Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Schools Matter: Diane Ravitch and What's Underneath the Policy Makeover

Schools Matter: Diane Ravitch and What's Underneath the Policy Makeover

Diane Ravitch and What's Underneath the Policy Makeover

Diane Ravitch is looking great and sounding great, on some education issues, at least. I have not read her book yet, which I have ordered, but if the excerpt offered by NPR below is any indication, there is clear evidence that a beautiful progressive facade has been effected, even while there are plenty of old wrinkles still visible through an, otherwise, marvelous philosophical facelift. Take the next to the last paragraph from the excerpt below, for instance:
At the conference, I was on a panel charged with summing up the lessons of the day. I proposed that the states and the federal government were trying to assume tasks for which they were ill suited. I suggested that they should flip their roles, so that the federal government was gathering and disseminating reliable information on progress, and the states were designing and implementing improvements. Under NCLB, the federal government was dictating ineffectual remedies, which had no track record of success. Neither Congress nor the U.S. Department of Education knows how to fix low-performing schools. Meanwhile, the law required the states to set their own standards and grade their own progress; this led to vastly inflated claims of progress and confusion about standards, with fifty standards for fifty states. Every state was able to define proficiency as it saw fit, which allowed states to claim gains even when there were none. The proper role of the federal government is to supply valid information and leave the remedies and sanctions to those who are closest to the unique problems of individual schools.
Now this chunk of text comes after an entirely suitable screed on the evils of school privatization, corporate bottom feeders, and the "measure and punish" ethos of NCLB. The epiphany that Diane recounts from 2006, nonetheless, continues to provide her with the rationale that undergirds her proselytizing for the Common Core, i. e., national curriculum standards. Funders of the Common Core adamantly support the privatization and corporatization that Dr. Ravitch would seem to oppose in her new book (please follow the links to their sources, which provide invaluable information for where ed philosophy meets ed funding):

In the paragraph above, we see Diane pivot from claiming that the Federal government should just be "gathering and disseminating reliable information" to clearly suggesting that such federally-supplied "reliable information" should include a single set of curriculum standards that are not subject to the "confusion" that might result from the development of standards at the state or local levels.

What Dr. Ravitch does not seem to recognize is that if the 
at