Buy new:
$8.77
List Price: $26.95

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Save: $18.18 (67%)
FREE delivery April 25 - 26. Details
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$8.77 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$8.77
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Orion LLC
Ships from
Orion LLC
Sold by
Sold by
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. You may receive a partial or no refund on used, damaged or materially different returns.
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. You may receive a partial or no refund on used, damaged or materially different returns.
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Other Sellers on Amazon
Added
$8.86
& FREE Shipping
Sold by: FindAnyBook
Sold by: FindAnyBook
(2778 ratings)
97% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$4.87
+ $3.99 shipping
Sold by: Revolver Market
Sold by: Revolver Market
(1908 ratings)
88% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Added
$18.56
FREE Shipping
Get free shipping
Free shipping within the U.S. when you order $35.00 of eligible items shipped by Amazon.
Or get faster shipping on this item starting at $5.99 . (Prices may vary for AK and HI.)
Learn more about free shipping
on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Sold by: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates and Return policy
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education Hardcover – March 2, 2010

4.5 out of 5 stars 240

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$8.77","priceAmount":8.77,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"8","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"77","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"uP8%2FHCIYFgn36p7NqsCvouzZeRbisy%2BJlftDsx68VXeBhetXql2AaQ39EFMpYAjafslPKSOLHlM0WIVq9BXJeJBIhqO50RySdXpNluAZCzC5nkKnSXSoQ2eu8vFIXK7fwQedpSk1wMJ1HSFWV%2Ff1UEs3O%2B5nDH9eezs0HJImy1CSgZshKlvF%2B1GdVHLkuhDm","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

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 America’s best-known education experts.

Diane Ravitch—former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum—examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today’s 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 America’s 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 “merit pay” 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.


The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Frequently bought together

$8.86
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by FindAnyBook.
+
$12.99
Get it as soon as Tuesday, Apr 23
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
$15.85
Get it as soon as Tuesday, Apr 23
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by sixers and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* As an education historian and former assistant secretary of education, Ravitch has witnessed the trends in public education over the past 40 years and has herself swung from public-school advocate to market-driven accountability and choice supporter back to public-school advocate. With passion and insight, she analyzes research and draws on interviews with educators, philanthropists, and business executives to question the current direction of reform of public education. In the mid-1990s, the movement to boost educational standards failed on political concerns; next came the emphasis on accountability with its reliance on standardized testing. Now educators are worried that the No Child Left Behind mandate that all students meet proficiency standards by 2014 will result in the dismantling of public schools across the nation. Ravitch analyzes the impact of choice on public schools, attempts to quantify quality teaching, and describes the data wars with advocates for charter and traditional public schools. Ravitch also critiques the continued reliance on a corporate model for school reform and the continued failure of such efforts to emphasize curriculum. Conceding that there is no single solution, Ravitch concludes by advocating for strong educational values and revival of strong neighborhood public schools. For readers on all sides of the school-reform debate, this is a very important book. --Vanessa Bush

Review

NYSun.com
“Public education is a tough enterprise. It won’t be fixed overnight. But if we stick with a back to basics approach, saturated with the solid American democratic values that Ms. Ravitch advocates, we won’t be so prone to fall for the silver bullets that never seem to find their mark.”

Los Angeles Times
The Death and Life of the Great American School System may yet inspire a lot of high-level rethinking.”

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post
“Her credibility with conservatives is exactly why it would be particularly instructive for everyone--whether you have kids in school or not--to read
The Death and Life of the Great American School System.”

Booklist, starred
“For readers on all sides of the school-reform debate, this is a very important book.”

Library Journal, starred
“[A]n important and highly readable examination of the educational system, how it fails to prepare students for life after graduation, and how we can put it back on track…Anyone interested in education should definitely read this accessible, riveting book.”



Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
“Diane Ravitch is the rarest of scholars—one who reports her findings and conclusions, even when they go against conventional wisdom and even when they counter her earlier, publicly espoused positions. A ‘must’ read for all who truly care about American education.”

Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Education, Stanford University, and Founding Executive Director, National Commission for Teaching & America's Future
“Diane Ravitch is one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. In this powerful and deftly written book, she takes on the big issues of American education today, fearlessly articulating both the central importance of strong public education and the central elements for strengthening our schools. Anyone who cares about public education should read this book.”



E. D. Hirsch, Jr., author of Cultural Literacy, The Schools We Need, and The Making of Americans
“No citizen can afford to ignore this brave book by our premier historian of education. Diane Ravitch shines a bright, corrective light on the exaggerated claims of school reformers on both the left and the right, and offers an utterly convincing case for abandoning quick fixes in favor of nurturing the minds and hearts of our students from the earliest years with enabling knowledge and values.”


New York Times
“Ms. Ravitch…writes with enormous authority and common sense.”

The Nation
“In an age when almost everybody has an opinion about schools, Ravitch’s name must be somewhere near the top of the Rolodex of every serious education journalist in this country.”

Wall Street Journal
“Ms. Ravitch [is] the country’s soberest, most history-minded education expert.”

Christian Science Monitor
“Ravitch’s hopeful vision is of a national curriculum – she’s had enough of fly-by-night methods and unchallenging requirements. She’s impatient with education that is not personally transformative. She believes there is experience and knowledge of art, literature, history, science, and math that every public school graduate should have.”

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0465014917
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (March 2, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780465014910
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465014910
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 240

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Diane Ravitch
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

I was born in Houston, Texas, in 1938. I am third of eight children. I attended the public schools in Houston from kindergarten through high school (San Jacinto High School, 1956, yay!). I then went to Wellesley College, where I graduated in 1960.

Within weeks after graduation from Wellesley, I married. The early years of my marriage were devoted to raising my children. I had three sons: Joseph, Steven, and Michael. Steven died of leukemia in 1966. I now have four grandsons, Nico, Aidan, Elijah, and Asher.

I began working on my first book in the late 1960s. I also began graduate studies at Columbia University. My mentor was Lawrence A. Cremin, a great historian of education. The resulting book was a history of the New York City public schools, called "The Great School Wars," published in 1974. I received my Ph.D. in the history of American education in 1975. In 1977, I wrote "The Revisionists Revised." In 1983 came "The Troubled Crusade." In 1985, "The Schools We Deserve." In 1987, with my friend Checker Finn, "What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?" In 1991, "The American Reader." In 1995, "National Standards in American Education." In 2000, "Left Back." In 2003, "The Language Police." In 2006, "The English Reader," with my son Michael Ravitch. Also in 2006, "Edspeak." I have also edited several books with Joseph Viteritti.

“The Language Police” was a national bestseller. It remains relevant today because it contains a history of censorship in textbooks and education publishing.

My 2010 book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education," was a national bestseller. It addressed the most important education issues of our time. It is a very personal account of why I changed my views about education policies like standardized testing, school choice, and merit pay. I had been a conservative for decades, but about 2007, began to see that I was wrong. This book is the result.

My 2013 book "Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools" was a national bestseller. It documents the false narrative that has been used to attack American public education, and names names. It also contains specific, evidence-based recommendations about how we can improve our schools and our society.

My 2020 book, “Slaying Goliath,” tells the stories of the people and groups that are bravely resisting the privatization movement. It contains an exhaustive list of the individuals, foundations, think tanks, and organization that are wielding vast funds to destroy public schools and replace them with private and religious alternatives that choose the students they want.

In 2020, I co-published “Edspeak and Doubletalk” with veteran educator Nancy Bailey, a concise guide to jargon and deceptive language.

To follow my ongoing work read my blog at dianeravitch.net, where there is a lively conversation among educators and parents about the future of education. I started the blog in 2012. It passed 40 million page views a decade later and continues to grow.

Diane Ravitch

Delete Edit

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
240 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2011
The journeys the intellectually curious take are often interesting, and Diane Ravitch's evolution as a thinker and writer in education is fascinating to follow. This reviewer can't help but wonder how Ms. Ravitch's journey matches his own.

