Ravitch Chapter 3

When imagining a well-rounded school, one might think of a school filled with discussion based English classes, interactive Math classes, exciting labs, and rich History classes; one may also think of an endless list of extracurricular activities and athletic teams. Sadly, many public schools across the country do not have these opportunities. The Diane Ravitch book: Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, focuses upon Ravitch’s opinion on this important issue. Since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, schools have focused on math and reading scores; because of this, schools have disregarded and cut back on other subjects that they are not being tested on such as

In chapter one, Joel Spring covers the topics of the history and political goals of public school. From the beginning of the public school education system politics seemed to have a hand inside public schools. Joel Spring mentions about the controversial goals of education. The main topic for this chapter seems to point towards the political approach to the goals of education. Now not all goals are bad but they do have an underlining that can spark a debate whether it is between the parents, students, teachers, or politicians. Goals such as subject matter, patriotism, should public schools override the objections of the parents over subject matter. A good quote from the book “American Education” is “Education goals are a product of what people believe schooling should do for the good of society.” With such a simple definition of what educational goals are ends up being much scrutinized. Everyone has an opinion sometimes they turn out to be great ideas and other times not.

This is her best supporting statement because it is the most accurate and easiest to verify, just ask any current student or teacher in a public educated school system, higher test scores equal higher ratings for the school. Furthermore, she not only offers a clear and persuasive outline of the various issues facing public educators today, she offers ideas for how to fix those issues. For example, she explains the importance of how parents need to get involved with where they are sending their children to school and need to be the ones to put their foot down with these test score curriculum school systems. Ravitch suggests, “An educated parent would not accept a school where many weeks of every school year were spent preparing for state tests. An educated parent would not tolerate a school that cut back or eliminated the arts to spend more time preparing for state tests” (Ravitch 108). However, this is the area where the reader may disagree with Ms. Ravitch, as the suggested solution, may be her weakest argument because, it seems that a more dynamic solution would not only include the parent, to change the ways the schools are, but more importantly, it would include the student. This only makes sense, as the students are the most vested in this argument and are the ones most impacted by what is going on in the classrooms, if they want change,

Diane ravitch also utilizes direct examples of laws and schools within her article in order to backup her claims about the new focus in educational systems. Within the first sentence of her article, Ravitch is already referencing a law that was passed in 2001, stating that “since the advent of no child left behind” schools have focused more on subjects that are being tested, in order for the school to be seen as having a more rigid educational system, which will draw more students and more funding. Ravitch then goes on to say explain what an ideal school would look like: a strong arts department, along with extracurricular activities, and also an in depth study of subjects like history, literature, science, and mathematics. She explains that this was once the norm for many schools, both wealthy and non, as well as both public, and private. However, in

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University. She makes a very compelling, but extremely one-sided argument that educational reforms such as “No Child Left Behind” are causing students to have lesser opportunities in schools. Her argument is directed towards school boards, parents, and lawmakers who have the ability to change school and state policies on education. She wants those people to believe that the current school system is not effective in giving students a quality education and preparing them for life. Diane Ravitch’s argument brings up a question for readers: Is it beneficial for students when schools cut funding to non-tested subjects? According to Ravitch, most of the schools in the country, except for the ones in the most affluent communities base their

The article, “Who benefits from failing urban school districts?” written by Martin Haberman, the authors influential piece expresses the concern for the current direction of public education. When the concept of who is benefiting from failing urban school districts is mentioned; one would believe that no one can possibly benefit from schools failing. The children aren’t benefiting, their parents aren’t benefiting, the community isn’t benefiting. The public institution is becoming a big business instead of an institution that helps children in their development. It is obvious that there are challenges in the schooling system. In this manuscript, I will discuss the issues with the bureaucracy in education. There will also be mentioning of how standardized testing and the lack of resources in urban schools are affecting children’s education in the urban community. Lastly, there will be a discussion about how parents and teachers have an effect on children’s education.

