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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 07:29 AM Sep 2013

America's Education Whistleblower: Diane Ravitch and the Reign of Error

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/25



In 2007 when Diane Ravitch descended from her 20,000-foot view of the education reform landscape to examine what was going on at ground level, she did not like what she saw: children suffering nose-bleeds and vomiting from test anxiety, school personnel and parents humiliated by test results designed to satisfy the failure quotas imposed by cynical and self-serving corporate privateers and political ideologues; educators being blamed for the effects of poverty that no amount of good teaching could fix alone; untrained beginners replacing education professionals in schools that needed the most caring and experienced teachers; schools that had functioned as community centers of identity and activity being closed; a pathological fixation of quantifiable data that had displaced attention to the human needs of growing children; an educational governance structure increasingly controlled by autocratic and arrogant billionaires; and an incredibly shrinking and brittle collection of desiccated facts having replaced the curriculum for the lower caste of segregated untouchable children incarcerated in more and more urban corporate reform schools.

Seeing all this, Ravitch did what was unthinkable among the delusional and arrogant group of efficiency-worshipping zealots with whom she had spent much time during the prior twenty years: she admitted the entire antiquated system of back to basics on steroids 1) was not improving teaching and learning, 2) was not closing the achievement gaps, 3) was not making public schools stronger, and 4) was not being held accountable for the previous decades of more of the same failed policies built upon the same racist and classist standardized testing foundation, made harder still with each subsequent repackaged iteration.

What makes Diane Ravitch even more unique is that she did not sit behind a screen to offer her insider testimony on these issues to the court of public opinion and then go into an educational witness protection program but, rather, she made the continuing public condemnation of the Billionaire Boys Club her raison d’être, even as the plutocrats’ high-testosterone testocrats have challenged her unassailable facts and as the academic mercenaries from the corporate think tanks have resorted to pretzel logic in attempts to refute her wisdom. Since 2010 when she published The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Ravitch has been on a non-stop one-woman road show, crisscrossing the country, speaking to the growing and rumbling army of educators of the nation’s PS Hope.
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duffyduff

(3,251 posts)
10. Her book is on my wish list.
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:27 AM
Sep 2013

Never mind some of the detractors--this woman is the real deal, and that is why she is being vilified by "reformers."

She was once on the "other side" of ed reform, which somebody here is trying to use to "discredit" her, unsuccessfully, in my view. When you know where all of the bodies are buried, you are far better an advocate.

Some other notable people who have "come to Jesus" are David Brock and Michael Lind. I hold both in high regard in large part because they were part of the "other side."

If you are going to argue she is an "opportunist" and then blather about private schools, you immediately discredit and debunk yourself because private schools are not better than public schools. This includes charter schools, which ARE private schools that siphon taxpayer money so they don't have to charge tuition.

ancianita

(35,812 posts)
2. Please don't buy her book. She's stating what's been obvious to teachers for over fifteen years.
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 09:29 AM
Sep 2013

Last edited Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:39 AM - Edit history (1)

You're not going to like this, but I feel compelled to really go off here. And seriously, it's not about you, even one bit.

It's about the role of academia in "fixing" public schools. Diane Ravitch 'did not sit behind a screen to offer her insider testimony on these issues to the court of public opinion" because she has to go out and promote a book. A big fat confessional about how she helped make these schools a failure throughout her career.

For the forty years that I've read everything she's written or heard her name since my student days at Florida State and Northwestern, I'll tell you this: This woman has been a professional opportunist who publishes which side she's on only when it's safe and teachers have lost their ground game. She's never done legal battle or said or done anything risky for teachers, she's never fought against state or district boards to stop their adopting any "reform" or defunding moves on the treadmill of "innovation" that masquerades as reform and just earns middleman 'paychecking.'

She collates raw data after all the arguments have been aired. She is ten years behind the issues here and does not deserve "expert" stature in the court of public opinion about the public's schools. She in no way deserves publication as some "expert," but gets published due to the sheer momentum of her academic life. She should just go away. She's a waste of time. Only many younguns at salon or other sites on the internets don't know that.

If you're in academia, I can see that you'd probably have some need to defend her. I'm not. I'm in the very different world of public education, the world of field professionals. I don't have an axe to grind, except that universities -- the world of which Ravitch is a part -- are in no way invested any longer in developing excellence in public schools. They have become as 'marketized' in their goals as their corporate endowers, to whom Ravitch has been tied her entire career.

She is not a friend. Friends like her simply confuse who the enemies of public education really are. She knows. She drains professional expertise and stature away from teachers, whom academics should politically aid and stand behind when the public's teaching professionals say they need it, not years and years after they've ignored them and their state fights lost. All the while these kinds of academics busy themselves with higher education games -- such as conducting what I call treadmills of innovation in public schools, but never in private schools. Why not private schools? Because they already know what works. And they know that politicians wouldn't spend that kind of money even if the public wanted them to.

