Diane Ravitch Website
My visit to Philadelphia
Yesterday I went to Philadelphia to speak to the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Before I left New York City, the local spokesperson for Parents Across American, Helen Gym, asked if I would meet with some journalists to talk about the “reform” plan just released the day before. She sent me a link to the plan, and as I read it, it sounded just like the plans recently proposed or adopted in such cities as Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Cleveland: Close public schools, open privately managed charter schools, cut the budget. That’s the basic formula, and it is always accompanied by impressive promises of glory to come: higher test scores, higher graduation rates.
In the Philadelphia “blueprint,” as elsewhere, there is always talk about evidence and research, but truth to tell, I couldn’t find any in this plan. The Philadelphia reformers say they want to downsize the central headquarters and establish “Achievement Networks” to manage portfolios of schools. This is supposed to be based on the New York City model. I called around to veterans in the system and asked them to tell me about these networks that are a model for others. Their first question: Are they talking about the second reorganization of the New York
Reflecting on The NCTM Meeting
In the Philadelphia “blueprint,” as elsewhere, there is always talk about evidence and research, but truth to tell, I couldn’t find any in this plan. The Philadelphia reformers say they want to downsize the central headquarters and establish “Achievement Networks” to manage portfolios of schools. This is supposed to be based on the New York City model. I called around to veterans in the system and asked them to tell me about these networks that are a model for others. Their first question: Are they talking about the second reorganization of the New York
Reflecting on The NCTM Meeting
I was the opening speaker at NCTM last night and I had a wonderful event. First of all, I sat next to a smart middle-school teacher from Wellesley, Massachusetts, and we talked about the problems of the Common Core standards and about Wellesley in the spring. She told me that she wasn’t sure that even her students–who live in an affluent suburb of Boston–will be able to handle the expectations of the CC standards. I asked her, if they can’t, who will? The problem, as I later told the audience, is that these standards have never been field tested. But more about that on another post.
When I got up to speak, I suddenly realized that I was utterly awestruck: Everyone in the room was a math teacher! That meant that everyone in the room was really smart, much smarter than I! I did well in math in high school, but I always considered myself an English & history person. So, of course, I am awestruck in the presence of 2,000 or more math teachers.
I talked about what historians and mathematicians have in common: respect for evidence. And I went through the
When I got up to speak, I suddenly realized that I was utterly awestruck: Everyone in the room was a math teacher! That meant that everyone in the room was really smart, much smarter than I! I did well in math in high school, but I always considered myself an English & history person. So, of course, I am awestruck in the presence of 2,000 or more math teachers.
I talked about what historians and mathematicians have in common: respect for evidence. And I went through the