Contributor
Diane Ravitch, Research Professor Of Education, New York University
Related Link:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/
Biography provided by participant
Diane Ravitch is an historian of American education, and author of "Left Back: The Language Police" plus many other books. She is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.
Recent Responses
November 2, 2009 09:38 AM
Race to the Top is placing its bets (and more than $4 billion) on a risky gamble: that schools will get better if they are "turned around" or closed. Unfortunately, there is no sure strategy for turning around a low-performing school other than tossing out all the kids and replacing them with higher-performing ones. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education released a booklet offering advice on turning around low-performing schools and admitted that its recommendations had "low" evidence. There is also no guarantee that a new school opened in place of a "failing" school will be any better.…
Read moreOctober 26, 2009 01:18 PM
I would like to see public education improve, and I would like to see Catholic and other religious schools survive. So I have a simple principle to propose: Public money for public schools, private money for private schools. That way, entrepreneurs would stop picking the public's pocket for their enrichment, and philanthropists would be encouraged to support effective and worthy religious schools, especially those (like Catholic schools) that have helped poor and working-class families and children. The survival of inner-city Catholic education now hangs in the balance, and only private money can save it. And should. Diane Ravitch…
Read moreOctober 19, 2009 12:24 PM
Teachers should be evaluated mainly in two ways: One, by their supervisors who regularly visit their classes and observe their teaching. And two, by their peers, who interact with them and who know them well and know the students they have taught. The current demand to evaluate teachers by their students' test scores is of limited value. It has no application to teachers in the earliest grades, because their students are not tested. Nor does it apply to high school teachers, for the same reason. Many of those who now teach in elementary and middle schools also do not have…
Read moreOctober 13, 2009 09:29 AM
The Department of Education should eliminate AYP requirements from this program and proceed as rapidly as possible to revise NCLB to remove all its toxic mandates, including the absurd goal of all children being proficient by 2014. Setting impossible goals does not improve American education. Diane Ravitch…
Read moreSeptember 28, 2009 09:39 AM
It should be beyond dispute that common standards will impact the quality of education, but only if the standards are meaningful and can translate into reality. That is a big If. We are a mobile nation. Families move from district to district, state to state. It makes little sense for states to have widely disparate expectations in key academic subjects. But getting from where we are to where we should be will not be easy. I would give a grade of Incomplete to the recently released standards. I speak now only about the ELA standards; I don't feel qualified to…
Read moreSeptember 21, 2009 10:01 AM
There is one very easy answer to solving the dropout crisis. Reduce graduation standards and make it easy for everyone to get a diploma, regardless of their preparation for college or the workplace. Many districts are already on target to achieving this goal. For example, in New York City, 74% of our highs school graduates who enter the community colleges of the City University of New York require remediation in basic skills. This, after having passed five Regents exams administered by the State Education Department! This suggests that New York State has so dumbed down its graduation exams that even a…
Read moreSeptember 14, 2009 10:50 AM
College graduation rates reflect the fact that so many students enter college ill-prepared for the reading, mathematics, and science requirements of college-level studies. ACT released a study recently showing that only 23% of the graduates of the high school class of 2009 were ready for college studies in English, social science, mathematics, and science. About a third of the students who enter college across the nation require some remediation in basic skills as freshmen. In some states, the figure is closer to 50%. In New York City, half the students who enter the City University of New…
Read moreSeptember 8, 2009 09:35 AM
The notion of "21st century skills" is a fiction. There are no such skills. Every single skill listed as a "21st century skill" has been in demand long before the 21st century, in some cases for many centuries. Most of what is now proposed--whether critical thinking skills or working in groups--has been an integral part of the progressive education movement since the early years of the twentieth century. Anyone knowledgeable about the history of American education would recognize most of these skills as another manifestation of progressivism (see Lawrence Cremin's The Transformation of the Schools or my own…
Read moreAugust 24, 2009 09:44 AM
The release of the ACT results is yet another demonstration of the woeful inadequacy of No Child Left Behind, which has focused every school on low-level tests in reading and math. Three-quarters of the class of 2009 are not ready for college, and only 23% are likely to be able to earn a C average. Yet we know that about 60% or more of the class will indeed go to some institution of higher education, where many will need remediation in reading, writing, and mathematics. Students will be well prepared for college not by endless test prep and testing in…
Read moreJuly 20, 2009 06:31 AM
Why Are We Lying To Children? No Child Left Behind created a perfect storm of lying and fraud, all of it completely legitimate. The federal government told the states that every child must be proficient in reading and mathematics by the year 2014 or face serious sanctions. Schools that failed to meet their annual progress targets for six years in a row might have their entire staff ousted, be closed, turned over to state control, or converted to private or charter management. The mandate to states, districts, schools, and teachers was clear: Produce higher scores or die. In a slight…
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