at all. She’s referring to the proficiency gap—and by boosting the percentage of black students getting to “proficiency,” she is automatically closing said gap because almost all of the white students are already over that bar. But that doesn’t mean that the average black student will be achieving at the same level as the average white student, which is what “eliminating the achievement gap” sounds like.

Talk of closing the achievement gap is “sloppy and misleading,” Petrilli notes.  “Let’s stop talking about the achievement gap entirely, and instead focus on raising achievement across the board,” he concludes. ”It’s more honest, and, in my view, more equitable, too.”

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.)

NAEP, NCLB, CYA, SOP

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 4, 2009 in Assessment and Testing and accountability. 4 Comments

Former Ed Secy Margaret Spellings is the latest boldface name in the edusphere to say last week’s NAEP numbers show that NCLB is working.  Over at Common Core, Diane Ravitch takes a close look at the numbers and says, er…not so fast.  Her takeaway:

First, our students are making gains, though not among 17-year-olds. Second, the gains they have made since NCLB are smaller than the gains they made in the years preceding NCLB. Third, even when they are significant, the gains are small. Fourth, the Long Term Trend data are not a resounding endorsement of NCLB. If anything, the slowing of the rate of progress suggests that NCLB is not a powerful instrument to improve student performance.

The different takes on the NAEP tells Checker Finn that what we really need is an independent education-achievement audit agency “to sort out the claims and counterclaims about student performance and school achievement.” 

Advocates always do this sort of thing—reaching for whichever data they think make the most convincing case for their accomplishments, exertions and assertions (and, of course, making or implying causations that no reputable scientist would accept). This will continue. And usually the advocates get away with it because anybody who disputes their claims is also seen as having his/her own ax to grind. That’s why America would be so much better off with an independent education-performance audit bureau.

A fine idea, but like a newspaper ombudsman or “public editor,” there will always be some question about how one’s judgement is colored by the interest of whoever is signing the check.  Apropos of which, I keep running into this quote from David Simon, the creator of The Wire. 

 ”You show me anything that depicts institutional progress in America – school test scores, crime stats, arrest stats – anything that a politician can run on [or] anything that somebody can get a promotion on, and as soon as you invent that statistical category 50 people in that institution will be at work trying to figure out a way to make it look as if progress is actually occurring when actually no progress is.”

Sounds cynical, I know.  But hard to argue.

Cassandra Warns the Trojans About Merit Pay

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 22, 2009 in Assessment and Testing, Education Practice, Educational Policy and Teaching. 4 Comments

If you remember your Greek mythology, you’ll recall Cassandra, tragically blessed with the gift of prophecy but cursed by Apollo so that no one would believe her.  Think of her while reading Diane Ravitch’s latest over at Bridging Differences. 

Here is my prediction: Merit pay of the kind I have described will not make education better, even if scores go up next year or the year after. Instead, it will make education worse, not only because some of the “gains” will be based on cheating and gaming the system, but because they will be obtained by scanting attention to history, geography, civics, the arts, science, literature, foreign languages, and all the other studies that are needed to develop smarter individuals, better citizens, and people who are prepared for the knowledge-based economy of the 21st Century. Nor will it identify better teachers; instead, it will reward those who use their time for low-level test preparation.

“Is it possible to have an education system that mis-educates students while raising their test scores?” Ravitch asks. ”Yes, I think it is. We may soon prove it.”

Cassandra is speaking.  Are you listening? Do you believe her? 

I do.

Aggregating Content is a 21st Century Skill

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 4, 2009 in Education News. 2 Comments

EdWeek’s Steven Sawchuk files a big 21st Century Skills piece off last week’s Common Core event in the new Edweek.  It’s well-worth reading if you’re new to the debate and looking for a straight, dispassionate take on the argument over P21. 

Diane Ravitch has lots more to say at Bridging Differences, and the reader comments, as always, have plenty of caloric value.  Here’s CK Blog contributor Diana Senechal, for example:

It seems to me that P21 wants to promote advertising skills more than critical thinking skills. Make a commercial of your favorite short story. Make a soundtrack and video display for a poem. Make a Venn diagram, using online “concept mapping” tools, to compare world religions….The worst projects promote a culture in which students are called upon to “sell” a work of literature or a snack (more or less side by side). Instead of delving into the language, they clip it and package it. Instead of studying history, they build their “financial literacy” by developing a strategy for selling snacks.

Joanne Jacob also weighs in with a lengthy recap of the ongoing debate;  Finally, a hat tip to Jay Greene, who provides comic relief with a 21CS spoof from The Onion:  An impossibly deadpan Fox News-style panel discussion on Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Kids for the Post-Apocalyptic Future?  “The games make it all seem deceptively simple,” one panelist opines.  “A kid’s not going to be able to kill a six-foot long irradiated beetle just by pushing a few buttons.  He’s going to have to get down there with an axe and hack and hack and hack…”

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=VTbYUd1jUc4">http://youtube.com/watch?v=VTbYUd1jUc4</a>