I spent part of the last two weekends reading Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” It’s part polemic and part confessional.

Ravitch, once an ardent supporter of charter schools, accountability and other market-based reforms, has done a dramatic, highly public 180-degree turn. She now says these approaches will destroy public education if allowed to continue unfettered.

A former federal education official (under Bush I and Clinton) and an influential writer and thinker on education, Ravitch’s change of heart is attracting national notice, and with good reason.

Her book, while exhibiting some of the new convert’s zeal and bombast, contains thought-provoking stuff. Even though I don’t agree with some of her conclusions, and though she paints some people as villains who don’t deserve the abuse, she also makes some compelling arguments that those of us pushing some of the reforms she now abhors would be wise to ponder.

In a nutshell, Ravitch believes that U.S. education went seriously off the rails in the early 1990s and has been heading down an increasingly destructive path ever since.

It was in the early ‘90s, she says, when a concerted effort to write national content standards fell victim to ideological bickering over history standards and their allegedly liberal/progressive bias. An interesting footnote: The person who led the charge against the standards was none other than Lynne Cheney, wife of our former vice president.

Once the standards movement stalled, and standards writing was turned over to states, Ravitch says, states responded by writing vague, meaningless standards that remain in effect to this day.

“The states seemed to understand that avoiding specifics was the best policy; that standards were best if they were completely non-controversial; and that standards would survive scrutiny only if they said nothing and changed nothing,” she writes.

Into this vacuum rode George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind. The revamped federal education law, Ravitch says, made test scores in reading and math the Holy Grail and left everything else in ruins. She contrasts NCLB to the seminal “A Nation at Risk” and finds NCLB wanting:

“A Nation at Risk envisioned a public school system that offered a rich, well-balanced and coherent curriculum, similar to what was available to students on the academic track in successful school districts. No Child Left Behind, by contrast, was bereft of any educational ideas.”

Once test-based accountability became the nation’s obsession, a new generation of market-based reformers arrived on the scene to further the agenda, Ravitch says. She heaps particular scorn on Alan Bersin, a former federal prosecutor (and now the nation’s border czar), a non-traditional superintendent who ran the San Diego schools from 1998 to 2005, and Joel Klein, New York City schools chancellor, and his boss Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She also takes some swipes at Arne Duncan for his stewardship of Chicago schools.

Ravitch raises red flags about charter schools and the foundations that promote them. While it might not be these foundations’ intentional agenda to destroy American public education, she says, their pushing of charters, choice and accountability are doing just that.

Echoing many of the arguments of teachers’ unions across the country, Ravitch says that charters drain the best, most motivated students from regular public schools, leaving those schools in a death spiral, for which they are then blamed.

“As currently configured, charter schools are havens for the motivated,” Ravitch writes. “As more charter schools open, the dilemma of educating all students will grow sharper. The resolution of this dilemma will determine the fate of public education.”

The problem with this argument, of course, is that it implies that ‘motivated’ students from low-income families should be denied the opportunity for a better education so that the institution of public education, which has served them badly, survives to fail another day.

Here I side with Howard Fuller, who on a recent Denver visit proclaimed: “I am from the Harriet Tubman school of education reform.” Every kid who escapes a bad educational environment is one more kid with a better chance at a fulfilling life.

Ravitch excoriates the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation for being unelected policy-making monoliths, utterly unaccountable, that are shaping the direction (or as she would argue, dismantling) of public education.

“There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society’s wealthiest people,” she writes. “…The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountable power.”

I ask Ravitch: To whom, then, should we cede control over public education? An answer as banal as “the people” won’t cut it. Elected school boards? Their failures, especially in big cities, are the stuff of legends.

Ravitch argues, in compelling if vague fashion, that the way to “fix” public schooling is not to look for a single answer, but rather to unite in common purpose, to eschew test-driven stripped-down education, to develop a broad and deep national curriculum (she favors something along the lines of Core Knowledge, with top-notch art and music education added to the mix), to find great teachers and support them with training and good pay, to get more parents to read to their kids, and to expect kids to behave in a civil manner when in school.

It’s hard to disagree with any of Ravitch’s suggested cures, even if her description of the disease is off base. But it’s almost impossible to see how we get there from here. While she lays out some of the problems forcefully, in blunt, plain English, she goes fuzzy on us just when we need her most.

Still, this book is a must read for anyone who cares about public education reform. In Ravitch’s arguments you will hear echoes of some of the ideological battles taking place right here, right now.

The fact that her book’s release coincides almost perfectly with announcements about first-round Race to the Top winners suggests that the battle over public education’s future has been joined on a grand scale. Its outcome will not be decided anytime soon.

Popularity: 69% [?]

If there is an acid test for K-12 education, it is whether high school graduates are prepared to take college classes without needing remediation.

Aurora fails that test in a big way. So does Denver. More than half the college-bound students in both big urban districts need remedial help in at least one basic subject area – reading, writing or math.

And the state as a whole has nothing to brag about: Its remediation rate stands at 32 percent. That’s right: Nearly one out of every three Colorado high school graduates enrolled in a Colorado college or university in the fall of 2008 had to take at least one remedial class last year. Statewide, the remediation rate has held steady for the past five years. (See the numbers for yourself in our new data center.)

Students enrolling in community colleges need a lot more remedial help than those going to four-year schools. Some 53 percent of community college enrollees needed remediation, compared to 20 percent entering four-year schools. Since community college students tend to be disproportionately low-income kids of color, it’s easy to see where the biggest problem resides.

The numbers are sobering, the trend depressing. Despite the state’s avowed focus on improving K-12 education, nothing anyone has tried has moved this most important needle.

Looking at a list of the state’s large districts, one is hard-pressed to find rays of sunshine. One exception might be Jefferson County – the state’s largest district – where the remediation rate has dropped by 4.7 percentage points over the past five years. Still, better than one in four Jeffco graduates needs remediation.

Elsewhere, though, the rate has stayed flat or has climbed. Aurora? Up 11 percentage points in five years. Denver? Up 5.7 percentage points. Cherry Creek? Up 3.6 percentage points. Douglas County? Flat.

Are these districts enrolling higher percentages of low-income kids? Yes. Does this explain the flat or increasing remediation rates? No one can say with certainty.

Some districts point out that significant innovations in the past couple of years don’t show up in this data. What is called 2009 data actually comes from the fall of 2008. This may be true. But name a school district that doesn’t, at any given point in time, claim to be in the midst of significant new reforms. I’ll look for next year’s results to be better. But I won’t hold my breath.

Where have we gone wrong? Are the steps we are now taking – Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, new state standards, new assessments – finally going to make a difference? How long will it take for the results to appear in the form of lower remediation rates?

Anyone who tells you he or she knows the answer to any of those questions is deluded. All we can do is hope. Well, actually, we can do more than hope. We can hold ourselves to a higher standard – literally and figuratively.

A first step would be to stop the practice of boasting about increased high school graduation rates unless and until remediation rates drop. Pawning the problem off on someone else and then claiming to have solved it is the worst sort of cynical, statistical sleight of hand.

Jettisoning jargon and vague platitudes, and getting clear about what we expect would also help. Diane Ravitch, in her new book (“The Death and Life of the Great American School System”) traces the malaise in our school systems to the abandonment of meaningful content standard development; this in the wake of a political controversy over history standards in the mid-1990s. Following the controversy, Ravitch writes,

“…with a few honorable exceptions, the states wrote and published vague documents and called them standards. Teachers continued to rely on textbooks to determine what to teach and test…Business leaders continued to grouse that they had to spend large amounts of money to train new workers; the media continued to highlight the mediocre performance of American students on international tests; and colleges continued to report that about a third of their freshman needed remediation in the basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics.”

