As I said in my prior post, I’m nearly finished reading “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”, by Diane Ravitch. From 1991 to 1993, Diane was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
This book is excellent and definitely worth reading. I've had the opportunity to do a quick Q & A with Ms. Ravitch. Check it out;
1. What would you consider the single most pressing problem with No Child Left Behind?
The worst thing about No Child Left Behind is that it created a punitive attitude towards teachers and schools. If the school doesn't raise scores, heads must roll! Principals must be fired, teachers must be fired, and schools must close! We see this echoed now in President Obama's endorsement of the mass firing of teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. If anyone asked my advice about NCLB, I would tell them to remove all the federal sanctions, which have no basis in research or reality and will lead to devastation of communities, not to improvement.
2. Testing seems like an excellent tool to measure progress. NCLB focuses on testing, so where is the problem?
As I show in the book, the present generation of tests are not good enough to make high-stakes decisions. I do not oppose testing as such; I think testing is useful when used for informational and diagnostic purposes, to tell us how students are doing, how schools are doing, how districts and states are doing. But there should be no stakes attached to such tests. It is the misuse of test scores and accountability that has given NCLB a deservedly bad name.
3. Business models get results, and NCLB seems to have elements of a business model. Why do you think the business model hasn’t worked for education?
There are different business models. The one being applied now in education is based on incentives and sanctions, which produces competition for rewards and fear of punishment. This business model is sometimes associated with cheating, gaming the system, cooking the books to get the desired results. We saw that with the debacle at Enron, WorldComm, and other businesses that got the right numbers but ultimately defrauded their investors and collapsed.
A different business model emphasizes the value of trust, collaboration, and teamwork among those who do the work of the organization. We have seen this in many successful corporations, and we see it in team sports. Games are not won by a group of individuals trying to beat their teammates, but by players who harmonize their strengths with those of their fellow players.
Schools need business managers to buy supplies and to maintain the plant, but the work of schooling requires collaboration and trust, not competition among teachers and fear of sanctions. Teachers and schools should feel encouraged to share their successes, not to hide their trade secrets.
