Ravitch Urges Committee Not to Abandon Public Education
12/16/2010
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Diane Ravitch, noted education historian, author, research professor and former U.S. Secretary of Education during the first Bush administration expressed her profound disapproval of the proposed Stand for Children legislation in a written statement presented to the House Special Committee on Education Reform.
A former supporter of such “reforms” as charter schools, merit pay and vouchers, Ravitch has since rejected such measures and is now a strong advocate for teachers and unions and an outspoken opponent of standardized testing and the unproven strategies for education improvement promoted by Gates, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and many self-proclaimed child advocacy groups.
To Esteemed Members of the Illinois Legislature:
I am writing to express my profound disapproval of both the spirit and the letter of the proposed Stand for Children legislation.
The clear purpose of this proposed legislation is to target teachers for punishment and dismissal. There is nothing positive about this legislation. Nothing in it will encourage teachers, offer support for them, enable them to do a better job, or provide help for those who need it. This legislation will demoralize teachers in Illinois and focus them on testing and test scores. It will intensify the punitive aspects of the federal legislation, No Child Left Behind, which has done nothing to improve education in the United States for nearly a decade. It will encourage teaching to the test and will narrow the curriculum to only what is tested.
The message of this proposed law is that the state of Illinois does not respect teachers and that it intends to hold them solely responsible for students' test scores, and to pretend that students themselves and their families are in no way responsible for attending school, putting effort into their schoolwork, or preparing for each day's classes. Only teachers will be held accountable.
This is not what successful nations do. The nations that regularly outperform us on international tests pay attention to teacher quality by recruiting well-prepared candidates, helping them become good teachers, and providing consistent support to help them become better teachers. High-performing nations build collaborative school climates, where experienced teachers mentor new teachers. They seek teamwork, not punishment. They invest in meaningful professional development that enables teachers to improve.
This mean-spirited legislation will demoralize, demean, and dishearten the men and women who teach the children in the public schools of Illinois. Its other implicit goal is to delegitimate public education and prepare the ground for more privatization. Since research consistently demonstrates that privately managed schools do not get better results than regular public schools and do not cost less, I urge you not to abandon public education. Despite the self-interested pleas of "reformers," it remains the case that the root cause of low academic performance is not "bad teachers," but concentrations of high poverty, English language learners, and racial isolation. These problems will not be solved by targeting teachers for punishment.
Public education is a vital institution in our democracy. Please, do no harm.
Diane Ravitch Research Professor
New York University
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Research, 1991-93
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