As a 35-year field professional, I can tell you that academics like Diane Ravitch do not, do NOT care who wins the public education war, as long as they get paid. Sure, they continually sell their lip service as 'expertise,' but they, in fact, do nothing that affects public school classroom improvements. They don't change state or local board policies. This war is about tax money and political spending. She's got hers.

Academia has provided no lasting commitment to public education. It has abandoned democratic education values for corporate values. Ravitch does no harm, but education is sooo past what she's offering, which will in no way turn the tide to increase funding. She's never changed the general public's opinion about school over the years, yet she's added nothing but weight and over-complexity to the very real problems of funding. I believed it of her twenty years ago, and I still belive it: Ravitch is the last in a long line of sellouts to the public in the name of "expert" opinion. Forget her.



annabanana

(52,791 posts)
3. Rather than focus on the messenger, shouldn't the message
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 09:56 AM
Sep 2013

engender more public discussion?

Your lengthy post does not engage the argument.

ancianita

(35,812 posts)
4. I accept that point. But Ravitch should neither start nor conduct this discussion. That's
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:05 AM
Sep 2013

how I will engage the discussion from its start.

Ravitch is no "messenger." She's an active aider and abettor of the "myth of the hierarchy of expertise," and as such her words cloud public understanding and neither aid nor abet increased funding or constructive actions that promote the quality of education found in private schools.

Thanks for your response.

 

duffyduff

(3,251 posts)
6. And what have YOU done? Your statement about private school "quality" is laughable.
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:08 AM
Sep 2013

You have discredited yourself right there with your statement.

Private schools are NOT better than public schools. They CANNOT be because they pick and choose whoever they want to attend.

ancianita

(35,812 posts)
11. Nice talk. And what have YOU done? Re private schools, I'm talking outcomes and learning models--
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:27 AM
Sep 2013

neither of which public schools can get because public boards won't fund them. Laugh all you want. It's easier than asking for an explanation.

The research of the last 60 years, when it accounts for all other factors of classroom achievement, boils the argument of achievement down to socioeconomic status. The research has been replicated and stands as the most solid foundation -- besides class size studies and time-on-task studies -- of any new public school restructring. Being born poor isn't what keeps poor kids from achieving like rich kids, but the way that the private and public systems are structured simply maintains that socioeconomic/achievement correlation.

Talk about Ravitch's ideas all you want. I don't care. Just be wary of her motives and expertise. If she admits that the "experiment" of charters is at best a mixed bag if not a failure in raising achievement, then I would go from there. But I know her work through the last forty years, and I can't stand how she wants to frame the public's thinking about how to solve a problem that she was never serious about solving all along.

 

duffyduff

(3,251 posts)
5. Ravitch is the real deal, and nobody is more powerful to discuss ed than somebody who has been
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:07 AM
Sep 2013

on the "other side."

Your longwinded post says nothing, just hot air.

Xyzse

(8,217 posts)
8. You may be right that she aided and abetted the slide of the Public School System.
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:19 AM
Sep 2013

However, talking about it now and showing her error to me is a good thing. It is good to hear about someone who advocated for the wrong policies state what is wrong and provide context.

I mean, Obama is continuing the privatization of the school system, and it is one of the many areas I just can't get along with, however it is still important to hear what he is saying, even if it is only to further the debate.

Perhaps, if someone from the field does write a book and garner enough of a name for themselves, it would be better, but the chances of that at the moment is slim. So I suggest using the tools that are out there. This, being one of them.

I may suggest, if you don't have time, to write Matt Damon's mother in regards to writing or collaborating on a book, regarding the same subject. She was a teacher as well, and it has shaped Mr. Damon's view on the school system.

Either way, for movements to flourish there needs to be a rallying point. I think this book is needed.

ancianita

(35,812 posts)
13. Point taken. Rally away. As a former field professional frustrated by years of academic exploiters
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:33 AM
Sep 2013

-- and I've counted her among those -- I just had to get that out of my system.

I hope that links on strategies for funding, research about outcomes, class size and socioeconomics come up.

Xyzse

(8,217 posts)
14. I can understand.
Wed Sep 25, 2013, 10:38 AM
Sep 2013

It really does suck, but I sure don't have enough of a voice to do something bigger.
So, if I find someone who is marginally more connected than I am who espouses the same view... I'd use that.

Still, I am serious about Matt Damon's mother.
Here:
http://www.nancycarlssonpaige.org/aboutnancy.html

Apparently she does have a few books that are well received, though nothing in regards to denouncing the current system and perils of privatization.

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