Last week the New York Times published an interesting article, titled Scholar’s School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate, about education historian Diane Ravitch’s about-face on a number of public education issues.

I have been reading Dr. Ravitch’s work for a while and want to call it to the attention of people interested in public education.  Why?

A former Bush (both) administration(s) appointee who championed No Child Left Behind and other education reform initiatives,  Dr. Ravitch has reconsidered her views on that legislation and other important public education issues.  Some popular initiatives Dr. Ravitch is now questioning:

• Charter Schools. She has concluded that they are no better than average and draining resources from the public education system.
• Standards/Accountability. She has questioned whether No Child Left Behind standards and curricula have produced lower standards so that most children only appear not to be left behind.
• 21st Century Skills. In September 2009, she gave us a history lesson on why skill-centered education, like the 21st Century Skills initiative so popular here in West Virginia right now, has never worked.

Dr. Ravitch’s September 2009 op-ed commentary in the Boston Globe is a relatively brief document rich with insights about public education:

• “For the past century, our schools of education have obsessed over critical-thinking skills, projects, cooperative learning, experiential learning, and so on.  But they have paid precious little attention to the disciplinary knowledge that young people need to make sense of the world.”
• “Thinking critically involves comparing and contrasting and sythesizing what one has learned.  And a great deal of knowledge is necessary before one can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanations.”
• “The intelligent person, the one who truly is a practitioner of critical thinking, has the capacity to understand the lessons of history, to grasp the inner logic of science and mathematics, and to realize the meaning of philosophical debates by studying them.”

Dr. Ravitch’s views are significantly outside of the current educational mainstream, which happens to consist of a conventional wisdom shared by most Democrats and Republicans alike.  You would think that when most Democrats and Republicans agree on something, they’re probably right.  But Dr. Ravitch will make you “think” otherwise.

From time to time, I like to call people’s attentions to provocative ideas that lie outside the mainstream of conventional thought, especially if I believe there is at least a grain of truth in what is being said.  Today that person is Marion Brady, veteran teacher and curriculum designer, who wrote an open letter to teachers recently that was published in the Washington Post’s education blog “The Answer Sheet”:

The single worst shoot-yourself-in-the-foot act that contributed to our loss of control of education reform happened about 20 years ago. That’s when leaders of business and industry, convinced that educators either didn’t know enough or didn’t care enough about educating the young to be trusted, hijacked our profession. And we let them.

Mr. Brady suggests that we have entrusted our educational system to people who are not professionals.  They think they know how to run a school because they know how to run a business and they attended school as student.

If you’re looking for a surgeon to remove a cancerous growth, a plumber to fix a leaky pipe, an artist to paint a portrait, a caterer to produce a wedding dinner, you don’t dictate which scalpels the surgeon picks up, which wrenches the plumber brings into the house, which brushes the painter will use, or select the caterer’s kitchen utensils.

Mr. Brady suggests that it’s fine for these non-professionals to engage in problem identification, but they should leave solution-identification and implementation to professional educators.

The new leaders were certain they knew what was wrong with America’s schools, and what had to be done to set them right: What was needed were “standards.” Clear, no-nonsense standards. Tough, demanding standards.

Mr. Brady thinks everyone is wasting a lot of time developing curriculum standards.  First, they are unnecessarily narrowing what students need to know. Second, they are encouraging memorization over the development of “an organized, self-reinforcing, dynamic body of knowledge.”  Third, they are stifling the development of new ideas by providing an official list of worthy ideas.

Two recent posts here - The Race to the Bottom and The Race to the Top? – summarize research and analysis that support Mr. Brady’s contentions.