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111 reviews for:
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Diane Ravitch
3.99 AVERAGE
111 reviews for:
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
Diane Ravitch
3.99 AVERAGE
A rare book I think could have benefited from being longer - I'd have liked to see more specific details about the impact of teacher's unions and the details of curriculum, for example, and similar topics Ravitch addresses briefly. I think she presents fairly strong arguments against school "incentivization" (in the sense of making schools for-profit private enterprises and relying on tests to structure teacher salaries and bonuses). There's a little nostalgia for the "good old days" when she was growing up, but besides one chapter on her h.s. lit teacher, it doesn't detract from her overall arguments. Recommended for anybody with an interest in education or public services in contemporary America. And (sarcastic) bonus points to the student who was so interested in the book they annotated one chapter. In pen.
While this book is a bit dated (2010), I think it was an interesting critique on the American school system that grew up in a.k.a. the one that measured our success based on reading and math test scores without any focus on other subjects or the arts. I think there was a valuable critique of the Gates Foundation, as well as the notion that schools be run as a business. I gained so much knowledge from this book, and it definitely will benefit any future advocacy I do when it comes to education reform.
I had to read this book for a class. It was definitely interesting reading about the different school systems in the United States that tried implementing new curriculum or testing or accountability just to have it all fail miserably. Most other countries have an education system that works and continually have their students pass American students in subjects like reading, math and science because they have one thing the United States lacks. And that is patience. We are not patient. We are continuously looking for the next quick fix or magic bullet that will completely overhaul the system and make us #1. BUT it will never happen until we agree to be patient, to study what works, and to implement an effective curriculum over time. Yes, time. I think many of the examples she provided would have worked if we just gave it more time and didn't make hasty decisions that made no sense in the long run. Testing means nothing. We are just teaching kids how to fill in a score sheet. How does this prepare them for the real world? It doesn't. Our education system is a complete joke.
“What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.”
"When a school is successful, it is hard to know which factor was most important or if it was a combination of factors.Even the principal and teachers may not know for sure. A reporter from the local newspaper will arrive and decide that it must be the principal or a particular program but the reporter will very likely be wrong. Success, whether defined as high test scores or graduation rates or student satisfaction, cannot be bottled and dispensed at will. This may explain why there are so few examples of low-performing schools that have been "turned around" into high -performing schools. And it may explain why schools are not very good at replicating the success of model schools, whether the models are charters or regular public schools."
"When a school is successful, it is hard to know which factor was most important or if it was a combination of factors.Even the principal and teachers may not know for sure. A reporter from the local newspaper will arrive and decide that it must be the principal or a particular program but the reporter will very likely be wrong. Success, whether defined as high test scores or graduation rates or student satisfaction, cannot be bottled and dispensed at will. This may explain why there are so few examples of low-performing schools that have been "turned around" into high -performing schools. And it may explain why schools are not very good at replicating the success of model schools, whether the models are charters or regular public schools."
This was an interesting read, both in terms of the experience of the writing and the content. Ravitch has a compelling voice that balances passion based on expertise with personable accessibility. She incorporates mounds of evidence, but the prose never becomes dry. That said, the epilogue added on to the revised and expanded edition did feel fairly redundant, and could have been cut down by quite a bit.
In terms of the content, at first I was invigorated by her arguments against the trends in testing and school choice--both areas where I agree with her. But as I continued to read, I began to take issue with some more nuanced things, particularly in the latter half of the book. For one, I noticed that Ravitch decries the focus on standardized testing (again, I heartily agree with her on this point), but also uses data from standardized testing to prove some points.
I also encountered a handful of moments of referring to or discussing children with disabilities that felt ableist--for example, seemingly creating a false dichotomy between "disabled" and "motivated" students, or equating disability with being "difficult" (in the context of test-based school & teacher evaluation), or framing disability as a problem vis a vis education. Now, I don't know if this was a failure of phrasing on Ravitch's part or a reflection of her underlying beliefs, but the issue deserves to be raised.
