The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education
Diane Ravitch—former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum—examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today’s most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril.
Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving America’s schools:
- leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning
- expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools
- pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not “merit pay” based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores
- encourage family involvement in education from an early age
Review: I selected this book to read for an assignment as part of a class on public policy in education for my master's degree program. The author is the former assistant secretary of education and draws on her extensive experience in American education to reflect on major trends in our national educational system over the last several decades.
The major trends Ravitch covers in this book are school testing, school choice, accountability, and the practice of private foundations steering educational movements. I particularly enjoyed chapters that served as case studies of school districts gone wrong, including examples from New York City and San Diego. Ravitch pokes holes in the many flaws of No Child Left Behind, which transformed the standards movement into a testing and accountability movement. In addition, the book spends a lot of time discussing teaching as a profession, including what it means to be a teacher in today's educational environment and the flaws in how we as a nation currently evaluate teachers.
Of course, like any book on education, and public policy in education in particular, this work is biased. Other writers would argue just as strongly for the opposite of what Ravitch has. However, I think the length and breadth of her experience lend legitimacy to her arguments. Additionally, I respect the fact that this book is written refuting strong opinions she held earlier in her career, "What was the compelling evidence that prompted me to reevaluate the policies I had endorsed many times over the previous decade? Why did I now doubt ideas I once had advocated? The short answer is that my views changed as I saw how these ideas were working out in reality" (2). I have great respect for anyone willing to change their mind after viewing compelling evidence that shows that their original views were wrong.
At times I did feel like the scope of this book was a bit broad and disjointed. Ravitch tackles numerous subjects on a national scope in a relatively short book. However, these are clearly issues that she has strong views on. As a consequence, the reader gets a decent overview of numerous trends in American public education.
In sum, this is a hard topic, but a necessary one. For anyone with a stake in education and our nation's future, this is a worthwhile read. As citizens, it's worthwhile to be informed about the forces that are driving our nation's schools, so we can take a stand to help fight for what matters.
Stars: 4
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