A decade ago I was a graduate student. I had earned my undergraduate degree in music education, and had been teaching for several years, and was uninterested in getting another "ed degree." I opted instead to get a Masters Degree in liberal studies, focusing purely on academics uncluttered with education methods courses.

While there I was exposed to works by Ayn Rand, Tom Sowell, and a host of other free-market thinkers, and I found myself largely convinced by their arguments. As graduation approached I wrote my thesis on free-market reforms in public education, taking the radical stance that public education was a failed experiment that should be abandoned. Instead, I argued, it would be far more efficient to let private and parochial schools compete for students whose parents were free to enroll their child in any school they could afford. The tax savings could go to provide an education for those who could not afford it.

I spent 100s of pages defending this proposition using whatever statistics I could muster to bolster my case. I read and quoted all the free-market education luminaries: Chubb and Moe, Sowell, and yes, Diane Ravitch.

This work altered my life. I quit my public school job and took a teaching job in a parochial high school. I loved that job, and it confirmed for me that private schools (especially religious ones) tended to work better because of a more humane environment, higher curriculum standards, and greater freedom for teachers to both teach and discipline without political interference.

However, I noticed something else. The teachers I was working with at the private high school were exactly the same folks who I taught with in the public high school. They weren't any smarter, or better read, or more educated. They were freer to teach, that was certain. But that was due more than anything else to a relatively permissive administration that wasn't constantly on people's backs trying to "improve performance."

I also noticed that students who did drugs, or got into fights, or just struggled academically disappeared from the school over time. Some were expelled, some just removed themselves when they discovered they couldn't handle the work or didn't like having to wear a uniform, or didn't like the fact they had to deal with a dean of discipline. It was self-evident that this state of affairs made teaching MUCH easier.

After several years teaching at the private high school my family started to grow and my wife informed me that she wanted to stay home with the children. After years teaching in the private school, fiscal realities began to set in. I needed to make more money. So I updated my portfolio, and went to work again in the public schools.

After having taught in both settings for so long, and mixing academic head-work with real world experience in the trenches, I can honestly say that I have drawn many of the same conclusions Diane Ravitch does in this book. The reasons the private schools outperform the public ones are myriad, but have NOTHING TO DO with school choice, economics, tenure reform, unions, and testing. Perversely, these reforms make our public schools less like the private schools that outperform them. In fact, these things have virtually no positive impact at all as far as I can tell.

What does work? Standards and curriculum that aren't driven by tests, teachers who are free to teach the curriculum and hold students to account for the material, and administrations who ensure the curriculum is being taught. Here is a truly frightening true story:

A local superintendent was having a frank conversation with a teacher regarding budget cuts. She said "look, you teach music. There are people who teach social studies. Are these subjects on state tests? Do they matter? As far as I am concerned social studies teachers basically waste faculty parking spaces in the lot."

You read that right. In an age when more than a third of Americans cannot pass the basic citizenship test required of those seeking U.S. citizenship, this superintendent called history and social teachers a waste of faculty parking spaces. Want to know the reasons why social studies supposedly "doesn't matter" anymore? Read this book. It begins with a good explanation. Do you think that the schools are the reason Americans are uninformed. Think again. As a colleague once told me when I shared with them a libertarian critique of the public schools before I left to go teach in the private school: "No. Its society stupid."

In addition to strong and intact traditional families we need standards: NATIONAL STANDARDS that have meat to them in all disciplines. We need to be free to teach that curriculum. We need to work to end grade inflation. We need administrators who support teachers who teach curriculum and hold students to account. We need parents need to work WITH as opposed to AGAINST teachers in the schools. These are the things that will improve education. What WON'T work is the current ideologically driven war on teachers being waged by well-meaning but misguided and out of touch folks on the "right."

