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The
Death and Life of the Great American
School System.
How Testing and Choice Are
Undermining Education
by Diane Ravitch
Basic Books, 2010
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<< Diane Ravitch, the nation's foremost
historian of education, warns that national
education policy is on a path to wrecking our
cherished tradition of public education. In
this remarkable book, she describes how
such strategies as accountability schemes
based on questionable standardized tests,
merit pay for teachers based on gains on the
same unreliable tests, vouchers, and charter
schools have been oversold as solutions for
our educational problems. Ravitch
explains why she became persuaded by
accumulating evidence that policymakers are
on the wrong track in pushing a market model
of reform that ignores the realities of the
classroom. The more they push these policies,
she writes, the more they will harm our
nation's school system and undermine the
quality of education. Ravitch shows how
President George W. Bush's No Child Left
Behind program ("NCLB") has failed to improve
education. The main result of NCLB has been
to turn our schools into testing factories.
While children are trained to take
standardized tests, they do not gain the
knowledge and skills that are necessary
components of a good education. The
federal "sanctions" and "remedies" now
mandated across the nation have unfairly
stigmatized thousands of schools and put them
at risk of being closed and privatized. The
Obama administration has now adopted the same
approach as the George W. Bush
administration, despite the lack of evidence
that these "reforms" will improve the quality
of education. Ravitch reviews the record of
districts that claim to have achieved
"miracles," and finds that the alleged
"miracles" vanish on close examination. Not
only are test scores in many states and
districts inflated by statistical
game-playing and lowered standards, but the
over-emphasis on testing has all but
eliminated the essential elements of a solid
education, including history, civics,
science, the arts, geography, literature,
physical education, health education, and
foreign languages. Ravitch shows that
privatization and deregulation of schools
solve no problems. Charter schools choose
their students in lotteries, then have the
freedom to exclude (or "counsel out") those
who don't test well. Many do not accept a
fair share of students with disabilities and
those who are English language learners. The
regular public schools, by contrast, have to
educate everyone. Meanwhile, many charter
managers pay themselves handsomely for their
services. Ravitch demonstrates that charters
on average do not get better results than
regular public schools. The currently
fashionable idea that teachers should be
evaluated by their students' test scores,
Ravitch finds, is wrongheaded. She explains
that the research for this proposition is
deeply flawed. The main consequence of this
approach, now a keystone of the Obama
administration education plan, will be to
drive good teachers out of public education.
Ravitch argues that what is at stake is
nothing less than the future of public
education, especially in our urban districts.
Every student should have a solid,
well-balanced education that prepares them
for the future. A democratic society, she
concludes, needs a healthy, vibrant public
education system, with good public schools in
every neighborhood. On our current
course, the schools will be privatized,
deregulated, and turned over to
entrepreneurs. Based on a careful review of
the evidence, Ravitch says that this course
of action is unlikely to improve American
education. This is a classic and riveting
story of good intentions gone terribly wrong.
Ravitch, former assistant secretary of
education with over 40 years of experience in
educational policy, provides an important and
highly readable examination of the
educational system, how it fails to prepare
students for life after graduation, and how
we can put it back on track. Ravitch was once
a passionate advocate for the conservative
policies of testing and accountability,
school choice, privatization, and
business-style management, all of which she
here powerfully shows leave students trained
to take tests but not prepared to participate
in the 21st-century economy. Changes she
suggests include curricula that emphasize
what students need to learn over test scores,
having professional educators rather than
politicians, business leaders, and
philanthropists run the system, and using
charter schools to help students most in need
instead of allowing them to siphon off the
best students from public schools. VERDICT:
Anyone interested in education should
definitely read this accessible, riveting
book. — Mark Bay, Library Journal
>>
>>
Source | html
>>
First, Let's Fire All the Teachers ! by Diane
Ravitch | html
>>
Diane Ravitch Website | html
>>
Education Week, l'enseignement de base aux
Etats-Unis | html
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