Will setting the bar higher – and being specific about what clearing the bar entails – make a difference? In our fractured and dysfunctional political climate, is such an achievement even possible, on either a statewide or national basis? Color me skeptical.

But we have to keep trying – and to demonstrate the courage to make hard and unpopular choices. The alternative is to continue living with remediation rates like these:

West High School, Denver: 87 percent

North High School, Denver: 75 percent

Montbello High School, Denver: 73 percent

Aurora Central High School, Aurora: 71 percent

Abraham Lincoln High School, Denver: 69 percent

McLain Community High School, Jefferson County: 67 percent.

You get the picture.

Popularity: 43% [?]

I read a sobering New York Times Magazine article Sunday evening about the Texas State Board of Education and how a number of its members want to use the public education system (to the extent they believe in it) to transform the United States into an overtly Christian nation. Then I wrote a blog post about why I found the article so scary.

Because the Texas state board has disproportionate influence over textbook publishers, this near-majority of religious extremists could succeed. They may not transform the nation, at least in the short term. But they are patient people, and they could soon transform some of what kids are taught into outright religious propaganda and pseudo-science.

My brother David wrote an incisive comment under the blog post:

I know that Christian fundamentalism has had increasing influence over the last couple of decades, but the increasing individual liberties championed by Western societies arouses the ire of religious fundamentalists of all stripes. They see the hegemony of the individual as a decadent and dangerous distraction from the service of the Divine, which must be upheld by an entire society in order to receive the Divine’s protection and blessing.

They also tend to want the state to serve as a mechanism for promoting and coordinating religious activity. All our ills are, in this view, the result of a kind of idol worship, of placing ourselves above God. They don’t have to look far to find developments that look like evidence to support their view.

The question is: Does a society that sees individual liberties as sacred, and in which everyone can do as they please as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, have the backbone to confront this development? The devotion of religious extremism to the cause of indoctrination makes education the main battlefield.

David crystallized (as usual, far more articulately than I could) why this article stayed with me through the night and into this bright holiday Monday.

I also recommend the thoughtful comment from EdNews blogger Ben DeGrow, a conservative Christian. Ben places the issue in a different context. His argument is characteristically well-reasoned.

And then, Denver school board member Andrea Merida, with whom I have taken issue on several occasions, added this comment to the blog:

I couldn’t agree with you more, Alan. What a great initiative for us to rally behind, huh?

Andrea’s comment reminded me of an old mantra of mine, that I have forsaken in recent times. Public education (and, for that matter, freedom) has plenty of powerful enemies. So why do those of us who believe in this bedrock institution spend so much time fighting one another tooth and claw? We only weaken ourselves, while our real adversaries patiently build their strength.

Most often, I have bemoaned this infighting during labor disputes. School district officials and teachers’ union leaders savage one another as they squabble over steps, lanes and COLAs. Meanwhile, people who would like to see public education die lick their lips and chortle with glee.

These days, however, the battleground has shifted. Among public education advocates, there are those of us who believe that the underpinnings of the public education system have weakened to the point where fundamental change is essential. There are others who argue that schools are under-funded and hideously managed, and that more competent stewardship of this public trust, combined with a lot more money, would cure what ails public education.

Both sides have legitimate points. Rather than acknowledging this, however, leading voices on both sides go out of their way to heap scorn upon those with whom they disagree.

After reading the Times Magazine article, I have to ask myself: How stupid are we? Or is it naïve? Do we believe that public education in some form is guaranteed to survive into the endless future?

If so, we had better wake up.

Don’t get me wrong. Family squabbles are healthy. It’s good to disagree, frequently and vigorously. Debate helps push new and better ideas. But when the debate gets personal and nasty, when people assume ill-intent on the part of their adversaries, then it becomes unhealthy and counter-productive.

