18 de março de 2010


Diane Ravitch, historiadora de NYU, presentó su libro la semana pasada
que explica su crisis intelectual y cambio de opinión en las mayoría de
sus posturas sobre política educativa (accountability, estandares,
school choice, charter schools, vouchers, etc.) en un evento en American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) en Washington DC. Mark Schneider, cientista
político de AIR y AEI y ex-Comissioner del National Center for Education
Statistics, fue el comentarista. Adjunto sus comentarios que son
bastante críticos y entretenidos.


Gregory

Mark Schneider

Comments on

Diane Ravitch: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

Diane is arguably the best educational historian working today and one
of the best the nation has ever produced.

She is also a sharp critic: I found myself cringing at Diane's analysis
of how so many programs I thought were reasonably good have gone astray.

Of course it's not only programs that get skewered, the behavior of some
very prominent reformers and researchers also come under close scrutiny.

Chapter after chapter she confirms what we all know about education
policy and practice---it is relentlessly based on fads built on the
flimsiest of evidence. Diane shows that good ideas are often taken to
scale without any thought about how any of reforms might work in a
larger venue.

Even worse, as Diane shows in case after case, ideas often become
invested with magic properties so that people see them as a silver
bullet that will cure all our ills.

And of course Diane is a great writer, so the book goes down easy and
there is a compelling personal odyssey in here that makes the book a
great read.

I'm not sure if it was Diane's intent, the book depressed the hell out
of me.

But -- and, of course, there was going to be a but---after going through
the book and finding myself in a funk, I picked myself up and reread the
book---and ultimately came away disappointed. **

I always viewed Diane as a hard-headed sharp analyst. But I didn't know
that she was also a hopeless romantic and I think that her romantic
vision of what schools were and where they should be just doesn't work
with the reality of the world we live in.

As Nelson Smith from the National Alliance for Charter Schools described
it to me: much of this book is like looking through a rose colored
rearview mirror.

Why do I say Diane's vision of what we want from our schools is romantic:

From Page 230: "Certainly we want our students to be able to read and
write and be numerate. Those are the basic skills on which all other
learning builds. But that is not enough. We want to prepare them for a
useful life. We want them to be able to think for themselves when they
are in the world on their own. We want them to have good character and
to make sound decisions, about their life, their work, and their health.
We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor. We
hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with
others. We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness."

The list expands to include an appreciation arts, music, and science, to
be multicultural, to be great citizens, and so on and so on.

From the picture on the cover, I suppose all this great stuff is
supposed to happen in a broken down one room school house in the middle
of a prairie, where every teacher is a Mrs. Ratliff, Diane's high school
English teacher, who stars in chapter 9.

In Diane's vision if we can't have a one room school house in the middle
of the prairie we should strive for a neighborhood school that is a
beautiful, well maintained facility that is amply resourced.

This is an idealized version of what education might have been in a
simpler time gone by.

· A time when there were lots of Mrs. Ratliff's because women had
no other alternative occupations,

· a time when neighborhoods may have really been more cohesive
and safe, and

· a time when public schools may have actually delivered a
broader education that prepared people for work and society.

But in today's world, there may be more teachers in rubber rooms in NYC
than there are Mrs. Ratliffs, there are neighborhood schools that fail
to impart even the most basic knowledge to their students year after
year after year, and it's a world where only 3% of Detroit's fourth
grade students are proficient in math according to the latest NAEP results.

Again, let me say how much I liked parts of the book but let me delve
into a couple of her arguments in more detail---places where I think she
got things wrong.

A key theme throughout the book is the importance of a broad liberal
arts curriculum. This shows up in many chapters and in many contexts. Of
course, her call for such a curriculum matches her notion of what we
should want from our schools.

I have at least two problems with her argument.

The first is factual---I'm not sure how much the curriculum has actually
narrowed---something she charges happened under NCLB and is antithetical
to her vision of what schools should be doing.

There is some evidence at the elementary level that there has been an
emphasis on math and reading, driven no doubt in part by the testing
requirements of NCLB, but I don't think we really know the actual extent
to which the curriculum narrowed.

I also think that the real problem is not narrowing of the curriculum
but that in order to get what we want and need from our schools, the
agrarian model of the school day and the school year has to go---180
days, 6 hours a day is simply not enough time to fit in all that needs
to be done.

One of the things we do know---and it's not a fad or a magic
bullet---time on task matters. And if we persist with a short school day
and a short school year, we are simply never going to get schools that
produce the students and citizens that the nation needs.

While the evidence on the K-8 world is not all that good regarding the
narrowing of the curriculum, the evidence from the high school world is
clearly opposite of this supposed narrowing. As well documented in NAEP
high school transcript studies, students are taking more credits than
ever before and they are taking more rigorous sounding courses than ever
before.

This leads me to the second question: if schools have focused so single
mindedly on math and reading in the last 8 years, why have the results
on NAEP, PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS, been so lackluster.

Something doesn't compute.

And if high school students are taking more social studies, which they
are, and taking more world history, which they are, and more geography,
which they are, and more arts---again, have we seen how a broader
curriculum have increased the abilities and talents of our recent graduates?

Something more than a narrow curriculum is at play and that has to do
with the poor job that far too many schools are doing with the students
they have and the quality of the teacher workforce.

Saying that schools should have a broad liberal arts curriculum does
nothing to address those problems.

A second area that I want to comment on is Diane's analysis of choice,
particularly charter schools.

Diane exults neighborhood schools.

From page 113: "when I was a child in Houston in the 1940s and 1950s,
everyone I knew went to the neighborhood public school. Every child on
my block and in my neighborhood went to the same elementary school, the
same junior high school, and the same high school. We car-pooled
together, we cheered for the same teams; we went to the same after
school events."

