Schools will never fix inequality: Diane Ravitch vs. Arne Duncan fight misses point on poverty

It is not every day that the U.S. secretary of education charges a professor with "insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country." But in the cutthroat world of education reform, the daggers have come out.

The professor, Diane Ravitch of NYU - who once shared educational reformers' love for school choice, charter schools and accountability - has in recent years come to oppose them. A few weeks ago, she published a much-debated op-ed in The New York Times that reiterated her belief that few schools, reformed or not, can overcome the differences in family income that determine educational outcomes. "Families," she wrote, "are children's most important educators."

The critics pounced. The columnist Jonathan Alter called her views "the mother of all cop outs." The aforementioned Arne Duncan - President Obama's education chief - said she was "in denial."

To the new breed of educational reformers, whose motto is "no excuses," schools cannot only prevail over the effects of an impoverished upbringing; they can set students from poor families on the path to college and, ultimately, a middle-class life.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/06/19/2011-06-19_schools_will_never_fix_inequality.html#ixzz1Pok0PB84

Rogaine!!!

Great analogy.

Until our government can return to making decisions based on evidence rather than by gut feel, things can not get better. Ravitch is fighting that fight. While she's not fighting for everything that's needed, she is fighting for a basic point.

destroy public education

the wingnut libertarians have joined forces with the Rushdoony crazies and the educational entrepreneurs, abetted by the captive/compliant media

you're seeing the result

There are quite a few Democrats on this reform train.

it`s hard to learn in school when the violence follows through the doors. it`s hard to learn when there`s nothing to eat.you have one parent who tries to make ends meet. maybe you don`t have a parent at all. the guy down the block is making a couple hundred a week watching out for the cops or the other gang...the list goes on and on. then throw into the mix the rural poor across the country and their set of problems.

yes it`s so easy to blame the teachers who spend their own supplies because the school won`t supply them or they are stolen from the warehouse(where did all those thousands of dollars of computers go arne?). here in illinois we give teachers a tax break so they can buy school supplies for their classrooms! ya, teachers make to much, are lazy union asses,or they don`t care about their students.

it`s really easy to blame the teachers and their unions because it`s just to dam hard to actually create the conditions so these children can grow up and find good paying jobs to get themselves and their families out of the hole. thanks arne and thanks barack,you know maybe you two should have gone to public schools in a big city or a poor rural area of this once great nation.

i`m glad i`m 64 and can remember when i was blamed for my failure not the teacher.

Usually it's the person looking through rose-colored glasses and ignoring the pitfalls who is said to be in denial. I don't think I've ever seen the phrase used of someone who was saying, "Your utopian schemes for reform won't solve the problem."

It seems like a strange, Freudian slip -- one that raises the question of who's really in denial around here.

But teachers are told that they own their kids' education. The standardized test in Texas, even the version that constitutes the exit exam (given in 11th grade so there's a make-up opportunity) is explicitly an evaluation of teacher effectiveness.

It's the height of hubris: If only teachers were competent, all kids would learn. It's not what the kid brings to the table, it's what the teacher brings to the table; if the teacher falters, it's because she's not supported by the administration, school board, state ed agency, or federal government.

The dept. of education (state and federal) folk love it. It grants them power and a lot of leverage. Few that aspire to positions of power dislike power. Politicians love it: It gives them the chance to take the power and authority while absolving parents of responsibility. Dostoevsky's grand inquisitor was right: bread, spectacle, and absolution from responsibility is what breeds loyalty (at least for a long time).

If you really, really assume that this is true, that it's all the teaching establishment's responsibility; if you're a true believer that the child is a lump of clay to be moulded and that all kids are not only created equal but are equal at every point except for what teachers and administrators do to them (or that the teachers and administrators have the ability to undo any bad done to the kids), then you have to say Ravitch is in denial.

One minister I knew who believed that the US and Britain were the Biblical Israel, that Reagan (then Bush I, then Clinton) was part of an evil system of Babylon that ruled over the earth to make it a collectivist, satanic hell, who fervently believed that a woman who was kicked down the stairs by her husband would be rewarded for her obedience to her husband, who believed absolutely that Jesus would return before he died, simply said that the rest of the world was in denial. From his perspective he was right: Pretty much everybody denied the truths that he held so dear, that he was convinced of. Then again, he died a decade ago, so it's not really a problem any more.