Serve the Children Better, Give Them the Resources They Need

Diane Ravitch was interviewed this morning on NPR's Morning Edition. Formerly a supporter of charter schools, standardized testing, and No Child Left Behind, she recently reviewed the data and found that these programs she had advocated for simply weren't working. You can hear the 5 minute clip, or read the transcript, in this brief interview highlighting her new book, Reign of Error.

Here are a couple of highlights from the interview:

"The reason we call them bad is because they're serving disproportionate numbers of children with disabilities, because the charter schools don't want them. They have disproportionate numbers of children who don't read or speak English because they're foreign born. And the charter schools don't want them either. So we're getting the public schools overloaded with low performing children and then calling them failing schools. And that's wrong. Are there bad schools? If there are bad schools then the people whose feet should be held to the fire are the superintendents, the administrators, the people who run that system. It's their job to identify the schools that are really bad schools and to change them. And then give that school the small class sizes it needs, the guidance counselors it needs, the extra resources it needs so that it can serve the children better."

"American public education is a huge success. Test scores have never been higher than they are today for white children, black children, hispanic children and Asian children. High school graduation rates have never been higher than they are today for all of those groups. Our schools are not failing. They're very successful. Where there are low test scores, where there are higher drop out rates than the national average is where there is concentrated poverty. Now we cannot, obviously, wipe poverty out over night, but there are many things we can do to make school a stronger equalizer than it is today. One of those would be to have reduced class sizes in the schools that serve the children of poverty. Another would be to have universal pre-kindergarten. We should have a strong arts program in every one of these schools because children have to have a reason to come to school other than just to be tested. … The kids we're trying to help the most are getting the least."