Last night in class, my professor told us of Diane Ravitch. Ravitch is an education historian who spent most of her career battling progressive educators. She served in the first Bush administration’s Education Department. Now, she is in the final stages of an about-face on almost every stand she once took on American education.
There is an article about her in the New York Times and you can read the whole thing here.
What is infuriating is that she is one of the people that pushed so hard to get No Child Left Behind, endless testing, and charter schools and is one of the big reasons we have all these ridiculous things today.
I've included a few quotes from the article that made me angry and hopefully optimistic simultaneously.
"Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools* and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education."
"Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself."
"Ravitch told school superintendents at a convention in Phoenix last month that the United States’ educational policies were ill-conceived, compared with those in nations with the best-performing schools."
“'Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect,' she said. 'They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the way to ensure good education. We’re on the wrong track.'”
Let's hope this turns us into a nation that can be proud of its educational system, just like Finland**.
*If you don't know what charter schools are let me explain. Charter schools are schools that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to public schools. They are not private schools and cannot charge tuition but most charter schools hold a lottery to get into the school. While some people swear by charter schools and think they're the best thing and their kids are getting a far superior education than they would at their local public school, most charters have all the same problems public schools do, and they are bleeding money from the public schools in order to operate. The only difference I've seen is that occasionally the class sizes are smaller. And yes, that will improve your child's education because the teacher can spend more time with your student. However, if we'd just stop trying to find the "easy" answer and invest more in public schools and stop being buttheads about raising taxes, we in public schools can and will give your child the most superior education in the world. Just pull your heads out and invest in your future, deal?
That turned into a tangent. If you can't tell, I despise charter schools. I think they're horrible and it sickens me that we have to give up some of our public funds (which we get by following rules, regulations, and statutes set up by the government) and hand them over to charter schools who don't have to do any of those things. UGH!
**Finland is at the top when it comes to highest school success. When the NEA vice president (Lily Eskelsen) went to an international education conference, she spoke with their head of education. She asked "What are you doing to help your kids succeed in school?" The first thing out of Henna's mouth, "We got rid of standardized tests a long time ago because they don't tell you anything." Also, Finland has basically no students who are learning Finnish, (students learning English are called English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Language Learners (ELL) in the United States so I guess I can call them FLL?) so they don't have that hurdle to jump. All professional people are paid the same in Finland...doctors, lawyers, teachers...same salary. So people who really want to teach and would be good at it are not turned away by the fact that they could make double if they went into another career. And the distribution of wealth is pretty even. Everyone is middle class.
When we fix all these things, maybe we'll be able to match up with the education giants of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment