The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Books | Education / Administration / General
4.3
Diane Ravitch
A passionate plea to preserve and renew public education, The Death and Life of the Great American School System is a radical change of heart from one of AmericaÕs best-known education experts. Diane RavitchÑformer assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculumÑexamines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques todayÕs most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril. Ravitch includes clear prescriptions for improving AmericaÕs schools: leave decisions about schools to educators, not politicians or businessmen devise a truly national curriculum that sets out what children in every grade should be learning expect charter schools to educate the kids who need help the most, not to compete with public schools pay teachers a fair wage for their work, not Òmerit payÓ based on deeply flawed and unreliable test scores encourage family involvement in education from an early age The Death and Life of the Great American School System is more than just an analysis of the state of play of the American education system. It is a must-read for any stakeholder in the future of American schooling.
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Author
Diane Ravitch
Pages
283
Publisher
Basic Books
Published Date
2010-03-02
ISBN
0465014917 9780465014910
Ratings
Google: 5
Community ReviewsSee all
"A lucid analysis of the pitfalls of recent educational reform movements. Ravitch, a former member of the Bush administration demonstrates the follies in "choice" and market driven systems which assume that consumer behavior applies to education. Ravitch points out the core flaws in this theory: student "consumers" do not necessarily know how to make the best educational choices, and schools are evaluated on their ability to sell a "product" to many students who are actively hostile to it. Despite some irksome name-dropping and a tendency to repeat the same statements 3 times in a row, this is a valuable read. Media accounts of "miracle" charter schools and aggressive turnarouds often fail to do the necessary follow-up; Ravitch points out that many of these trumpeted interventions have resulted in negligible long term gains, especially for the poor and minority students who need help most.<br/><br/><br/>Hmmm...some of the educational gimmickry she describes is in use at my daughter's school: "text to self connections" indeed!"