Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  The reformers’ big idea is to establish a free market of schools, with many privately managed charter schools, and assumes that the resultant competition will improve all schools. Some reformers, like Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal, think the answer is to offer vouchers so that children in low-performing public schools can go to private and religious schools. The reformers can point to isolated examples of charter schools in which poor children got higher test scores or achieved a higher graduation rate or a higher college acceptance rate than their peers in public schools. But after twenty years of charter school experience, the number of these exemplars remains small. The evidence for vouchers is even weaker. As yet, no entire district has been transformed by private management. We would know more if the reformers took over an entire low-performing district, like Newark or Detroit, leaving no children out. But that has not happened.

  Meanwhile, they rest their claim to be reformers on the belief that schools can be fixed now and that student outcomes (test scores) will reach high levels without doing anything about poverty.

  But this makes no sense.

  Poverty matters. Poverty affects children’s health and well-being. It affects their emotional lives and their attention spans, their attendance and their academic performance. Poverty affects their motivation and their ability to concentrate on anything other than day-to-day survival. In a society of abundance, poverty is degrading and humiliating.

  Some children are able to rise above all the burdens imposed upon them by poverty. Some are able to focus on their schoolwork and to master whatever assignments they receive. They become excellent students and get high test scores. Some graduate from high school. Some go to college. A few will become highly successful professionals.

  Most don’t. Most are dragged down by the circumstances into which they were born, through no fault of their own. Our most endangered children are raised by single parents who struggle to feed and clothe their children. Some are raised by two parents who face similar obstacles. Some are raised by grandparents. Some are raised by a parent who is addicted to drugs or mentally ill or emotionally incapacitated. Some are homeless or in foster care. Some do not know who their parents are.

  It is easy for people who enjoy lives of economic ease to say that poverty doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to them. It is an abstraction. For them, it is a hurdle to be overcome, like having a bad day or a headache or an ill-fitting jacket.

  But for those who live in a violent neighborhood, in dingy surroundings, it is a way of life, not an inconvenience. Children who have seen a friend or relative murdered cope with emotional burdens that are unimaginable to the corporate leaders who want to reform their schools or close them.

  The rate of childhood poverty in the United States is higher than in any other advanced nation. Nearly a quarter of American children live in poverty. The latest report from UNICEF says that it is 23 percent. No other advanced nation tolerates this level of poverty. In Finland, which has an excellent school system, 5 percent of the nation’s children live in poverty. The U.S. rate for child poverty is about double the rate found in such countries as the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. It is triple the rate of child poverty in Germany, Austria, and France. And it is quadruple the rate of child poverty in such nations as Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Finland, and Iceland.4

  The UNICEF report says that the only “economically advanced” nation with a higher child poverty rate than the United States is Romania. But having visited that nation and seen how it was impoverished by decades of misrule and dictatorship during the Cold War, I would not place it in the same category as the United States and Western European nations. Romania aside, it is clear that the United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of child poverty of any of the economically advanced nations in the Western Hemisphere.

  Poverty matters before children are born. According to the Centers for Disease Control, poverty is “one of the most important predictors of insufficient prenatal care. Women with incomes below the federal poverty level consistently show higher rates of late or no prenatal care and lower rates of early care than women with larger incomes.” The United States has an especially high rate of women who do not receive prenatal care until relatively late in their pregnancies. A delay in obtaining prenatal care or not getting any prenatal care is associated with “increased risks of low birth-weight babies, premature births, neonatal mortality, infant mortality, and maternal mortality.”5

  Preterm births pose risks to both mother and child, and the proportion of such births increased by 20 percent between 1990 and 2006, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. At present, one of every eight live births is preterm. Two-thirds of all infant deaths are preterm babies. Those who survive may have “lifetime health complications, including breathing problems, cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities. Late-preterm infants (babies born between 34 and 37 weeks gestation) are 4 times more likely than term infants to have at least 1 medical condition and 3.5 times more likely to have 2 or more conditions. Approximately 8 percent of preterm babies have a major birth defect. Preterm birth is a leading cause of neurological disability, including cerebral palsy in children.”6

  Preterm births are associated with a greater likelihood of learning disabilities: “Infants born early have higher rates of hospitalization and illness than full-term babies. Growth and development in the last part of pregnancy are vital to the baby’s health. The earlier the baby is born, the greater the chance he or she will have health problems. Preterm babies tend to grow more slowly than term babies. They also may have problems with their eyes, ears, breathing, and nervous system. Learning and behavioral problems are more common in children who were born before 39 weeks.”