I'll swap anecdotes about neighborhood schools to present an alternate
reality to the idealized vision of Houston public schools in the 1950s.

Both my daughters went to neighborhood schools in suburban Long Island
in the 1970s.

The schools were well funded---per pupil expenditures were always in the
top five school districts in the state, the facilities were good, there
was one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school, so
kids cheered the same teams, went to the same concerts, etc. Every
morning, I waited with other parents to send my kids off to school on
the school bus and that created neighborhood cohesion and built
friendships and social capital.

My daughters even had their own Mrs. Ratliff---who like Diane's Mrs.
Ratliff taught them English in their senior year.

By the way, I always wondered why they had to wait until the very end of
their school careers to get such an incredible teacher and why so many
of their teachers were so clearly mediocre.

More tellingly every morning when I sent them off to school, my prayer
was "please don't ruin the love for learning that these young kids
have." And mind you this is in one of the best funded school districts
in the nation!

For three years I taught in a neighborhood middle school in New York
City. My prayers during those years was rather different and even more
pessimistic than the prayer I had for my children---during those years,
my prayer was "please get me through this day in one piece."

Yes, it would be wonderful if neighborhood schools were what Diane wants
them to be, but they aren't. If they were what she wanted, then I
understand her antipathy toward charter schools, but far too many
traditional public schools are failure factories.

Let me turn to in more detail to the issue of choice and charter schools:

Diane's analysis of charter schools is at the tail end of an analysis of
the evolution of choice---hitting the usual notes, Milton Friedman,
Chubb and Moe, vouchers---and then the displacement of vouchers by
charter schools as the preferred vehicle of reform for choice advocates.

She begins by reviewing the empirical evidence concerning the learning
gains among voucher students and finds that there were few cases where
the gains of voucher students were greater than students who were
offered but did not accept vouchers.

This is taken as an indicator of failure---but Milton Friedman actually
argued that voucher schools could either produce higher outcomes at the
same price or the same outcomes for a lower price. Since vouchers, for
example, in DC carry a price tag that is about half of what traditional
students get, the second condition of Friedman's hypothesis is actually
met---that is students are doing as well for far less money.

Incidentally, the same thing is true of charter schools, which as Diane
notes produce pretty much the same results as traditional public
schools---but charters are funded at around less than 90% of the
traditional public schools, so from Friedman's second perspective they
are doing better.

Vouchers as she rightfully notes have hit a dead end and charter schools
have taken their place as the preferred mechanism for using choice as a
mechanism for reform. Diane's take on charter schools is pretty
negative---and much of her criticism has to do with creaming.

She writes:

"Regular public schools are at a huge disadvantage...because charter
schools may attract the most motivated students, may discharge laggards,
and may enforce a tough disciplinary code, but also because the charters
often get additional financial resources from their corporate sponsors"

This is an interesting argument---but where does it leads us?

On one hand it is hard to prove. As others have noted on observed
measures, like race, ethnicity, free lunch, ELL, special education,
there are few if any systematic differences between charters and
traditional public schools.

There may other types of parent/student differences, such as
motivational issues, that distinguish charter school parents from
traditional public school ones, but first I'm not sure how we can really
measure them---they are called "non-observables" for a reason.

Let's set aside the measurement issue and focus on some implications of
Diane's argument.

Diane worries that the success of charter schools will draw off the most
motivated students and parents and create havens for good students, who
attend schools for longer hours and more days, who have dedicated
teachers, and excellent curriculum, outstanding teachers and a culture
that emphasizes hard work.

And as these schools succeed the public schools will fail, because they
will collect the students with less motivation---but if we took the kids
in charter schools and distributed them back into traditional
neighborhood schools would the performance of students in those schools
really go up?

As a specific example, if we closed the Thurgood Marshall Academy in DC
and sent those 400 students back to the neighborhood high school, what
would be the outcome? We would most likely lose most of those 400
students, who are now on the track to college. Is that a good tradeoff?

Diane also notes the differences between "No-excuse schools" like KIPP
that emphasize proper behavior and the attitudes needed for success. She
notes that far too many public schools stopped* *expecting civility and
proper behavior.

But that difference helps explain why parents choose charter schools:
they are looking for small, safe schools, that often emphasize basics
and accept no excuses.

In short, don't many of the charter schools come closer in aspiration
and often in practice to the image that Diane has of what defines
functioning school?

And more importantly, if we close down all the charter schools and wait
for neighborhood public schools to improve, who pays the costs? Middle
class parents will move to the suburbs or send their kids to private
schools, leaving the burden of bad schools to fall on the usual less
affluent victims.

*Conclusion*

While I have emphasized my disagreements with the book, let me return to
the positives.

The book tells a depressingly familiar story of a field wracked by fads
and innovations that have gone off the track.

While I disagree with some of the analysis, overall her diagnosis of
where we've gone wrong is often nothing short of brilliant---although as
noted above, there are big places where I believe she got things wrong.

But more fundamentally, I can't make the leap that Diane makes---the
disconnect between the diagnosis her concluding "Lessons Learned"
chapter is too far for me to go.

I, like so many people in this room, have good friends who actually do
the incredibly hard work of teaching or running schools. They face real
problems day after day after day. They are looking for help, for a way
forward.

Can we in good conscience say "look to the little school on the prairie"
or "a shining neighborhood school on the hill" and all will be good? I
don't think so.



--
--
Gregory Elacqua
--
Sub-director
Centro de Políticas Comparadas de Educación
Universidad Diego Portales
56-2-676-8535
www.cpce.cl


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