Diane Ravitch has written a compelling book. However, I fear it is too little too late. Our public schools (and the teaching profession) may die the same death other jobs have died in the course 30 years of ideologically driven national suicide. I was convinced intellectually by arguments of free-traders and libertarians. However, the real world is what matters. So called free-markets and international free-trade have become the mechanisms by which our middle class is being destroyed, our jobs outsourced, our wages reduced, our job security ended, and our families put under financial strain that they cannot survive. It may be too late to stand up and yell "stop the madness." But stand up we must.
11 people found this helpful
Report
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2010
No silver bullets. This is the simple premise of Diane Ravitch's new book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," which is being brought out this week by Basic Books. Written by one of our nation's most respected scholars, it has been eagerly awaited. But it has also been, at least in some quarters, anticipated with a certain foreboding, because it was likely to debunk much of the conventional -- and some not so conventional -- wisdom surrounding education reform. This is a fabulous book that may well become the most widely read volume on education reform in memory.

Much of the publicity and controversy over the book has to do with changes in public policy positions Dr. Ravitch has taken recently - away from choice and testing. And while she has evolved in her thinking, to my mind she has been remarkably consistent. As she always has, Dr. Ravitch believes in high standards, a rigorous curriculum, treating teachers with respect and never straying from the truth - which is why she has become critical of testing programs that have fostered a culture of lies and exaggeration. And she backs up her positions - old and new - with convincing data and perceptive analysis.

"The Death and Life of the Great American School System" is a passionate defense of our nation's public schools, a national treasure that Dr. Ravitch believes is "intimately connected to our concepts of citizenship and democracy and to the promise of American life." She issues a warning against handing over educational policy decisions to private interests, and criticizes misguided government policies that have done more harm than good.

Ideas such as choice, utilizing a "business model" structure, accountability based on standardized tests and others, some favored by the left, others by the right are deemed as less, often much less, than advertised. Dr. Ravitch doesn't oppose charters, but rather feels that the structure itself doesn't mandate success. As in conventional schools, there will be good ones and bad ones. But charters must not be allowed to cream off the best students, or avoid taking the most troubled, as has been alleged here in New York City.

Her main point, however, is broader. "It is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing educational policy to be directed, or one might say, captured by private foundations," Dr. Ravitch notes. She suggests that there is "something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public educational policy to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people." However well intended the effort, the results, in her telling, have not been impressive, in some cases doing more harm than good.

These foundations are beyond the reach of the voters' will, and they themselves, "are accountable to no one," Dr. Ravitch writes. "If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountable power." Dr. Ravitch questions why we're allowing the relatively small financial contributions made by the foundations, dwarfed by the hundreds of billions America spends on public education, to leverage the entire investment? And she asks who, when there is no accountability, will take the fall if things go horribly wrong?

My experience, writing about public education in New York City, suggests that many of the prescriptions imposed by the foundations have indeed resulted in spectacular failures. But I can't recall a single press conference at which a somber foundation head, flanked by the local superintendent and mayor says, "Sorry, pupils, we really bollixed that one."

The Gates Foundation has pumped billions into the creation of small high schools, facilitating the destruction of hundreds of existing larger high schools. So unsuccessful has this strategy been that Mr. Gates has now abandoned it throughout the nation. Many experts, Dr. Ravitch among them, could have told Mr. Gates that the problem wasn't the high schools. It is that the students were arriving at these schools ill prepared to do high school level work.

What of the once-great comprehensive high schools, institutions with history and in some cases a track record of success going back generations? As time moves on, it is fast becoming clear that the new small schools, many with inane themes (how about the School of Peace and Diversity?), can never substitute for a good neighborhood high school, which can become a center of communal life and pride. Dr. Ravitch's report underscores the fact that the trick is to fix the neighborhood schools beset with problems, not destroy them.

The involvement of charitable foundations in education is familiar ground to Diane Ravitch. She came to prominence as the nation's leading historian of education with the publication of her acclaimed book, "The Great School Wars, New York City 1805-1973." The final chapters in that book are an account of the controversy over community control of the city's public schools that began during the 1960s, facilitated by the Ford Foundation, resulted in a bitter teachers' strike, and delivered a clunky, partially decentralized restructuring.

Had it not been for these events, her history of New York City's public education system might have quickly been forgotten, gathering dust on library shelves. But history is not just the distant past, but the news of yesterday as well. By putting events, still fresh in our memories, into relevant context, Dr. Ravitch demonstrated their importance in the larger historical context and made her reputation.

An article she wrote more than 40 years ago, entitled "Foundations: Playing God in the Ghetto," sounds like something from the front pages of today's news. No other observer of the events surrounding our schools brings such a deep perspective to the events of today in our schools, always different but so much the same.

If the Broads, Waltons and Gates really want to fix America's schools, a good place to start would be by purchasing a copy of Dr. Ravitch's book for every Washington bureaucrat, senator, representative, state legislator, mayor, school superintendent, school board member, and principal. That could set the whole system moving in the right direction.

It is not only the foundations that Dr. Ravitch blames for the current crisis: government has also failed in the attempt to reform the schools from above, lacking a clear perspective of how schools work on a day-to-day basis. Thus, the major federal initiative, No Child Left Behind, well intentioned as it may have been, ended up damaging the quality of education, not improving it.

While the federal government declares schools as "failing" and prescribes sanctions for schools not meeting its goal of "annual yearly progress," it is the states that are allowed to write and administer the tests. This has led to a culture of ever-easier tests and more test preparation rather than real instruction. More ominously, it led to such scandals as the New York State Education Department lowering the "cut scores" that define the line between passing and failing.

Dr. Ravitch suggests that the proper roles of the states and federal government have been reversed under NCLB. Maybe the standards for achievement should be set in Washington, which, after all, administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the solutions found at the local level, using the accurate data provided by Washington. Instead of moving in a different direction from the failed NCLB model of the Bush Administration, the Obama administration has adopted and expanded on them.

When appointing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the president cited Mr. Duncan's record of "improving" test scores in Chicago. Dr. Ravitch points out that these improvements were rejected as exaggerated and "not real student improvement" in a study by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. She notes that the Obama administration is linking increases in federal funding to mandated adoption by other districts of the same programs that have already failed Mr. Duncan and the children of Chicago.

Teacher-bashing, so in vogue among the "reformers" dominating the national discussion, is rejected by Dr. Ravitch. How could the unions be responsible for so much failure when, she asks, traditionally, the highest scores in the nation are posted by strong union states such as Massachusetts (best results in the nation) and the lowest scores in the south, where unions are weak or non-existent?

The mania for closing "failing" schools also comes under the Ravitch microscope. To her mind, closing schools should be reserved for the "most extreme cases." Virtually alone among those discussing educational policy, Dr. Ravitch appreciates the value of schools as neighborhood institutions. To her mind, closing schools "accelerates a sense of transiency and impermanence, while dismissing the values of continuity and tradition, which children, families and communities need as anchors in their lives."

I saw this at work recently with the closing of a high school in my old Bronx neighborhood, a school from which both my mother and wife were graduated. Will the replacement hodge-podge of a half dozen unrelated "theme schools" drawing conscripted students from all over the city, ever mean as much to the local community, or have the potential to contribute to its renaissance?

If there is no silver bullet to fix the schools, Dr. Ravitch reassures us that the public schools can be greatly improved, even without miracles, the heavy hand of government or direction from the mega rich and their powerful foundations. What does Dr. Ravitch suggest instead?

She advocates a clear vision of what we should expect our schools to accomplish for our children, and a "well conceived coherent and sequential curriculum" designed to fulfill that vision, declaring our intention "to educate all children in the full range of liberal arts and sciences and physical education." Dr. Ravitch notes that one state that has a particularly well-regarded curriculum, Massachusetts, routinely outperforms the other states on national and international measures.

Once a quality curriculum is in place, we can recruit and train teachers who fully comprehend what is expected of them, and develop programs to overcome the real deficits that many students in our most at risk communities bring to their academic careers. Similarly students must understand what standards of behavior and academic commitment are demanded of them. Testing should again be used as a device to help students in a diagnostic way, not to punish adults or stigmatize schools.

Public education is a tough enterprise. It won't be fixed overnight. But if we stick with a back to basics approach, saturated with the solid American democratic values that Dr. Ravitch advocates, we won't be so prone to fall for the silver bullets that never seem to find their mark. Read this book!
269 people found this helpful
Report