Here's Ravitch's reply:
I hoped that accountability and choice might bring us closer to the goals I believe in, but I was wrong. They are means, not ends. Getting higher test scores is not the same as getting a high-quality education. As I explain in my chapter on accountability, there is so much cheating, so much gaming of scores, so much manipulation of data by states and districts that the state scores are unreliable. Because of its high stakes and its onerous sanctions, NCLB has incentivized everyone to raise scores by any means necessary. Often this is just institutionalized fraud. Or ,as Arne Duncan likes to say about the dumbing down of state tests, "We are lying to our children."
As for charters, I readily grant that there are some excellent charters. But most people who have studied charters recognize that the range in quality among them is very great and that there are far more mediocre charters than excellent ones, as well as some that are abysmal.
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Is Education on the Wrong Track?
A TNR Symposium.
- March 17, 2010 | 4:38 pm
- www.tnr.com/article/education-the-wrong-track
From: Diane Ravitch
To: Kevin Carey
Subject: We don't yet have all the answers for fixing American education, but we know current reforms aren't working. So why keep supporting them?