I fear we have reached this point in the education debate, locally and nationally. So let’s not forget: There are people out there who do have ill intent, who want to transform our country into a Christian version of what the Taliban made Afghanistan in the late 1990s. As Ben points out, only a small faction of conservative Christians endorse this agenda.

But no, Ben, I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I raise the specter of the Taliban.

This faction may appear to be on the fringe. But it is a well organized fringe, with powerful allies inside and outside of our government.

If we keep focusing all our energies on fighting people with whom we should be allied, then we do so at our peril.

Popularity: 29% [?]

The deepening political divide on the Denver school board and elsewhere in the education world is often, and simplistically, described as ‘reformers’ vs. ‘non-reformers.’ Let’s dispose of those meaningless labels once and for all.

At a recent event in Denver, Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, argued that more accurate terms to describe the two camps would be ‘disrupters’ (in place of ‘reformers’) and ‘incrementalists’ (in place of ‘non-reformers’). Disrupters are after systemic change while incrementalists, as their name would suggest, want to preserve chunks of the current system and keep basic power structures intact.

That’s a better framing of the dispute, but it misses the heart of the problem, at least locally.

While most people in the education world have spent the last few weeks in a frenzy over the Race to the Top competition, I’ve been distracted, wondering why the current battles over transforming public education, especially in Denver, have become so much more intractable and uncomfortable of late.

I’ve finally framed it in a way that makes sense to me. I’m sure some of you will disagree and will make your objections known, loud and clear. That’s good. Let’s have the debate.

The divide I see is between people who take a pragmatic approach to education reform and those who take an ideological approach. One is not inherently superior to the other.

The problem today is that neither side recognizes how fundamental the disagreement is. (A similar divide exists in the health care debate, with President Obama playing the role of ultimate pragmatist, much to the chagrin of people with more ideological inclinations on both the left and right).

Pragmatists in the current education debate assume people on the ‘other side’ are pragmatists as well, and that what we’re fighting over boils down to competing strategies and tactics for reform. People driven by ideology assume their opponents are basing their positions on ideology as well, and that the ideologies are inherently incompatible.

Unless and until the two camps approach these disagreements with a clearer understanding of their nature, there will be little hope of compromise or reconciliation.

This is, of course, a generalization, and subject to Abraham Lincoln’s famous caveat about the worth of all generalizations. Undoubtedly, there are some ideology-driven people in the camp pushing aggressive reform – those, for example, who see vouchers as an end and not a means.  And I’m sure there are plenty of pragmatists among those who are more incremental in their approach.

But as a generalization, I think this frame fits.

Some examples: On Monday, I posted a subtitled video of Denver school board member Arturo Jimenez addressing Spanish-speaking parents in their native tongue just before a vote on placing another campus of the West Denver Prep charter school in northwest Denver. I posted it because it was an impassioned and fascinating bit of rhetoric, and because it’s an excellent example of the ideological approach to school reform.

In his three-minute talk, Jimenez argues against West Denver Prep not because the school doesn’t get results, but because he fears it will produce students who do not think for themselves but rather become cogs in a machine, “engineers who upon graduating from college build bomb components meant to destroy…”

He believes that Latino children must be educated in their native language as well as English, and in such a way that produces “leaders,” who make the key decisions affecting their future, rather than ceding them to others. Schools like West Denver Prep, he implies, do not produce such leaders, but rather subservient followers.

“Our dream is that we are not this nation’s beasts of burden, especially when we have gone to college,” he says.

Similarly, Jimenez’s colleague, Andrea Merida, argues at the same meeting against the West Denver Prep campus because a traditional neighborhood school, Valdez, was poised to become a dual immersion English-Spanish K-8 school. That plan is now dead, to be replaced by the high-performing charter school.

The Valdez program, Merida says, “is incredibly important really to our integration as Latinos into this society…it says to Latino children that it’s OK to be Latino, it’s OK to speak Spanish. And it says to Anglo kids and other non-Spanish dominant kids that it’s OK to feel uncomfortable with a language other than English…We need to do a better job supporting schools that families actually want and stop allowing other schools to poach from them.”

