How Education Expert Views Miss the Mark on Low Income Students
By Ray Salazar, NewsTaco
As my students develop their argumentative writing, I push them to ask themselves “What are the implications of my argument?” In other words, if our high-school community accepts their idea, what will the argument encourage the audience to believe, communicate, or do? As we move into another year of education reform and anti-education reform with little ground in between, I want to push education expert Diane Ravitch to reconsider the implications of her arguments this past year.
I also hope that those who support, quote, and exalt her, accept we cannot blindly trust Ravitch’s logic in 2014. Nor can we passively accept the extremes on the other side of the education debate, but that’s for another post.
So why focus on Diane Ravitch? Why not start with the Michelle Rhees, the Walton Foundations, the education entrepreneurs? The truth is: my ideas align more with Diane Ravitch that with those she criticizes.
But as one my Chicago Southwest side students said to me one day, “It’s the same, but it’s different.” Therefore, if Diane Ravitch truly wants her policy work to make a difference in the lives of American students, she needs to consider the implications of her arguments, which perpetuate practices that