Cross-posted from Gotham Schools
Last week’s post from Denver educator Marc Waxman about why he now questions the dominant reform narrative has attracted more interest than any other single piece posted on this blog in its three years of existence.
Diane Ravitch, whose recent book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” explored similar themes and became a New York Times bestseller, has written an open letter to Waxman. Here it is:
Dear Marc,
I was surprised and delighted to read your essay explaining your loss of faith in the now-dominant narrative about school reform. These days, everyone seems to be either in one camp or the other; most everyone seems to have rock-solid beliefs; and all too few people seem willing to re-examine their beliefs.
I was trying to do that in my book, and as you know, it is painful. It is also risky. In your case, you risk alienating friends, allies, even financial supporters. I had more freedom than you; my work life is behind me, I don’t need any financial supporters, and my children are on their own. But it is scary to take risks, and not many people are willing to do it.
I was heartened to read your admission, in light of your experience, that charter schools are not a panacea. That is a bold admission to make at a time when three new movies are trying to persuade the American public that charter schools are indeed a panacea. The charter movement unfortunately has built a narrative around the ideology that charter schools are not only a panacea but that they can beat regular public schools by the only metric that matters: test scores.
And it is here that your blog was most wondrous: You have worked with children for many years, and you have come to realize that test scores are not the only goal of education. I certainly agree with you that test scores should not be confused with “achievement.” Achievement, broadly defined, is a worthy goal. We want children to achieve many things, including the ability to read, write and calculate. Learning to play a musical instrument is an achievement; writing a research paper is an achievement. For some children with unusually difficult lives, just being in school everyday is an achievement. Like you, I have learned not to accept test scores as synonymous with achievement, nor to assume that the only children who matter are those who “win” whatever competitions we create for them. Teachers, especially those who deal with a wide variety of children every day, understand this.
You find yourself asking hard and important questions about why we educate and what we hope for when we educate. You understand that the powerful demand fueled by NCLB and the Race to the Top to get higher test scores year after year is not by itself a worthy goal, nor one that well serves the children for whom you are responsible, nor is it a reasonable way to judge teacher quality. Sure, test scores matter and we should use them. But you understand that test scores these days are misused, and the policymakers’ obsession with them is warping schools and the lives of children. I suggest that the obsession with test scores is also warping the charter movement, encouraging charters to exclude students who might pull down their scores, and limiting the movement’s ability to develop good schools.
Discussions about why we educate and how we define good education can easily become mere rhetoric and empty verbiage. I would be content to rely on my favorite quote from John Dewey: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.” So, let us ask, for example, whether the education our society provides for its children is good enough for the children of President Obama and Bill Gates and other leaders of society. I don’t think they would stand for schools that have cut back on the arts and science to make more time for test prep. Not for a minute. I doubt that their children go to schools where teachers are judged by their students’ test scores and thus incentivized to ignore whatever is not on the state tests.
Marc, I admire your courage and your independence. Keep raising questions. Keep questioning yourself. I don’t know what your funders will think about it. But you have crossed that bridge already. Now you are in new territory. Thinking is dangerous. But how could you teach your students to think and to free their minds of cant unless you were willing to do it yourself?
Diane Ravitch
Popularity: 4% [?]
“ We want children to achieve many things, including the ability to read, write and calculate. Learning to play a musical instrument is an achievement; writing a research paper is an achievement. For some children with unusually difficult lives, just being in school everyday is an achievement. Like you, I have learned not to accept test scores as synonymous with achievement, nor to assume that the only children who matter are those who “win” whatever competitions we create for them. ”
If Ravitch has really learned these lessons, then it is completely nonsensical for her to oppose charter schools on the sole ground that they don’t increase test scores enough. Charter schools are one of the main places where one can find teachers and students doing exactly what Ravitch purports to favor: studying Core Knowledge-type curricula, or focusing on the arts, etc
Mr. Buck, your comment seems to suggest a certainty that every charter school program educates the whole child. Yet, in Denver, we know this is not the truth. We know the programs in our Denver charters are quite varied, actually.
Perhaps knowledge of Kunsmiller Arts Academy, or any given IB program in Denver, has escaped you.
No, I didn’t say anything about “every” charter school — we’re dealing with probabilities, not certainties. For example, public charter schools are 20 times more likely than other public schools to adopt the Core Knowledge curriculum. Thus, Ravitch should be applauding the expansion of the one area of the public sector that is so much more likely to adopt the rich curriculum she supposedly favors.
Test scores should not be the sole criteria for success, not even for academic success.
I was on the Colorado State Board of Education that created the CSAP. I was also a technical adviser to the national goals panel that took state testing national.
I and most others never envisioned how educators would destroy the intent of state or national testing by teaching to the test, test prep.
My support for state or national assessment came after visiting schools in over a dozen countries, all of whom outperform the USA on multiple scales. This includes that fact that most of their high school graduates out perform us and they are 16 years old when they finish high school, not 18 like here.
However one difference is that their tests include writing essays, giving speeches and oral defenses, etc. They do not rely upon multiple choice. This also means that they spend more on assessment, or in many countries have non teachers do the evaluations, often without pay. Retired professional folks, etc.
The biggest difference and the main reason our CSAP testing has been a failure is that they never, ever, teach to a test. They cannot since the teachers, prinicpals, school board members, etc. never see the tests, not even last years.
Instead a separate group develops the test against a public set of high standards. Teachers must teach to the broader, high level standards.
This also means that they do not have hundreds of teachers and principals in jail for cheating on these tests. All too many cases of teachers reading the answers to students, changing the scores in the teacher lounge, etc. have proven that we should not trust everyone, and that we should not design a system that effectively rewards cheating.
Our educational bureaucracy is so afraid of real accountability that they perverted the good intentions that many of us had decades ago and that could have worked if we had followed the European and other examples that have worked for generations of students who consistently outperform our students, and for less money per student.