StickWithANose

Former Assistant Secretary of Education under George H. Bush and Bill Clinton and noted think tank scholar Diane Ravitch has undergone a conversion of sorts from being a strong proponent of charter schools to a fierce opponent. The impetus for her conversion is the mounting evidence that, despite their popularity on both sides of the political aisle, charter schools are not effective tools for raising student learning, and that charters pose a threat to the public character and democratic accountability inherent to the institution. Obama’s ‘Race to the Top’ is a race to the privatization of public schooling and to the looting of public treasuries by private interests. Here are some key quotes from a recent interview on  NPR:

“I was known as a conservative advocate of many of these policies,” Ravitch says. “But I’ve looked at the evidence and I’ve concluded they’re wrong. They’ve put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don’t think any of this is going to improve public education.” [...]

“There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition,” Ravitch says. “Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what’s [been successful] for them. They’re not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block.”

“The basic point about charter schools is they’re about 5,000 of them today and they range across the board from very, very fine schools to absolutely horrible schools, and the only national study that’s been done said that 17 percent of the charter schools did better than the local public schools with which they were matched and 83 percent were either no different or worse. So we dont have any evidence that this is going to make it any better…”

Kudos to Diane for making a stand based on her allegiance to empirical evidence as opposed to clinging to partisan ideology! More of this please…