  Whatever it might cost to assure that every pregnant woman gets the prenatal care she needs at the earliest possible date, the cost of the status quo is far larger: “Medical costs for a premature baby are much greater than for a healthy newborn. A 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine found the economic burden associated with preterm birth in the United States was at least $26.2 billion annually, or $51,600 per infant born preterm.”7

  Given these facts, how can anyone reasonably claim that poverty is just an excuse? How can people ignore the fact that poverty is the most reliable predictor of which women will receive adequate prenatal care to assure the health of their babies? Think of the improvement in the physical health of children and their mothers if our nation’s philanthropists determined to solve this one very finite problem: the lack of adequate prenatal care. Other nations have figured it out. Why can’t we?

  There are many significant differences between children of the poor and children of the nonpoor. As Richard Rothstein wrote in his major study of the causes of the black-white achievement gap, “Demography is not destiny, but students’ social and economic family characteristics are a powerful influence on their relative average achievement.”8 Very poor children can succeed in school, and middle-class children may do very badly despite their advantages. But on average, the advantages and disadvantages into which children are born make a difference. As the singer Sophie Tucker used to say, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is definitely better.”

  Children born to poor mothers are less likely to receive regular medical care. They are less likely to see a dentist. They are less likely to have educated parents. They are less likely to have books and magazines in their home. They are less likely to be read to each day by a parent or guardian. They are less likely to be enrolled in a prekindergarten program. They are less likely to have their own bedroom and a quiet place to study. They are less likely to hear a large and complex vocabulary at home, as compared with children in professional families. They are less likely to get three nutritious meals every day. They are less likely to live in sound housing. They are less likely to live in a safe neighborhood. They are less likely to take family trips to the local library or museum. Th
ey are less likely to participate in organized activities after school, such as sports, dramatics, art or dance or music classes. They are less likely to take a family vacation or go to summer camp.9

  Children of the poor are more likely to be born preterm or with low birth weight and consequently to suffer cognitive impairments, learning disabilities, and attention deficits. They are more likely to suffer “fetal alcohol syndrome,” a collection of severe cognitive, physical, and behavioral problems that occurs ten times more often among low-income black children than among middle-class white children. They are more likely to live in a dwelling infested with rats and roaches. They are more likely to have a parent or guardian who is incarcerated or unemployed. They are more likely to be homeless. They are more likely to move frequently and change schools frequently because their parents or guardians couldn’t pay the rent. They are more likely to have asthma (“the disease is provoked in part from breathing fumes from low-grade home heating oil and from diesel trucks and buses … as well as from excessive dust and allergic reactions to mold, cockroaches, and secondhand smoke”). Children who suffer from asthma are likely to wake up during the night wheezing and to be drowsy and inattentive the next day in school. Poor children are more likely to be ill without getting treated by a doctor. They are more likely to be hungry or to suffer anemia because of a poor diet. They are more likely to have undetected vision problems. They are more likely to have undetected hearing problems. They are more likely to have toothaches and cavities. They are more likely to be exposed to lead in the paint on their walls. Lead poisoning may cause cognitive deficiencies, which obviously affect academic performance.10

  Children of poor families are more likely to be chronically absent from school, missing as much as a month of the school year. This sustained absence from daily instruction widens the achievement gap.11

  The burdens imposed on children by poverty are physical, emotional, cognitive, and psychological. Because of poverty, the achievement gap begins before the first day of kindergarten. The advantage is definitely with children who have good health, regular checkups, good nutrition, educated parents, a literate environment, basic economic security, and an array of after-school and summer activities.

  When one considers the difference in life circumstances of children who are poor and children who are not poor, it is inconceivable how any responsible person could claim that poverty doesn’t matter or that poverty is an “excuse.” What such a person is really saying is that we don’t need to do anything about the health issues of poor children. We need not concern ourselves with their inability to see well or hear well, with their toothaches or their asthma or anemia. We need not fuss about the conditions in which they live. The reformers seem to think that the burdens of poverty, no matter how oppressive, can be overcome by effective teachers and by a regime of strict discipline. “Great” teachers, they assert, will enable the success not just of a small number of determined children but of all children in their classes. They reason that if children afflicted with all these burdens are taught by someone with high expectations, if they learn to sit quietly and walk in silence, if they learn to follow instructions without questioning, if they learn proper manners, then they will succeed in school, they will get high test scores, they will go to college, and they will succeed in life.

  But the weight of social science evidence says they are wrong.

