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

by Diane Ravitch

  SOURCE: U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (CPS), October 1972–2009.

  ! Interpret data with caution. The coefficient of variation (CV) for this estimate is 30 percent or greater. NOTE: The status dropout rate indicates the percentage of sixteen- through twenty-four-year-olds who are not enrolled in high school and who lack a high school credential. High school credentials include high school diplomas and alternative credentials, such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate. Respondents were able to identify themselves as being two or more races. The white, non-Hispanic; black, non-Hispanic; Asian/Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic; and American Indian/Alaska Native, non-Hispanic categories consist of individuals who considered themselves to be one race and who did not identify as Hispanic. Non-Hispanics who identified themselves as multiracial are included in the “two or more races, non-Hispanic” category. The Hispanic category consists of Hispanics of all races and racial combinations.

  SOURCE: U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (CPS), October 2009.

  SOURCE: OECD, Education at a Glance 2012 (2012), Table A1.2a, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932664176.

  NOTE: Countries are ranked in descending order of the percentage of twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-olds who have attained tertiary education.

  SOURCE: OECD, Table A1.3a. See Annex 3 for notes (www.oecd.org/edu/eag2011).

  * Significantly different (p<.05) from 2008

  NOTE: Score gaps are calculated based on differences between unrounded average scores. Black includes African American. The white and black race categories exclude Hispanic origin.

  * Significantly different (p<.05) from 2008

  NOTE: Score gaps are calculated based on differences between unrounded average scores. Black includes African American. The white and black race categories exclude Hispanic origin.

  Acknowledgments

  In writing this book, I incurred many debts. I wish above all to thank my dear friend and partner, Mary Butz, whose patience and support sustained me during long hours of reading, writing, and revising.

  I thank the other members of my family, who have been understanding and supportive of my passion to write this book, including my children, Joseph, Lisa, Michael, and Daniel, and my grandchildren, Nico, Aidan, and Elijah.

  I am grateful to those on whom I relied for ideas, inspiration, reflections, research, and suggestions, including Bruce Baker, Jennifer Berkshire, Carol Burris, Anthony Cody, Linda Darling-Hammond, Matthew Di Carlo, Stephen Dyer, Leonie Haimson, Noel Hammatt, Lance Hill, Daniel Hurewitz, Jeannie Kaplan, Rita Kramer, Larry Lee, Karen Miller, Jonathan Pelto, Bill Phillis, Michael Ravitch, Janice Resseger, Richard Rothstein, Gary Rubinstein, Pasi Sahlberg, Carla Sanger, Mercedes Schneider, Diana Senechal, Mark Weber, Elaine Weiss, and Yong Zhao. I thank my dear friend Sandra Priest Rose, who has been a source of encouragement and wisdom for many years. I thank the many teachers, principals, superintendents, parents, school board members, scholars, and friends who sent me articles and ideas about what was happening in their schools and communities.

  I thank my literary agents, Lynn Chu and Glen Hartley, for believing in my work over many years.

  And I thank Victoria Wilson, my editor. Knopf published my 2003 book, The Language Police. It aslo published the work of my mentor, the late Lawrence A. Cremin, and I am happy to see this book on the same list with his great works on the history of American education.

  Notes

  CHAPTER 2 The Context for Corporate Reform

  1. Walt Haney, “The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 8, no. 41 (August 19, 2000); Stephen P. Klein et al., “What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us?” RAND Issue Paper IP-202, RAND, Santa Monica, Calif., 2000, 2, 9–13.

  2. Jennifer Brown, “Cost Doesn’t Spell Success for Colorado Schools Using Consultants to Improve Achievement,” Denver Post, February 19, 2012.

  3. Rick Hess, “The Common Core Kool-Aid,” Education Week, November 30, 2012.

  4. Joanne Weiss, “The Innovation Mismatch: ‘Smart Capital’ and Education Innovation,” Harvard Business Review, HBR Blog Network, March 31, 2011.

  5. Stephanie Simon, “Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits from U.S. K–12 Market,” Huffington Post, August 2, 2012.

  6. Daniel Taub, “Andre Agassi Forms Charter-School Fund with Canyon Capital,” Bloomberg News, June 2, 2011; Brian Toporek, “Billionaire Donates $18 Million to Agassi’s Charter School,” Education Week, October 31, 2011.

  7. Tierney Plumb, “Movie-House Investor Dives into the Charter-School Space,” The Motley Fool, August 16, 2011; Capital Roundtable, For-Profit Education Roundtable Brochure, July 16, 2012, http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/Capital-Roundtable-For-Profit-Education-Private-Equity-Conference-2012.html; Juan Gonzalez, “Albany Charter Cash Cow: Big Banks Making a Bundle on New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost,” New York Daily News, May 7, 2010.

  CHAPTER 3 Who Are the Corporate Reformers?

  1. Rick Snyder, “A Special Message from Rick Snyder: Education Reform” (memoran-dum), April 27, 2011, http://www.michigan.gov/documents/snyder/SpecialMessageonEducationReform_351586_7.pdf.