Finally, while Ravitch (I believe rightly) emphasizes that there are many socio-economic inequities underlying and causing poor "performance" of schools & students, and that these issues are not the schools' fault but rather the consequence of inappropriate priorities at the government level, she also doesn't question the ways in which curriculum & pedagogy, even when robust and impassioned, can perpetuate the hegemonic Western culture that then perpetuates those inequalities. In other words, while Ravitch calls for a return to a liberal arts, citizenship-oriented curriculum (as opposed to a test-driven, reading & math hyperfocused curriculum), she does not acknowledge that even the return to more varied, creative, and dialectic content & style can still perpetuate division if it's not intentionally anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-sexist, and so on. Similar to the ableism issue, I'm not sure if that's because she doesn't agree that that's true, it didn't work with the scope of the book, or perhaps some combination.
Everything considered, I still found the book to be very educational, and--again--a lovely reading experience, as far as the writing itself goes. I'd recommend it highly, with some caveats, to anyone wanting to learn more about education history and policy in the United States.
In terms of the content, at first I was invigorated by her arguments against the trends in testing and school choice--both areas where I agree with her. But as I continued to read, I began to take issue with some more nuanced things, particularly in the latter half of the book. For one, I noticed that Ravitch decries the focus on standardized testing (again, I heartily agree with her on this point), but also uses data from standardized testing to prove some points.
I also encountered a handful of moments of referring to or discussing children with disabilities that felt ableist--for example, seemingly creating a false dichotomy between "disabled" and "motivated" students, or equating disability with being "difficult" (in the context of test-based school & teacher evaluation), or framing disability as a problem vis a vis education. Now, I don't know if this was a failure of phrasing on Ravitch's part or a reflection of her underlying beliefs, but the issue deserves to be raised.
Finally, while Ravitch (I believe rightly) emphasizes that there are many socio-economic inequities underlying and causing poor "performance" of schools & students, and that these issues are not the schools' fault but rather the consequence of inappropriate priorities at the government level, she also doesn't question the ways in which curriculum & pedagogy, even when robust and impassioned, can perpetuate the hegemonic Western culture that then perpetuates those inequalities. In other words, while Ravitch calls for a return to a liberal arts, citizenship-oriented curriculum (as opposed to a test-driven, reading & math hyperfocused curriculum), she does not acknowledge that even the return to more varied, creative, and dialectic content & style can still perpetuate division if it's not intentionally anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-sexist, and so on. Similar to the ableism issue, I'm not sure if that's because she doesn't agree that that's true, it didn't work with the scope of the book, or perhaps some combination.
Everything considered, I still found the book to be very educational, and--again--a lovely reading experience, as far as the writing itself goes. I'd recommend it highly, with some caveats, to anyone wanting to learn more about education history and policy in the United States.
challenging
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Diane Ravitch elegantly shits on No Child Left Behind for two-hundred-plus pages
While the information was interesting, the writing was a little too dense for my taste.
A lucid analysis of the pitfalls of recent educational reform movements. Ravitch, a former member of the Bush administration demonstrates the follies in "choice" and market driven systems which assume that consumer behavior applies to education. Ravitch points out the core flaws in this theory: student "consumers" do not necessarily know how to make the best educational choices, and schools are evaluated on their ability to sell a "product" to many students who are actively hostile to it. Despite some irksome name-dropping and a tendency to repeat the same statements 3 times in a row, this is a valuable read. Media accounts of "miracle" charter schools and aggressive turnarouds often fail to do the necessary follow-up; Ravitch points out that many of these trumpeted interventions have resulted in negligible long term gains, especially for the poor and minority students who need help most.
Hmmm...some of the educational gimmickry she describes is in use at my daughter's school: "text to self connections" indeed!
Hmmm...some of the educational gimmickry she describes is in use at my daughter's school: "text to self connections" indeed!
I do not have enough starts to give this book. F*** Michelle Rhee; Diane Ravitch is the real deal. Extremely heartening for me as a public school teacher that someone out there is listening and paying attention. Ravitch offers a highly informative, multi-faceted look at school reform over the past 50 years or so to narrate how she came to her current views on what our focus should and shouldn't be when it comes to improving schools. In a shocking move in the current climate, she gives teachers the benefit of believing that most of them want to do good by their students and don't need to constantly be castigated in order to try their best. An insightful look at the myriad influences on children's success. It is only too bad that she didn't realize many of these things at the same time most (?) teachers did, i.e. at the inception of NCLB and choice programs. My only small criticism would be that all her "should"s at the end of the book are unfortunately pretty lofty, but to me a lot of what makes public education suffer right now would require a cultural overhaul to the general American psyche, which is a bit hard to come by. Thank you, Diane Ravitch, for making me feel less like I'm on crazy pills.