Americas Quarterly

FRESH LOOK Abroad consensus on education policy has emerged over the past decade, with liberals and conservatives alike championing accountability and choice in America’s public schools. Diane Ravitch, an education scholar who pushed for market-based reforms during her tenure in the U.S. federal government (George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations), recently defected from this movement.

One of the impressions left with this
reader is, in turning on many of the
reforms she helped launch, Ravitch
has created a false dichotomy. Market-
friendly policy and solid curricula are
not mutually exclusive. In fact, sim-
ply jettisoning the market ideas that
Ravitch once championed may not
only be facile, it could also be dan-
gerous, as scholars enthusiastically
embrace each new fad, refusing to rec-
ognize the merits or lessons of the last.

Her latest book explains why.

Shortcomings and collateral dam-
age associated with NCLB-inspired
reforms led the author to abandon
the movement she helped build. Her
180-degree turn is understandable, but
perhaps premature. The book’s argu-
ments against no-excuses education
policy take aim at poor implementa-
tion, but the execution of ideas might
be improved without ditching the
principles behind them. Ms. Ravitch
demonstrates that firebrand reform-
ers are not always effective: test scores
can be a dangerous shortcut for eval-
uation; overemphasizing basic skills
diminishes time for history, literature
and foreign languages; and education
policy must go deeper than simple re-
wards and sanctions. But solutions to
With remarkable clarity and author-
ity, Ravitch, now a research professor
of education at New York Univer-
sity and a senior fellow at the Brook-
ings Institution, offers a reality check
to those with blind faith in charter
schools and high-stakes standardized
testing. Even her critics will be forced
to acknowledge the evenhanded way
she approaches the facts. Few will
finish The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing
and Choice Are Undermining Educa-
tion convinced that market principles
represent the elixir that can transform
troubled U.S. school districts. But does
the author succeed in showing that
these reforms should be largely aban-
doned? Perhaps not.

“Enron-style” accounting with ques-
tionable data and results. Tying fund-
ing to scores has encouraged states to
dumb down their exams, creating il-
lusory progress to ensure that federal
dollars keep coming in. Punitive test-
ing has led educators to focus on basic
skills and test-taking strategies at the
expense of liberal arts and the sciences.

State scores have steadily climbed since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001. But this progress proves to be a mirage after a look at the largely flat performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federal assessment program. Texas, for example, claimed that 85. 1 percent of its students were proficient readers in 2007, but NAEP results put the number at only 28. 6 percent.

In her early scholarly work, Ravitch
consistently held that there were “no
shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver
bullets” in education. Influenced by
her colleagues, however, she aban-
doned this caution while serving as
assistant secretary of education dur-
ing the George H. W. Bush administra-
tion. She ultimately bought into the
hype that the market’s magic could
work wonders for schools. The idea
seemed theoretically sound: “Free of
direct government control, the schools
would be innovative, hire only the best
teachers, get rid of incompetent teach-
ers, set their own pay scales, compete
for students (customers), and be judged
solely by their results (test scores and
graduation rates).”
The book offers ground-level ac-
counts of how recent reforms have
played out in New York City and San
Diego. Alan Bersin, San Diego schools
superintendent, worked to “jolt the sys-
tem” on the basis of three axioms: “ 1)
Do it fast, 2) Do it deep, 3) Take no pris-
oners.” The massive firing and reshuf-
fling of personnel that ensued recall
the corporate raids of the 1980s. Teach-
ers became frightened as pressure to
perform mounted. Mega-rich founda-
tions awarded the districts millions
of dollars to help finance the reforms.
Yet no clear gains in student achieve-
ment resulted.

Any honest jury would agree that the results have been disappointing. The book dedicates substantial attention to the “data wars” in the public vs. charter school rivalry, concluding that they have produced no clear victor. Test scores are sometimes viewed as the equivalent of the corporate bottom line. But the book shows how high-stakes testing has resulted in what Ravitch has previously described as