Diane Ravitch

I heard an interview by Diane Ravitch on Morning Edition (NPR Radio this morning. She was an educational adviser under the first President Bush, a well spoken but often very conservative spokesperson for public education. She strongly edorsed No Child Left Behind. Today she sang a different tune and one that was remarkably in line with the beliefs of the California Teachers' Association. She said that the problem with NCLB was that it rewarded and punished schools for good and bad behavior. Districts did not change the ways they educated students but only cheated when administering standardized tests. Many states had no or very limited standards for their students so that made it easy for them to pass the test and thus obtain Federal monies, "play the game."

She also talked of how the Race to the Top Initiative still used the same old model of competition for schools. She said, "Schools should not be run on a survival of the fittest model." It is a corporate model and it is promoted by extreme conservatives who would like to see the elimination of public schools. I said pretty much the same thing when I was interviewed by the Sonoma West. Nevertheless very few people as far as I can tell read that article about Race to the Top.

She also talked about charter schools. When we talk about charter schools it must be noted that there is a difference between public charters and private charters. The difference does not lie in the success of charter schools. As Ravitch said research shows that the difference between mainstream schools and charter is school is next to nothing. But charter schools allow corporations to take over schools with a traditional competitive corporate model. I do not think that this model accelerates the pace of effective teaching or learning. There are some who think that there should be no public schools.