The Death and Life of the Great American School System - A Chilling Tale

“When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?”¹

-John Maynard

If someone asked me, “What one book should I read if I want to change the direction of public education in this country?”  The answer is simple:  Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System:  How Testing and Choice Are UnderminingEducation.  It is – dare I say – as frightening as a Stephen King novel, and as thrilling as a Jason Bourne Movie. 

Diane Ravitch worked as a counselor to Lamar Alexander, George H.W. Bush’s secretary of Education.  She was an instrumental advocate for high-stakes testing and school choice, originally in favor of market-based principles as accountability measures for schools (ie. giving money to schools that achieve and dissolving schools that fail on high-stakes test). 

That is how we run our economy; why not apply the same principles to schooling? 

In theory the idea may make sense; however, in reality, “…test-based accountability led to score inflation, to gaming the system, and to behaviors that undermined the value of the scores”  (Ravitch, 2010).  For instance, she writes how New York City inflated test scores for political reasons by lowering the passing threshold on the high-stakes test from year to year so it appeared as if NYC students were improving.  Moreover, she writes about Atlanta and Washington D.C. where cheating on high-stakes testing was rampant arguably due to perverse pressure on teachers and administration to raise test scores. 

In essence, this book challenges the myth the high-stakes testing and school choice lead to student achievement, citing study after study that rejects that claim and demystifying studies that support that claim.  For example, she cites Stanford University’s study - the most comprehensive study of charter schools to date - that says that states 17% of charter schools provide superior education, about 50% are no different than neighborhood public schools, and 37% provide inferior education (2009).  In contrast, Finland, one of the most successful international school systems, abolished high-stakes testing and school choice years ago, and they are outperforming the United States in every category on the only international comparative test (Sahlberg, 2011).   

The facts, Ravitch argues, reveals the current state of the American Public Schools is troublesome at best and in disrepair at worst.  Only time will tell.  In light of the evidence she presented in her book, I am skeptical of the current trajectory of school reform in this country, and I am hopeful that we change course.

Works Cited:

1.  Alfred L.  Malabre Jr., Lost Prophets:  An Insider’s History of the Modern Economists (Boston:  Harvard Business School Press, 1994), 220.

Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2009). Multiple Choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Palo Alto, CA Stanford University. http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf

Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great american school system : How testing and choice are undermining education. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Sahlberg, P., & Hargreaves, A. (2011). Finnish lessons : What can the world learn from educational change in finland?. New York: Teachers College Press.