Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform
Federal testing has narrowed education and
charter schools have failed to live up to
their promise.
By Diane Ravitch
Wall Street Journal
March 9, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575109443305343962.html?KEYWORDS=Diane+Ravitch
I have been a historian of American education since
1975, when I received my doctorate from Columbia. I
have written histories, and I've also written
extensively about the need to improve students'
knowledge of history, literature, geography, science,
civics and foreign languages. So in 1991, when Lamar
Alexander and David Kearns invited me to become
assistant secretary of education in the administration
of George H.W. Bush, I jumped at the chance with the
hope that I might promote voluntary state and national
standards in these subjects.
By the time I left government service in January 1993,
I was an advocate not only for standards but for school
choice. I had come to believe that standards and choice
could co-exist as they do in the private sector. With
my friends Chester Finn Jr. and Joseph Viteritti, I
wrote and edited books and articles making the case for
charter schools and accountability.
I became a founding board member of the Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation and a founding member of the Koret
Task Force at the Hoover Institution, both of which are
fervent proponents of choice and accountability. The
Koret group includes some of the nation's best-known
conservative scholars of choice, including John Chubb,
Terry Moe, Caroline Hoxby and Paul Peterson.
As No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) accountability regime
took over the nation's schools under President George
W. Bush and more and more charter schools were
launched, I supported these initiatives. But over time,
I became disillusioned with the strategies that once
seemed so promising. I no longer believe that either
approach will produce the quantum improvement in
American education that we all hope for.
NCLB received overwhelming bipartisan support when it
was signed into law by President Bush in 2002. The law
requires that schools test all students every year in
grades three through eight, and report their scores
separately by race, ethnicity, low-income status,
disability status and limited-English proficiency. NCLB
mandated that 100% of students would reach proficiency
in reading and math by 2014, as measured by tests given
in each state.
Although this target was generally recognized as
utopian, schools faced draconian penalties-eventually
including closure or privatization-if every group in
the school did not make adequate yearly progress. By
2008, 35% of the nation's public schools were labeled
"failing schools," and that number seems sure to grow
each year as the deadline nears.
Since the law permitted every state to define
"proficiency" as it chose, many states announced
impressive gains. But the states' claims of startling
improvement were contradicted by the federally
sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP). Eighth grade students improved not at all on
the federal test of reading even though they had been
tested annually by their states in 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006 and 2007.
Meanwhile the states responded to NCLB by dumbing down
their standards so that they could claim to be making
progress. Some states declared that between 80%-90% of
their students were proficient, but on the federal test
only a third or less were. Because the law demanded
progress only in reading and math, schools were
incentivized to show gains only on those subjects.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in test-
preparation materials. Meanwhile, there was no
incentive to teach the arts, science, history,
literature, geography, civics, foreign languages or
physical education.
In short, accountability turned into a nightmare for
American schools, producing graduates who were drilled
regularly on the basic skills but were often ignorant
about almost everything else. Colleges continued to
complain about the poor preparation of entering
students, who not only had meager knowledge of the
world but still required remediation in basic skills.
This was not my vision of good education.
When charter schools started in the early 1990s, their
supporters promised that they would unleash a new era
of innovation and effectiveness. Now there are some
5,000 charter schools, which serve about 3% of the
nation's students, and the Obama administration is
pushing for many more.
But the promise has not been fulfilled. Most studies of
charter schools acknowledge that they vary widely in
quality. The only major national evaluation of charter
schools was carried out by Stanford economist Margaret
Raymond and funded by pro-charter foundations. Her
group found that compared to regular public schools,
17% of charters got higher test scores, 46% had gains
that were no different than their public counterparts,
and 37% were significantly worse.
Charter evaluations frequently note that as compared to
neighboring public schools, charters enroll smaller
proportions of students whose English is limited and
students with disabilities. The students who are
hardest to educate are left to regular public schools,
which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair.
The higher graduation rate posted by charters often
reflects the fact that they are able to "counsel out"
the lowest performing students; many charters have very
high attrition rates (in some, 50%-60% of those who
start fall away). Those who survive do well, but this
is not a model for public education, which must educate
all children.
NAEP compared charter schools and regular public
schools in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009. Sometimes one
sector or the other had a small advantage. But on the
whole, there is very little performance difference
between them.
Given the weight of studies, evaluations and federal
test data, I concluded that deregulation and privately
managed charter schools were not the answer to the
deep-seated problems of American education. If
anything, they represent tinkering around the edges of
the system. They affect the lives of tiny numbers of
students but do nothing to improve the system that
enrolls the other 97%.
The current emphasis on accountability has created a
punitive atmosphere in the schools. The Obama
administration seems to think that schools will improve
if we fire teachers and close schools. They do not
recognize that schools are often the anchor of their
communities, representing values, traditions and ideals
that have persevered across decades. They also fail to
recognize that the best predictor of low academic
performance is poverty-not bad teachers.
What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent
curriculum that prepares all students. And our
government should commit to providing a good school in
every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to
provide a good fire company in every community.
On our present course, we are disrupting communities,
dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports
of their progress, and creating a private sector that
will undermine public education without improving it.
Most significantly, we are not producing a generation
of students who are more knowledgable, and better
prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That
is why I changed my mind about the current direction of
school reform.
Ms. Ravitch is author of "The Death and Life of the
Great American School System: How Testing and Choice
Are Undermining Education," published last week by
Basic Books.
_____________________________________________
for more of my work please go to:
http://www.redroom.com/author/rodney-d-coates
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
Muhammad Ali
Rodney D. Coates
Professor
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