American schools in crisis
A recent piece by Diane Ravitch in the Saturday Evening Post discusses the problems with America’s constant “race to the top” in school achievement, which means more money will be spent on testing students and less money will be available for subjects like foreign languages and the arts that are not tested.
Piece by piece, our entire public education system is being redesigned in the service of increasing scores on standardized tests of basic skills. That’s not good policy, and it won’t improve education. Twelve years of rewarding children for picking the right answer on multiple-choice tests is bad education. It will penalize the creativity, innovativeness, and imaginativeness that has made this country great.
In the article, she addresses recent efforts by state governors like Scott Walker that will push public dollars toward charter schools: