Where the Action Is in School Reform
The criticism most frequently leveled at Diane Ravitch's blockbuster book on education reform, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, is that Ravitch doesn't end the book with policy implications, her personal prescriptions for improving schools in America. In addition to identifying root causes of the disease, this thinking goes, Ravitch is honor-bound to cure it.
Yeah, yeah, the critics say--Ravitch does talk about strong, comprehensive curriculum and good teaching, but where are the innovative policy levers? Where are ideas like the $125,000 teacher salary initiative or the scheme to publish test-based teacher evaluations in the newspaper to shame, then fire, the laggards? Where is Ravitch's Superman solution?
In general, "reformers" aren't very interested in curriculum and instruction (unless they can package and sell it). What happens in the classroom is too low-level and "inefficient" to capture the interest of those whose goal is economic domination of world markets--plus raising international achievement scores. Whole-school reform models that guarantee a quick uptick in scores, maybe, but the small, grubby details of classroom interaction
