Diane Ravitch

Last night I went to Duke and saw Diane Ravitch.  She is a New York Times columnist, advocate for educational reform, against corporate America reforming education, and mind changer. 

First of all I want to thank Duke for hosting the evening.  However with that being said I believe that colleges should separate outsiders from students.  It made me think of how great Elon was for bringing such powerful speakers as Desmond Tutu, Benazir Bhutto, and Walter Cronkite.  Canden and I would get all dolled up (by this I mean pajamas), gather our homework and go grab our seat to half listen, half talk, half work on other homework (did you know 3 out of 2 people have trouble fractions?)  Of course Duke expected it’s education students to attend too.  And of course Christine (another IF) and I closed two of those lovely duke girls in…who insisted on talking.  So loudly the elderly man next to me told them to hush. So in the future Duke, you have a balcony, separate us.  Speaking of separation….

Did you know that US Education has changed in the last 50+ years?  We have ended segregation by races, ended separation of exceptional children and have had a storm of Hispanic immigration. Apparently we are integrated, included and immersed yet think that we have to pretend like things aren’t changing.  Diane went on to discuss charter schools, merit pay and the basic state of our schools.  Twenty years later we are still a Nation at Risk.

Those in charge want to pretend that it doesn’t matter what school they teach at, what group of students they teach, a good teacher will get good results.  “We can’t change society, so let’s change our schools”.  Education is a “business” that deals with products of intangible results.  The employees are the teachers, the parents and students are the consumers who use the products and the only profits that we can “see” are test results.  The corporate minded see that what works in a business should work in education-if a business fails, you fire those in charge.  If a school fails, you fire the teachers.  If the business is still failing, it goes under and is bought out by another company.  If a school continues to fail, it is bought out by a charter school.  Only 18% of charter schools actually outperformed their public school counterpart.  Now if the other 82% were comparable charter schools would be fine, however 36% of them did worse.  The government has taken money away from traditional public schools, only to endorse schools that did 36% worse. 

Diane said she saw the “train heading down the wrong tracks” and got off.  However in the world of politics, and personally speaking, life “I disgraced myself for changing my mind, and apparently you don’t do that”.  She knew that the free market goes through cycles where there are “winners” and “losers”, but in the sense of children we cannot have losers.  In education “there is no race, there is no top”.

We cannot continue to rate schools based off of test scores.  There are too many factors in determining how well a school performs.  Tests should only be used for what they are built for-if we are assessing how much a 5^th grader knows, we cannot assess how good of a teacher they had-yet we do, on a daily basis.  Now anyone that knows me, knows that I took test scores personally.  And by personally I mean cried my eyes out.  I felt that it meant that I was a bad teacher because my students did not perform well.  Were there things that I could/can do better?  Oh my goodness yes.  Were there things out of my control? Most definitely. 

Schools that have less than 10% poverty rate immensely outperform schools with higher rates.  If we could get schools to average out poverty rates, how would they rank themselves then?  There is a book called Hope and Despair: Why There are No Bad Schools in Raleigh.  Raleigh used to have this grand bussing scheme.  All the schools across the large district were “similar” and therefore all performed “similarly”.  Until two years ago when this was deemed unlawful, Raleigh was “fixing” the system.  Schools that perform below a certain level are always looked at by the state-well they got rid of those schools.  I don’t know about the issue of growth, but this is worth looking at. 

How does poverty affect education?  In undergrad we are given this idealistic approach to education.  It doesn’t matter who I teach, I can get any and all students to perform.  While yes, I can, it is difficult to engage low ability, hungry, distracted students.  Students that are born into poverty probably did not receive proper neonatal care, therefore have a higher chance of developing mental disabilities.  Students raised in poverty probably did not receive one on one attention at home, or proper pre-k education.  Compared to their peer who was not raised in poverty, on day one of kindergarten they are already behind.  Once they are in school, a child who is living in poverty probably does not have a parent at home helping or checking them with their homework, therefore, getting further behind.  As they grow up a child in poverty will be forced to take care of siblings, find jobs of their own, and basically put education on the back burner.  No matter how good their teacher is, living is more important.  So how does poverty affect education?  Greatly. 

How can education affect poverty? A child living in poverty, who puts education as a priority can rise above their surroundings.  That same child will grow up and hopefully get out of poverty, and then give back to their “old community” helping others rise above their situation.  But which came first, lack of education or poverty?  Can we stop the cycle?  We cannot break the cycle by closing schools and turning the system into a corporation.