  The economist Helen F. Ladd, in her presidential address to the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, reviewed the evidence and found a clear linkage between poverty and academic performance in state and national assessments, as well as international assessments. In every nation, even in high-performing nations such as Finland, South Korea, and Canada, the achievement levels of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds fall short of their more advantaged peers. The gap between poor and advantaged students is greatest, she found, where income inequality is greatest.12

  The gaps are smallest in those countries like Finland and the Netherlands that do the most to support the health and well-being of their children. Ladd found that “the low average test scores of U.S. students largely reflect our extremely high poverty rate and our relative lack of attention to the overall well-being of our children.” She concluded that “it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S. to replicate the success of higher scoring countries such as Finland, Canada and the Netherlands by focusing on school reform alone, and that is especially true for school reform that pays little attention to meeting the social needs of disadvantaged children.”

  If no other nation has managed to eliminate the achievement gap between children of the haves and children of the have-nots, why expect that the United States can do it without a major investment in reducing the causes of low achievement, which exist before the first day of school? If nations that devote significant resources to ensuring that their children are healthy have not closed the gaps, why expect that the United States can do so without improving the material condition of children’s lives?

  Other countries demonstrate that the gap can be narrowed, but narrowing it requires a willingness to protect children and families.

  The reformers’ belief that fixing schools will fix poverty has no basis in reality, experience, or evidence. It delays the steps necessary to heal our society and help children. And at the same time, it castigates and demoralizes teachers for conditions they did not cause and do not control.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Facts About Teachers and Test Scores

  CLAIM Teachers determine student test scores, and test scores may be used to identify and reward effective teachers and to fire those who are not effective.

  REALITY Tests scores are not the best way to identify the best teachers.

  Many educators hoped that No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on high-stakes testing would diminish when Barack Obama was elected. Unfortunately, President Obama’s Race to the Top adopted the same test-based accountability as NCLB. The two programs differed in one important respect: where NCLB held schools accountable for low scores, Race to the Top held both schools and teachers accountable. States were encouraged to create data systems to link the test scores of individual students to individual teachers. If the students’ scores went up, the teacher was an “effective” teacher; if the students’ scores did not go up, the teacher was an “ineffective” teacher. If schools persistently had low scores, the school was a “failing” school, and its staff should be punished. No excuses for failure, said the corporate reformers; we can’t wait, children have only one chance. We must close their schools and fire their teachers now, for the sake of the children.

  Educators say that every child can learn, but they understand that children learn at different rates and that some inevitably learn more than others. Educators recognize that some children have more advantages and a faster start than others. Some have disabilities that interfere with their learning. Not all children start at the same place and not all children end at the same place, and test scores are not the only way to determine whether children are learning. Even the Obama administration’s use of “growth scores,” which measure increases in test scores from year to year, places far too much emphasis on standardized tests.

  In the corporate reform mythology, every child can learn, and there can be no excuses for those who don’t. If they don’t get higher test scores every year, it is the fault of their teachers, whose expectations are low. Anyone who suggests that students’ family life or poverty might have anything to do with their test scores is just making excuses for bad teachers. Reformers believe that “highly effective” teachers can cause their students’ scores to go up every year. Lesser teachers cannot; those who can’t produce, they believe, must be found and fired without delay. Reformers say that an effective teacher can bring about three times as much learning in a year as a hapless, ineffective teacher. Or they say that three effective teachers in a row will change the life chances of their students, but a run of ineffective teachers will ru
in students’ lives forever.

  By the spring of 2010, the narrative of the corporate reformers was fully formed. In Central Falls, Rhode Island, a tiny and impoverished district, the local superintendent threatened to fire every teacher in the high school because its test scores were low. The state superintendent of schools supported the idea; so did Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama. None of the teachers received individual evaluations, but our nation’s leaders agreed they should all be fired. A cover story in Newsweek spelled out the reform narrative. On the cover was emblazoned the headline “The Key to Fixing American Education,” and behind it, written again and again, as if on a blackboard, was the solution: “We must fire bad teachers, we must fire bad teachers.”1

  Where did these ideas come from? One important source is the work of the statistician William Sanders in Tennessee, who began his career advising agricultural and manufacturing industries. Sanders claimed that his statistical modeling could determine how much “value” a teacher added to her students’ testing performance. By monitoring students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year, Sanders figured, he could isolate the “value added” by the teacher of that child. By comparing prior test scores, Sanders reasoned that the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of that student became unimportant. In effect, Sanders treated student learning as a finite quantity, with the teacher as the variable. The students’ test score increases or losses could be attributed to the teacher. In his studies, an effective teacher was one who produced large test score gains year after year. Based on Sanders’s work, reformers concluded that three effective teachers in a row could close the achievement gap.2