The Politics of Education Reform
Dana Goldstein has a profile of Diane Ravitch up at the Washington City Paper. It’s an interesting read. However, I found myself thinking along the same lines as Matt Yglesias on this one:
My problem with Ravitch, and the general Ravitchian worldview, is that no matter how many things she writes or how many profiles I read, I can’t really figure out what it is she thinks we should do. I know who Ravitch doesn’t like (Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates) and I know who she feels is unfairly scapegoated (teachers unions) and I know what she thinks is overhyped (charter schools), but I have no idea what she would do if she were in charge of the education department of an American city.
You see a lot of strongly held opinions in modern reform critics that basically cleave to a negative view toward reform without much positive to provide balance. Critics have lots of ideas on how to teach and how to help students but very few ideas on how to change the nature of the system. So you see stuff like:
- Reformers want to bust unions so that they can privatize schools.
- Unions are the only thing standing between reformers and the corporate takeover of schools.
- The modern reform movement is only concerned with tests. This is because because they A) don’t value