  2. Sam Dillon, “Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates,” New York Times, May 21, 2011; Sam Dillon, “Foundations Join to Offer Online Courses for Schools,” New York Times, April 27, 2011; Stephanie Simon, “K–12 Student Database Jazzes Tech Startups, Spooks Parents,” Reuters, March 3, 2013.

  3. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers together gave a total of $330 million to political campaigns and civil rights groups over a six-year period from 2005 to 2011. Alicia Mundy, “Teachers Unions Give Broadly,” Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2012. During the same period of time, the major foundations supporting test-based accountability and choice spent many times that amount. Gates spends $300–$400 million each year on education. Ken Libby, “A Look at the Education Programs of the Gates Foundation,” Shanker Blog, March 2, 2012, http://shankerblog.org/?p=5234. In 2011, the Walton Family Foundation spent $159 million on education grants: http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/mediacenter/walton-family-foundation-invests-$159-million-in-k12-education-reform-in-2011. These figures do not include political contributions made by either Gates or the Walton family.

  4. Steven Brill, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 131–32, 224–25.

  5. “Chiefs for Change Statement on Louisiana’s Bold Education Reforms,” Foundation for Excellence in Education Web site, April 18, 2012, http://www.excelined.org/ReformNews/2012/Chiefs_for_Change_Statement_on_Louisianas_Bold_Education_Reforms.aspx.

  6. Andrew Ujifusa, “Policy Shop Casts Long K–12 Shadow,” Education Week, April 25, 2012; Julie Underwood and Julie F. Mead, “A Smart ALEC Threatens Public Education,” Education Week, February 29, 2012.

  7. Anthony Cody, “Obama Blasts His Own Education Policies,” Living in Dialogue (blog), Education Week, March 29, 2011.

  8. Sunlen Miller, “Obama on Wisconsin Budget Protests: ‘An Assault on Unions,’ ” ABC News, February 17, 2011; Nia-Malika Henderson and Peter Wallsten, “Obama Praises Jeb Bush on Education Reform,” Washington Post, March 4, 2011; “Struggling Florida Schools Get More Time,” WCTV, July 19, 2011, http://www.wctv.tv/news/headlines/Struggling_Schools_Ask_to_Remain_Open_125809473.html?ref=473.

  9. Adam Peshek, “ALEC Responds to Ravitch Blog Post,” Education Week, May 15, 2012.

  CHAPTER 4 The Language of Corporate Reform

  1. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Confidence in U.S. Public Schools at New Low,” Gallup Politics, June 20, 2012.

  2. William J. Bushaw and Shane Lopez, “Betting on Teachers: The 43rd Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, September 2011, 18–19.

  3. Bill Gates, “America’s High Schools Are Obsolete” (speech to the National Govern
ors Association, February 26, 2005).

  4. Melinda Gates, interview with Jeffrey Brown and Hari Sreenivasan (video and transcript), NewsHour, PBS, June 4, 2012.

  5. Diane Ravitch, “The Myth of Charter Schools,” New York Review of Books, November 11, 2010.

  6. Joel I. Klein, Condoleezza Rice, and others, U.S. Education Reform and National Security (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2012).

  7. Tom Loveless, The 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., February 16, 2012; Tom Loveless, “Does the Common Core Matter?,” Education Week, April 18, 2012; Diane Ravitch, “Do Our Public Schools Threaten National Security?,” New York Review of Books, June 7, 2012.

  CHAPTER 5 The Facts About Test Scores

  1. Robert Rothman, “NAEP Board Urged to Delay Standard-Setting Plan,” Education Week, January 16, 1991.

  2. Ravitch, “Myth of Charter Schools.”

  3. A screen shot of the StudentsFirst Web site: http://msteacher65.tumblr.com/post/24901512311/michelle-rhee-no-friend-to-educators.

  4. National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2011 (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2011), 15, 44; National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2011 (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2011), 16, 41.

  5. Gerald Bracey pointed out how education statistics are misreported by ignoring Simpson’s paradox. See Gerald Bracey, “On Knowing When You’re Being Lied to with Statistics,” Huffington Post, January 27, 2007. He explained: “Simpson’s Paradox occurs whenever the whole group shows one pattern but subgroups show a different pattern.” Thus, the whole group may show a flat line at the same time that every subgroup shows gains because of increased numbers of those in the lowest-scoring groups.

  6. NAEP began reporting data for American Indian/Alaska Native in 2000.

  7. B. D. Rampey, G. S. Dion, and P. L. Donahue, NAEP 2008 Trends in Academic Progress (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, 2009). Progress stopped in 2008, the high-stakes testing era of NCLB and Race to the Top. The update of this report in 2013 showed virtually no change in scores between 2008 and 2012. See http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2012/.

  CHAPTER 6 The Facts About the Achievement Gap

  1. Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein, What Do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance? (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2013).

  2. Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley, The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped (Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 2010).

  3. National Center for Education Statistics, Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2011, 11.

  4. National Center for Education Statistics, Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2011, 12.

  5. Sean F. Reardon, “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations,” in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, ed. Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).

  6. Thomas B. Timar and Julie Maxwell-Jolly, eds., Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Perspectives and Strategies for Challenging Times (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press, 2012), 230.