When President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law in 2002, the legislation had one goal-- to improve educational equity for all students in the United States by implementing standards for student achievement and school district and teacher performance. Before the No Child Left Behind Act, the program of study for most schools was developed and implemented by individual states and local communities’ school boards. Proponents of the NCLB believed that lax oversight and lack of measurable standards by state and local communities was leading to the failure of the education system and required federal government intervention to correct. At the time, the Act seemed to be what the American educational system

Diane Ravitch, an “educational historian”, answers four questions in her book, Reign of Error. Is American education in crisis? Is American education failing or declining? What is the evidence for reform being promoted by the government and adopted by many states? What should we do to improve our schools and the lives of our children? According to Ravitch, the “crisis” concerning American education is actually a myth. In this book, she addresses myth after myth providing adequate clarity and information. She looks deep into the facts and brings to light what is actually happening in education in America in the following areas: test scores, achievement gaps, graduation rates, teachers and test scores, merit pay, charter schools, virtual school, government involvement of failing schools. In the latter chapters she offers specific solutions with detailed plans and recommendations to preserve and improve American education. Ravitch’s thesis is that American public education must be protected against government privatization and that we must work together to improve our schools. I couldn’t agree more with Ravitch. Government involvement in education has negatively impacted education since the passing of NCLB. Our focus has changed from being innovative teachers to cookie cutter teachers. Government officials should not make decisions without advice from educational professionals. We must all work together to make education work.

“Shrinking state and local education budgets matched with the added pressure of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which sets rigid standards in reading and math that schools must achieve in order to receive federal funding, have created a new challenge for districts” (Van Harken).

At the foundation of the American public school system is the belief that every child deserves a quality education. To this end, the public school system in America has undergone many reforms. One of which has been charter schools. Charter schools are independent public schools of choice working under the auspices of a charter and not governed by the board of education. The charter can be written by parents, teachers, school administrators, community leaders, educational businesses, etc. It determines the school’s guiding principles, management and accountability systems. The state approves the charter and provides funding for the school. Families choose these schools for their children. (“Resistance Hinders Success,” 2004)

“Unintended Educational and Social Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 311. EBSCOhost. In this peer-reviewed academic journal article, Liz Hollingworth, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, explores the history of school reform in the United States, and the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hollingworth states that the great promise of NCLB is that schools will focus on the education of low-achieving students, reducing the gap in student academic achievement between White students and African-American, Hispanic, and Native American student populations. Hollingworth states that an unintended consequence of NCLB was that teachers and school administrators had to shift curriculum focus in an effort to raise test scores, but in some cases, they had to also abandoned thoughtful, research-based classroom practices in exchange for test preparation. NCLB also affected teachers, highly qualified teachers left high-poverty schools, with low performance rates especially those schools where teacher salaries are tied to student academic performance. Hollingworth concludes her article by stating “we need to be wary of policy innovations that amount to simply rearranging the deck chairs on the

NCLB, the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was preceded by the Improving America’s Schools Act. Under that law, high-quality teaching and learning were not prevalent in all schools, and achievement gaps persisted, leading to agreement that a greater federal role for accountability was necessary—from which NCLB was born. NCLB authorized 45 programs in 10 different areas, but public debate tended to focus on the law’s testing, accountability, and teacher-quality requirements. NCLB required that students be tested in the subjects of English language arts (ELA) and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, and for states to use the results to assess how well schools were meeting “adequate yearly progress” goals for student proficiency in these subjects. Schools that consistently did not meet these goals overall, or for subgroups of students, were targeted for interventions, and eventually for sanctions.

The rise of idiot America as this article called it is and has been a very dangerous part that is just laying underneath the surface of American society this being the case with the publics way of looking at teachers as well as politicians. These thoughts and opinions of the “cult of ignorance” have led the American people to distrust and hate the people who have the knowledge on how to best teach and govern them.Instead turning to those that can show them that their problems are the same as the average everyday joe,even when this is clearly not the case with some of these people being hugely successful in large part because of the people they claim to represent being exploited to their “saviours” benefit. Because of this numbers of literate

In the section that asked the teachers what has been the most positive/negative aspect of the policy, some of the educators argued that the policy wasn’t realistic. Their main argument surface around students not being taught the foundations phonics, vocabulary, and phonemic awareness and later entering third grade with the missing pieces to reading comprehension, and therefore affecting their performance

Southerland cite that NCLB was an improvement policy that required, “… greater accountability to improve students’ achievement scores on statewide-administered summative tests for both teachers and school systems.”(Aydeniz 234). This can be said for all of the political reforms the agenda is to improve the test scores not the education of our children Educators are not only limited financially but they are deprived to the freedom to actually educate their students. Standards are subjective requirements that tend to hinder the true abilities of students and educators; no student is the same therefore it seems almost impossible to require every student to be able to comprehend on the same levels.