Merida and Jimenez make eloquent cases for their positions. Here’s what I think is the essence of their ideological argument:

Schools like West Denver Prep and KIPP are not respectful of Latino culture. Instead, they expect all children to conform to a code of behavior acceptable to the nation’s power structure. These schools do not truly prepare students to become leaders in their communities, but rather cogs in a machine designed to perpetuate the status quo.

I’m a pragmatist. I disagree with this position because I see such schools preparing students to become high-functioning adults with the ability to do the kind of academic work that trains people to think critically. But I have no doubt that Jimenez and Merida are sincere in their beliefs about different kinds of schools.

As a pragmatist, and speaking only for myself, I support successful urban charter schools, the state’s school autonomy law and other policy changes to allow for new models. I also support schools, be they traditional neighborhood schools, magnets, charters, what have you, that promote socio-economic integration.

I support  these schools and socio-economic integration because I have seen with my own eyes how these approaches help significant numbers of individual kids – some of whom would otherwise fail – succeed in high school, go to college and graduate. Whatever works, I’m for.

There is a difference between people who view some issues through an ideological lens and ideologues. Ideologues are blindly loyal to their ideology and are impossible to move off a position. I do not believe Jimenez and Merida are ideologues – I certainly hope they aren’t — but rather passionate advocates for their set of beliefs.

It is important that people locked in seemingly intractable disputes pull back and consider the perspective of their adversaries. Far too often in heated education debates, everyone fails to do this. If we’re to move forward, in Denver, and in Colorado, it is time for us to start listening more carefully to one another.

Popularity: 53% [?]

I’ve been resisting for more than a year now, but I’m finally sold on Twitter. Almost.

I made a New Year’s resolution to dive in and figure out whether this brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit social networking site is a passing fad dominated by narcissists (“I’m brushing my teeth now,” etc.) or a useful tool for people trying to stay abreast of any given topic.

It’s both, but one can easily ignore the silly stuff and dive into the more substantive matter Perhaps Twitter will eventually fly south, to be replaced by something sleeker. But for now, it serves as a nifty portal into the online world.

An article in the January 3 New York Times Week in Review said it well: “At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while. Much of what I need to know is in that cup…”

Let’s say you’re interested in what people are saying about and linking to on the subject of education reform. If you use any of the nifty Twitter applications available on the web (Hoot Suite, Tweetdeck, etc), you can subscribe to a feed called #edreform and every “tweet” that carries that “hashtag” (I know, yet another world of jargon to learn) will appear in the #edreform column you’ve created. These “tweets” usually include a link to an article or blog post that might be worth reading.

At this moment (2:30 p.m. Monday), here are the top five items listed under #edreform: (Glossary: RT means “retweet” – the person tweeting this is forwarding someone else’s tweet).

RT @MBAENews: @bostonherald editorial makes the case for unions to sign the #RTTT MOU – school committees too – http://is.gd/65nbahttp://is.gd/65nba #edreform

RT @dropoutnation: RT @chadratliff: Charter school advocate to be new Virginia schools chief http://bit.ly/6PyjkVhttp://bit.ly/6PyjkV #edreform #edpolicy #RttT

RT: @firebird2110 #CSFbill2R Mark Field – “Monitoring is not a neutral activity” #parenting #edreform #homeschool

RT @Clausvz: Antioch College is closing its doors!! That’s a terrible sign of the times. (via @alexanderrusso) #edreform

RT @mediaclectic: RT @brkthrulearning: New hip hop high school approved in Portland http://ow.ly/N6MMhttp://ow.ly/N6MM #edreform

Now, as someone who spends a fair amount of time trolling the web looking for interesting education nuggets, this is a potential goldmine. I might want to do some research into the new Virginia schools chief. I thought Antioch College closed last year, but now I’ll look to see what is new here. And a hip hop high school sounds, um, intriguing. I want to read more.

