A CASE FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION
Education historian Diane Ravitch, a lightning rod in the national debate on school reform, presented her case for public education Tuesday night in a well-received lecture at the Zoellner Arts Center.
Hosted by Lehigh’s College of Education, Ravitch engaged in an imaginary, yet spirited, debate with a school reformer who’d likely argue that the nation’s public schools are failing, test scores are declining and drastic measures are needed to save the nation from certain ruin.
As she fiercely countered those contentions, Ravitch argued that public schools must be saved for a future generation of children. She called the protection of public education from attempts at privatization as “the civil rights issue of our time.”
“The public schools are the people’s schools,” said Ravitch, author of Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. “Their doors are open to all… Public education must be, as we once hoped, a bastion of equal opportunity. Public education is a public trust. It is not a business opportunity.”
Ravitch, recently named by Education Week as the education scholar with the greatest public influence, spoke at Lehigh as part of COE’s Distinguished Lecture Series. She also sat down for a question-and-answer segment with Dean Gary Sasso, who described the school reform debate as one of the most contentious and polarizing in the world of education. In an effort to find common ground, Sasso said the College of Education also planned to host a speaker who presents an opposing view in the fall.
Ravitch, an educational policy analyst, was an assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993. She is a research professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
In an hour-long presentation, Ravitch argued that public schools are not failing and cited several factors: National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores and graduation rates are at their highest in U. S. history and dropout rates are at their lowest.
“Public schools are not mediocre,” she said. “They reflect their communities. Some are outstanding. Some are good but not great. Some are the heart of their community. Some struggle because they serve impoverished communities. We should help them, not close them.”
Anticipating how the debate with a school reformer might unfold, Ravitch countered a number of common arguments:
- That teacher performance should be evaluated by students’ test scores, in an effort to weed out bad teachers. Ravitch said test scores cannot adequately measure a teacher’s effectiveness. She said those who teach in affluent districts or who teach native English speakers will get higher ratings than those who teach in poor districts, who teach mostly English-as-a-Second-Language learners or who teach the severely disabled. She said peer assistance and review would be a better way to evaluate teachers.
- That collective bargaining should be banned so that unions can’t protect bad teachers. Ravitch argued that unions helped build the middle class in America and that teachers would be voiceless without unions to protect from them from misguided governors and legislators.
- That teacher tenure protects bad teachers. Ravitch argued that tenure protects teachers them from being fired for arbitrary reasons. “If bad teachers are getting tenure, then we have an administrator problem, not a teacher problem,” she said to applause.
- That test scores would go up if teachers had the incentive of merit pay. Ravitch argued that merit pay has never made a difference and pointed to a three-year Vanderbilt University study in Nashville. She said professionals are motivated by idealism, autonomy and sense of purpose, not money.
- That parents have a right to choose the schools for their children. Ravitch said school vouchers, which would help pay for students to attend private schools, don’t lead to higher test scores for children. ”Why privatize our public schools and destroy an institution that has been central to our democracy?” she asked.
- That Common Core will close the achievement gap. Ravitch said Common Core standards were set too high and that most students will fail.
For those who worry that the United States is falling behind other countries, such as China, in how well their students score on test, Ravitch argued that test scores are not an indicator of a nation’s economic future or success.
“America’s trump card has always been freedom, creativity, originality, innovation, ingenuity…,” she said. In addition to students getting a good education, she said she hopes America’s children are learning to be kind, thoughtful and hard-working and that they will come to possess a zeal for making society better. “That matters more than test scores,” she said to applause.
Ravitch acknowledged all is not well with public education. But rather than privatizing schools or using test scores to evaluate teachers, she said, the country needs to attack the root causes of low academic performance, namely segregation and poverty.
“We need reform intended to improve schools, not close them,” she said. “We need to believe we can solve our problems, not hand them off to entrepreneurs and corporations and well-meaning amateurs. We need to believe that our public institutions can be improved, not privatized, or we will lose our democracy. We must not abandon our ideals.”
Story by Mary Ellen Alu
Photos by Christa Neu
Posted on:
Thursday, February 12, 2015