REVIEW
Throughout the history of public education in the U.S. there have been periods of dissatisfaction with the schools and countless remedies have been suggested to “save the schools.” The current cycle of reform began in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk, a national report that attempted to tie our place in the global economy to the role of the public schools. The report stated “the nation’s global preeminence in science, technology, industry, commerce, and military defense is threatened by its mediocre education.” Notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. economy has lead the world nearly every year since 1983, a never-ending onslaught has been faced by teachers and school officials to make over the schools in the image of business as a means to saving our way of life.
Among those who championed standardized tests, accountability measures, charter schools, etc. was the pre-eminent education historian Diane Ravitch. She served in the administration of the first George Bush and has, for 20 years or more, championed the No Child Left Behind Act and the gradual take over of the public schools. As a consummate researcher, however, Ravitch has followed the implementation of these “reforms” and, voila, she found she had been wrong. The reforms have not worked and in some cases made the situation worse. Here are a couple of reviews of her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education wherein she sets the record straight. This is must reading for anyone who really cares about public education in the U.S.
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch
Library Journal
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, Univ. of the Cumberlands Lib., Williamsburg, KY
From Booklist
As an education historian and former assistant secretary of education, Ravitch has witnessed the trends in public education over the past 40 years and has herself swung from public-school advocate to market-driven accountability and choice supporter back to public-school advocate. With passion and insight, she analyzes research and draws on interviews with educators, philanthropists, and business executives to question the current direction of reform of public education. In the mid-1990s, the movement to boost educational standards failed on political concerns; next came the emphasis on accountability with its reliance on standardized testing. Now educators are worried that the No Child Left Behind mandate that all students meet proficiency standards by 2014 will result in the dismantling of public schools across the nation. Ravitch analyzes the impact of choice on public schools, attempts to quantify quality teaching, and describes the data wars with advocates for charter and traditional public schools. Ravitch also critiques the continued reliance on a corporate model for school reform and the continued failure of such efforts to emphasize curriculum. Conceding that there is no single solution, Ravitch concludes by advocating for strong educational values and revival of strong neighborhood public schools. For readers on all sides of the school-reform debate, this is a very important book.
–Vanessa Bush