There countless education-related hashtags, including #parenting, #charterschools, #edgap. It’s virtually limitless. And you can customize searches as well.

Last week, while I was trying to teach myself the finer points of Twitter, I searched the word “Salazar” and came upon a newsflash that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar had decided not to run for governor of Colorado. I was able to follow the breadcrumb trail of links and find a reliable journalist who had initiated the chatter. I immediately posted a “tweet,” and as far as I can tell, I was the first journalist in Colorado to report this. I was at least 45 minutes ahead of the Denver Post and the TV news websites. I was careful to hedge on the information, but I felt comfortable it was accurate.

So, I’m sold, at least for now. As a result, I’ve decided to start posting a lot more “tweets” and “retweets.” Yes, I wish the nomenclature had a less sill sound to it, but you work with what’s at hand.

You can follow me on Twitter by searching alangott or #alangott (still not sure if the # is necessary). You can also follow the more straight-news Twitter feed of EdNews Colorado at ednews (#ednews). Todd Engdahl will be posting frequent Twitter updates to #ednews from the state legislature once the session begins Wednesday.

Our methods of communicating are evolving almost too quickly to comprehend. I’m not out at the apex of the V, but I’m trying to stay in formation.

Popularity: 10% [?]

It’s a new year. What better time to preemptively make a fool of one’s self by offering predictions for the coming 12 months? In the spirit of optimism (spiced with skepticism) that accompanies the dawning of a new decade, here are 10 fearless predictions about what lies ahead for education in Colorado in 2010.

1. Colorado will win some Race to the Top money from the U.S. Department of Education. The amount will be significantly less than state officials had hoped. Winning the grant will not profoundly change education in Colorado.
2. The hot new story in Colorado education in 2010 will be the Harrison School District in the southeastern portion of Colorado Springs. Superintendent Mike Miles is doing some remarkable things. The district and Miles will become much-celebrated over the course of the year, at least in education circles.
3. Similarly, while Denver schools continue to garner most of the headlines, Aurora Public Schools will keep chugging along, making nice, steady gains and getting too little notice for it.
4. The legislature will pass a slew of education-related bills in 2010, but the state’s money woes will render many of them ineffective, or at best only marginally relevant to what happens in classrooms each day.
5. Denver Public Schools will limp along with a 4-3 split on its school board, slowing but not stopping the Bennet-Boasberg reforms, and providing a grim sort of entertainment. If Boasberg gets fed up and leaves – unlikely, but possible — the already-troubled district will hire a more traditional superintendent. A brain drain will ensue. DPS will slide into irrelevance and may never recover.
6. New schools like the Denver Language School and the Green School will prove attractive to parents. More whining about charters and autonomous schools draining resources from the district will ensue from predictable quarters.
7. No one will come up with a palatable resolution of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA) pension mess.
8. No one will come up with a miracle cure for the fiscal cliff Colorado education will fall off in 2011. By year’s end, panic will rival the Y2K bug and H1N1 scares. But in this case, the catastrophe may be real.
9. Mid-term elections will shake up the political landscape in Colorado. The net long-term effect on public education will be negligible. The pendulum will continue swinging along its proscribed arc.
10. When 2010 CSAP scores are released in the summer, some new star schools will be born, while at least some of last year’s wunderkinds will slide backwards and be consigned to media oblivion.

And finally, one last thought. It’s not a prediction, but rather a description of a reality. It happens year after year, as reliably as solstices and equinoxes:

The usual cast of characters will appear when controversy erupts in a school or neighborhood. They will complain vociferously, especially when TV cameras are present. They will threaten to unleash righteous fury on unresponsive bureaucrats. Then, when the cameras are gone, the controversy dies down and there is actual work to be done, they will vanish into the woodwork until the next big conflict arises.

Popularity: 56% [?]