Bad test scores do not necessarily translate into bad schools, said internationally recognized educator Diane Ravitch.
In a talk Monday evening titled “Will School ‘Reform’ Improve the Schools?”, Ravitch, author, activist and research scholar at New York University, focused on what she believes to be the most important challenges facing educational reform today. She said there is a large group of people—including politicians, lobbyists and hedge fund managers—who want to privatize education so that it operates like a free market. She equated high test scores to profit and teachers to employees with no rights or job security.
“Reformers want to transform public education as we know it,” Ravitch said. “They want it to change from community-based institutions serving democratic purposes into privately managed ones, whose primary goal is test scores.”
Ravitch discussed her change in political mindset regarding educational policy. Ten years ago, when No Child Left Behind— the largest federal legislation concerning education in the past decade—was originally under discussion, she considered herself to be conservative. She supported the ideas that teacher accountability and school choice were the most important aspects of educational reform.
After seeing the results of this legislation, Ravitch changed her mind.
“The most pressing problem facing educational reform is the obsession with test scores, which leads to firing teachers and closing schools,” Ravitch said. “[These factors] are destabilizing public education.”
She also challenged the assumption that low performing students are a result of poor teachers. She said educators should address poverty rather than low test scores when evaluating a school’s performance. If students have low test scores, many assume that the teachers are the problem—but it is often because of a child’s home situation, she added.
“Focusing solely on teacher quality relieves us of any obligation to come up with constructive ways to reduce poverty,” Ravitch said in an interview before her speech.
Ravitch explained that No Child Left Behind has not produced expected changes. The legislation was intended to reward high performing schools and cut funding to low performing schools, providing incentives for institutions to improve test scores.
Excellent teachers are often found in bad schools, she said, explaining that low performing schools are many times overloaded with low performing kids in the first place. Teachers are often unable to expect success from kids who were recently let out of jail or do not speak English at home, Ravitch noted.
“[No Child Left Behind] has created a disaster of epic proportions,” she said. “It has put everyone in the frame of mind that testing is the answer to all problems when it’s not.”
Lee Baker, dean of academic affairs of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, said the underlying motivation of No Child Left Behind—the idea that all children have the ability to succeed—was a relatively new concept, but the legislation was not executed properly.
“[This idea] is not a bad one, although the implementation in terms of the focus on teachers and test scores has not moved in the right direction,” Baker said.
Ravitch added that since No Child Left Behind was enacted, schools have been losing programs that do not require standardized testing, noting that arts programs, physical education and social studies have been eliminated in many districts.
“The purpose of public schools from the earliest days of our nation was to sustain our democracy, not to maintain test scores,” Ravitch said. “Schools are about character, citizenship and ethical behavior.”
Senior Chris Gierl said huge strides are being made in terms of teacher ability—what to teach and how to teach it.
“It’s unfortunate that more focus is on schools failing in general, instead of what can be done to improve them right now,” Gierl said. “We’re on the wrong path in terms of directing our efforts [in school reform].”
Ravitch concluded by noting that every child is entitled to quality public education that is not driven solely by test scores.
“Good public education should be a basic human right, not a consumer good whose availability is determined by market forces,” she said. “Children need to be looked at in terms of individuals that need to be educated toward reaching their fullest possible development.”
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