Last word on 'Class Warfare'
Diane Ravitch delivers what should be the last word on Steven Brill's new book, "Class Warfare." In a review for The New York Review of Books, Ravitch cuts to the core of Brill's wrongheaded assumptions about U.S. schools – primarily, that all problems are the fault of teachers and unions:
"Brill is completely ignorant of a vast body of research literature about teaching," she writes. "Economists agree that teachers are the most important influence on student test scores inside the school, but the influence of schools and teachers is dwarfed by nonschool factors, most especially by family income. The reformers like to say that poverty doesn't make a difference, but they are wrong. Poverty matters. The achievement gap between children of affluence and children of poverty starts long before the first day of school. It reflects the nutrition and medical care available to pregnant women and their children, as well as the educational level of the children's parents, the vocabulary they hear, and the experiences to which they are exposed."
Ravitch's broad knowledge of the history of American schools puts Brill's book in its proper context, deflating the myth of a current "crisis" by
