First, let me preface my review by disclosing that I am undeniably a member of the reform movement that Dr Ravitch systematically critiques in her book. My friends in the education sector are primarily employed by organizations like Teach For America, various charter schools and charter management organizations, and in "reform-minded" districts like New York City.
I visited two classrooms, in both the students were unruly and out of control. There was no student work on either the walls of the school or in the two classrooms I saw. Though somewhat familiar with NCLB, I was surprised to learn that this managerially comprehensive federal legislation stipulates nothing whatsoever regarding curriculum - the content is left to the states. And so, as Ravich points out, only naturally it appears the states themselves have been well incentivized to dumb down the tests over time to increase scores (like teaching to the test, but administering and governing to the test).
She offers an insider view of an external threat. Money and clout are enabling billionaire business persons to destroy a private community controlled institution.
Read her book and then join us at and help us bring the demise of NCLB and Race to the Top to an even faster conclusion. This book is a must read for every teacher, administrator and anyone else interested in education. Her original philosophy has rebirthed. She is again, who she once was. She also attacks major financial education philanthropies, such as Bill Gates, and shows that simply throwing money at schools doesn't work if it's put in all the wrong places. As a teacher, I was fascinated by her research and perspective.
Again, higher scores for charters and lower for public schools. Even under such conditions, the charters, on the whole, are statistically even with their public cousins.
All professors I have talked to, from very conservative to very liberal, agree this problem has grown a lot in recent years.
The charter school movement essentially provides no benefit to the majority of students. This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the future of American education.
But I think the evidence is that testing can come much closer than Diane Ravitch admits. From my point of view this is a straw man. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.
The speakers suggested many reasons, but Ravitch found "especially striking that many parents and students did not want to leave their neighborhood school, even if the federal government offered them free transportation and the promise of a better school." That was only the beginning of Ravitch's transformation. Every sentence, every page is full of affirmations of what I am seeing on a daily basis. And I was just seeing the smaller puzzle pieces, not the bigger picture. In fact, these things have virtually no positive impact at all as far as I can tell. Standards and curriculum that aren't driven by tests, teachers who are free to teach the curriculum and hold students to account for the material, and administrations who ensure the curriculum is being taught.
I visited two classrooms, in both the students were unruly and out of control. There was no student work on either the walls of the school or in the two classrooms I saw. Though somewhat familiar with NCLB, I was surprised to learn that this managerially comprehensive federal legislation stipulates nothing whatsoever regarding curriculum - the content is left to the states. And so, as Ravich points out, only naturally it appears the states themselves have been well incentivized to dumb down the tests over time to increase scores (like teaching to the test, but administering and governing to the test).
She offers an insider view of an external threat. Money and clout are enabling billionaire business persons to destroy a private community controlled institution.
Read her book and then join us at and help us bring the demise of NCLB and Race to the Top to an even faster conclusion. This book is a must read for every teacher, administrator and anyone else interested in education. Her original philosophy has rebirthed. She is again, who she once was. She also attacks major financial education philanthropies, such as Bill Gates, and shows that simply throwing money at schools doesn't work if it's put in all the wrong places. As a teacher, I was fascinated by her research and perspective.
Again, higher scores for charters and lower for public schools. Even under such conditions, the charters, on the whole, are statistically even with their public cousins.
All professors I have talked to, from very conservative to very liberal, agree this problem has grown a lot in recent years.
The charter school movement essentially provides no benefit to the majority of students. This book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the future of American education.
But I think the evidence is that testing can come much closer than Diane Ravitch admits. From my point of view this is a straw man. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.
The speakers suggested many reasons, but Ravitch found "especially striking that many parents and students did not want to leave their neighborhood school, even if the federal government offered them free transportation and the promise of a better school." That was only the beginning of Ravitch's transformation. Every sentence, every page is full of affirmations of what I am seeing on a daily basis. And I was just seeing the smaller puzzle pieces, not the bigger picture. In fact, these things have virtually no positive impact at all as far as I can tell. Standards and curriculum that aren't driven by tests, teachers who are free to teach the curriculum and hold students to account for the material, and administrations who ensure the curriculum is being taught.
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Great story….Keep on sharing… Thanks