Okay, this is a field report on "The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining
Education" by Diane Ravitch that I have just finished. 

I always stayed away from education experts of all stripes and the
books on the subject. The field of education seemed so empirical that
that books or research on it appeared as useful as self-help books or
cooking manuals. However, the perpetual school reform and its
discussion in the media as well as this country's apparent inability
to "fix" schools piqued my interest. Ravitch published her book about
half a year ago, held a few promotional interviews on NPR, NYT and the
like, seemed to make sense so I took the bait.

The book was no easy read even for someone who is used to plodding
through long non-fiction books. However, it is a worthy read. Ravitch
works backwards.  The book is a thorough review of US educational
reform initiatives of the last thirty years and their failures. In the
end Ravitch states her own position. 

According to Ravitch, improving public education (and by public she
means every student's education) is a long, and arduous process with
no shortcuts. The ingredients of improvement are many but none of them
are surprising or radical: small classes, broad curriculum, well-educated
teachers, well-maintained facilities, committed parents.

Before that for most of the book goes a litany of what does not work
and why.

- focusing on test scores as a way to improve education. It leads to
  teaching to the test, hollowing out the curriculum, just plain
  manipulation and fudging of data like making the students who are
  not doing well stay home on the day of the test. Ravitch
  meticulously shows how claimed notable test-score successes or
  failures ended up being related to changing student poverty level
  racial composition or other demographic factors.


         ...when [test] scores are produced by threats of punishment
   	 and promises of money, and when students cannot perform
   	 equally well on comparable tests for which they have not been
   	 trained, then the scores lose their meaning. Scores matter,
   	 but they are an indicator, not the definition of a good
   	 education.

  A variant of that strategy - focusing on teachers who provide the
  most test score improvements is just as much a folly.

  Often, this mechanistic approach to learning, for example to
  reading, is self-defeating. Students are learning words when they
  are exposed to different subjects and experiences not when they
  are cramming for the tests.

         Ironically, test prep is not always the best preparation for
         taking tests. Children expand their vocabulary and improve
         their reading skills when they learn history, science, and
         literature, just as they sharpen their mathematics skills
         while learning science and geography.

- "incentivizing" teachers to improve test scores, drowning them with
  paperwork, otherwise harassing them and singling them out as the
  major culprits in what is a systemic problem does not work. 

  Neither is any other business-like schemes. To Ravitch public
  education is a public good where shopping for the best deal
  just does not work:

       The market is not the best way to deliver public services.
       Just as every neighborhood should have a reliable fire station,
       every neighborhood should have a good public
       school. Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as
       privatizing the fire department or the police department. It is
       possible, but it is not wise.

  What a socialist. Ravitch's attitude towards teachers, especially
  experienced teachers is that of respect. Teachering cannot be taught
  and it cannot be imposed from above. She advocates for teacher's
  tenure and experienced teacher retention. She also recounts a number
  of cases where overzealous administrators tried to run schools or
  districts like a business venture, harassed and fired teachers in
  pursuit of a novel fad or score improvements and the deplorable
  results of such attempts.

  She sees a school principal as a head-teacher, the most experienced
  among the educators charged with helping the other teachers improve.

  Oh, and Ravitch talks about Teach for America (recent college
  graduates going to teach in inner-city schools for a year or two) and
  how the project results are mixed at best because the newly minted
  teachers lack experience.

- leaving curriculum development to book publishers does not work. The
  publishers are for-profit enterprises. The are interested in selling
  more books and avoiding controversy. The books end up being
  "... 1,000 or more pages stuffed with facts and lacking in narrative
  or intellectual excitement."

- messing with school size does not work. Bigger schools, high
  schools, would offer more AP classes, better accommodate special
  needs students, smaller schools provide more personal interactions
  between teachers and students, troublesome students are not lost,
  their problems are addressed quicker. The "sweet spot" is about
  800-1000 students. Breaking schools apart, merging them, having them
  compete for students ends up hurting the students. 

  Interestingly, Ravitch sees a neighborhood school as a kind of
  community pillar and not just an education factory. It is a place
  of attachment, memories and socialization for the adult members of the
  community.

- charter schools do not work. What started out as a project to try
  out new education ideas to show what can be done with inner-city
  students whom public schools could not educate properly turned out
  into a competing system: syphoning off the resources, more committed
  students and parents while bouncing worse students back into public
  schools. Ravitch also blames charter schools for ruining catholic
  schools that used to provide high quality education.
 
  Occasionally, charter schools do outperform public schools. A
  prominent example is Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). However,
  the methods are boringly traditional: discipline, longer instruction,
  committed parents, oh, and cherry-picking from public schools.

- relying on private money does not work. The private foundations are
  not accountable to the public. Their effort ends up being misguided
  and useless at best. She describes how Walton foundation tried to
  introduce business practices and right-wing politics into public
  schools and ended up supporting charter schools; how Gates
  foundation fruitlessly messed with school size; how Broad Foundation
  tries to economically "incentivize" students and teachers.

Ravitch takes apart Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

	   NCLB was a punitive law based on erroneous assumptions
   	   about how to improve schools. It assumed that reporting
   	   tests scores to the public would be an effective lever for
   	   school reform. It assumed that shaming schools that were
   	   unable to lift test scores every year --- and the people
   	   who work in them --- would lead to higher scores. It
   	   assumed that low scores are caused by lazy teachers and
   	   lazy principals, who need to be threatened with loss of
   	   their jobs. Perhaps most naively, it assumed that higher
   	   tests scores on standardized test of basic skills are
   	   synonymous with good education. Its assumptions were
   	   wrong. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and
   	   instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a
   	   strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing
   	   schools.

She is not kind to Obama either. Obama supports private initiatives of
Gates and Broad Foundations variety. He appointed Arnes Duncan to be
the Secretary of Education who pursues "incentivizing" and
economics-based policy dubbed NCLB2

Ravitch's reverence for public education as one of the foundations for
the democratic society is interesting: 

    	   Public education is a vital institution in our democratic
   	   society, and its governance must be democratic, open to
   	   public discussion and public participation.

Ravitch's position is not without flaws. She argues for country-wide
unified curriculum yet wants it to be democratically achieved. In a
country so politically polarized and with libertarian anti-authority
streak, this could never happen for such sensitive subjects as History
or English. She wants religion out of science. And that is in the
deeply religious country where 86% believe in god. Good luck with
that. God created evolution just to mess with the educators.

In summary, Ravitch's is a respectful, thoughtful, knowledgeable,
comprehensive book which is refreshingly traditional if occasionally
less than easy to read.

So, who's up next to read Ravitch?