We Must Change the Narrative About Public Education: Guest Blog by Diane Ravitch
By Betty Ray
3/4/11
Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Diane Ravitch, an historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and former United States Assistant Secretary of Education. She is now a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
Diane Ravitch
As the protests in Wisconsin dominate national news, and the White House and Congress gear up for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, currently called "No Child Left Behind"), we have a unique opportunity to put to rest some of the inaccurate narratives that have come to dominate debates around education policy, and to lay the foundations for a set of policies that can achieve our broader societal goals for children.
Myth #1: The Achievement Gap is Widening
Central to the current focus on using standardized tests to hold teachers and schools accountable is the belief that low-income children, especially minority children, are losing academic ground, and that weak schools and teachers with low expectations are to blame. In reality, African-American fourth graders have gained so much ground over the past two decades – when their schools were ostensibly failing them miserably – that they now score higher, on average, on reliable (NAEP) math tests than their white peers did as recently as 1992. And the very lowest-scoring students have seen the largest gains. White students