Why Mess With Success - Issues With Public Education Book Critique

By Isaiah Jackson

Though she has worked at a variety of highly influential jobs in education, her specialty is the history of education. All of us know what those who don't know history are doomed to do, and it behooves even skeptics (not just skeptical school board members) to turn an attentive ear to what is carefully laid out in The Death and Life of the Great American Education System.

Read her book and then join us at and help us bring the demise of NCLB and Race to the Top to an even faster conclusion. This book is a must read for every teacher, administrator and anyone else interested in education. Teachers are no longer respected as professionals to do the work they know is right for our kids. She has done her homework on the effects of NCLB and presents extensive data to prove it. What almost every reader will acknowledge, though, by the end of the book is that their perspective has been broadened, and their understanding of the issues has been deepened. It is not too often that a book forms a bridge between a school board member and the head of the teacher's union, but this one is capable of doing so (and did).

Before NCLB, schools defined success as the development of skills and the acquisition of a body of knowledge needed to become a productive citizen. Now success means getting good scores on a particular set of tests that may not produce a true measure of educational achievement. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker.

It's an honest and frank assessment of the state of American education from someone who has been through it all. Sir Winston Churchill said: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

As such, it probably comes as no surprise that I disagree with much of what Dr Ravitch has written in her book, at least, to varying degrees. Ravitch uses a bevy of academic studies, articles, and research to support her arguments against many of the current trends in education reform including NCLB-driven testing, expansion of charter schools, and merit-based compensation systems. My parents were public school Diane Ravitch has been on both sides of the No Child Left Behind fence. She shares her insight into what has become of one of the greatest education systems.

To the degree that parents want to send their children to charter or private schools, they impoverish the social and learning environment of public schools. This book is a clear, refreshing and thorough response to the educational reformers who blame teachers for the devastation brought on by the "recession", poverty, job loss and single family parenthood.

Her positions on an encyclopedic range of issues have been paraphrased in innumerable places. I do not propose to be useful in embellishing them. Instead, each chapter appears to be written to stand alone. And she makes many very strong arguments (but unfortunately, without much persuasive evidence or data). 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. Then there are the billionaire foundation meddlings, my personal warning is watch out for this Santa Claus! The ability to think, adapt, and, and be skeptical is difficult to measure. Ravitch has served in the field of education during the reign of three different Presidents. She was committed to NCLB and high stakes testing in the past but over the last three as the negative findings became public she now rejects both.

About the Author:

The "output" that comes with standardized testing does not always truly reflect the knowledge mastered in a given year, and evaluating schools solely on these test results does not truly reflect the quality of the teaching/learning at a given school. GARAGE STORAGE SYSTEM.