  7. Ibid., 240–41.

  CHAPTER 7 The Facts About the International Test Scores

  1. Klein, Rice, et al., U.S. Education Reform and National Security.

  2. Http://www.aip.org/fyi/2010/121.html.

  3. Yong Zhao, “A True Wake-Up Call for Arne Duncan: The Real Reason Behind Chinese Students Top PISA Performance,” December 10, 2010, http://zhaolearning.com/2010/12/10/a-true-wake-up-call-for-arne-duncan-the-real-reason-behind-chinese-students-top-pisa-performance/.

  4. H. L. Fleischman, P. J. Hopstock, M. P. Pelczar, and B. E. Shelley, Highlights from PISA 2009: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Olds in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy in an International Context (NCES 2011-004), U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011), 16, 21, 27.

  5. Ibid., 15; Carnoy and Rothstein, What Do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance?.

  6. Torsten Husen, ed., International Study of Achievement in Mathematics: A Comparison of Twelve Countries, 2 vols. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967), 2:21–25.

  7. L. C. Comber and John P. Keeves, Science Education in Nineteen Countries (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973); Elliott A. Medrich and Jeanne E. Griffith, International Mathematics and Science Assessments: What Have We Learned? (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1992), 79–81.

  8. Curtis C. McKnight et al., The Underachieving Curriculum: Assessing U.S. Mathematics from an International Perspective (Champaign, Ill.: Stipes, 1987), 17, 26–27; Willard J. Jacobson and Rodney L. Doran, Science Achievement in the United States and Sixteen Countries: A Report to the Public (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), 30, 37, 45.

  9. Motoko Rich, “U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show,” New York Times, December 11, 2012; Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown, “U.S. Students Continue to Trail Asian Students in Math, Reading, Science,” Washington Post, December 11, 2012.

  10. National Center for Education Statistics, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/timss/. All the TIMSS statistics that follow are drawn from this government report.

  11. Ina V. S. Mullis, Michael O. Martin, Pierre Foy, and Kathleen T. Drucker, PIRLS 2011 International Results in Reading (Chestnut Hill, Mass.: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College, 2012).

  12. Http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results07_math95.asp; http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_4.asp.

  13. Yong Zhao, “The Grass Is Greener: Learning from Other Countries,” September 18, 2011, http://zhaolearning.com/2011/09/18/the-grass-is-greener-learning-from-other-countries/.

  14. Yong Zhao, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization (Alexandria, Va.: ASCD, 2009), vii, xi.

  15. Yong Zhao, “Reforming Chinese Education: What China Is Trying to Learn from America,” Solutions, April 2012, 38–43.

  16. Vivek Wadhwa, “U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead,” Bloomberg Businessweek, January 12, 2011.

  17. Keith Baker, “Are International Tests Worth Anything?,” Phi Delta Kappan, October 2007.

  CHAPTER 8 The Facts About High School Graduation Rates

  1. U.S. Department of Education, The Condition of Education, 2012 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2012), fig. 32-2; U.S. Department of Education, Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2009–10 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2013).

  2. Federal data about graduation rates and dropout rates are drawn from the most recent report: C. Chapman, J. Laird, N. Hill, and A. KewalRamani, Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2009 (NCES 2012-006) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2011), 13.

  3. Lawrence Mishel and Joydeep Roy, Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2006), 49.

  4. Mishel and Roy conclude that the exclusion of these two groups—those who are in the military and those who are incarcerated—tends to neutralize any effect on the overall graduation rate, since the graduation rate for one group is high and the other is low. The exception, they say, is black males, who have a higher incarceration rate than other groups. Thus, “the black-white gap in high school completion may be higher than the official statistics show.” Ibid., 38, 10.

  5. Chapman, Laird, Hill, and KewalRamani, Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2009, 24, 44.

  6. Ibid., 5.

  7. Cameron Brenchley,
“High School Graduation Rate at Highest Level in Three Decades,” Homeroom: The Official Blog of the U.S. Department of Education, http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/01/high-school-graduation-rate-at-highest-level-in-three-decades/, fig. 2.

  8. Chapman, Laird, Hill, and KewalRamani, Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2009, 8.

  9. OECD, Education at a Glance 2011 (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2011), table A1.2a.

  10. U.S. Department of Education, The Condition of Education, 2011 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 2011), 76–77.

  11. Russell W. Rumberger, “Solving the Nation’s Dropout Crisis,” Education Week, October 26, 2011.

  CHAPTER 9 The Facts About College Graduation Rates

  1. Thomas D. Snyder, ed., 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1993), 66–69.

  2. U.S. Department of Education, Condition of Education, 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012045.pdf, p. 109, fig. 45-1.

  3. OECD, Education at a Glance 2011, http://www.oecd.org/education/highereducationandadultlearning/48630299.pdf, Table A1.3A, p. 30; OECD, Education at a Glance 2012 (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2012), p. 13, fig. 1.2.

  4. U.S. Department of Education, Condition of Education, 2012, table A-48-1.

  5. College Board Commission on Access, Admissions, and Success in Higher Education, http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/about-agenda.

  6. U.S. Department of Education, Condition of Education, 2011, p. 68, indicator 21.