Ravitch: Don’t believe in miracles
Waiting for a school miracle? Don’t hold your breath, advises education historian Diane Ravitch in a New York Times op-ed. Most turnaround success stories are public relations triumphs, she writes.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama hailed the Bruce Randolph School in Denver, which he said went from “one of the worst schools in Colorado” to a school that graduates 97 percent of seniors.
Randolph, a middle school that’s added a high school, does have a high graduation rate, she concedes, but students’ ACT scores are far below the state average, showing students are not well prepared for college. Middle schoolers rank in the fifth percentile statewide in math and the 1st percentile in science.
After Miami Central was “reconstituted” — the principal and half the staff members were fired — President Obama said “performance has skyrocketed by more than 60 percent in math” and that graduation rates rose to
