Diane Ravitch: On How to Save Public Education
Following is a section of an article by Diane Ravitch from the Progressive Magazine.
Saving Our Public Schools, October 2013
Pregnant women should see a doctor early in their pregnancy and have regular care and good nutrition. Poor women who do nor receive early and regular medical care are likely to have babies with developmental and cognitive problems. From the day they are born, young children need a loving caregiver, good nutrition, and medical care; theirparents should get the help they need to learn how to care for their babies.
Children need pre-kindergarten classes that teach them how to socialize with others, how to listen and learn, how to communicate well, and how to care for themselves, while engaging in the joyful pursuit of play and learning that is appropriate to their age and development and that builds their background knowledge and vocabulary.
Children in the early elementary grades need teachers who set appropriate goals for their age. They should learn to read, write, calculate, and explore nature, and they should have plenty of time to sing and dance and draw and play and giggle. Classes in these grades should be small enough—ideally fewer than twenty—so that students get the individual attention they need. Testing in the early grades should be used sparingly, not to rank students, but diagnostically, to help determine what theyknow and what they still need to learn. Test scores should remain a private matter between parents and teachers, not shared with the district or the state for any individual student. The district or state may aggregate scores for entire schools, but should not rank individual students by test scores or judge teachers or schools on the basis of these scores.
As students enter the upper elementary grades and middle school and high school, they should have a balanced curriculum that includes not only reading, writing, and mathematics, but also the sciences, literature, history, geography, civics, and foreign languages. Their school should have a rich arts program, where students may learn to sing, dance, play an instrument, join an orchestra or a band, perform in a play, sculpt, or use technology to design structures, conduct research, or create fanciful artworks.
Every student should have time for physical education every day.
Every school should have a library with librarians and media specialists.
Every school should have a nurse, a psychologist, a guidance counselor, and a social worker.
And every school should have after-school programs where students may explore their interests, whether in athletics, chess, robotics, history club, science club,