The Death and Life of the Great American School System

by Diane Ravitch

  19 New York City Department of Education, “NYC Results on the New York State 2006-2009 English Language Arts (ELA) Test (Grades 3-8),” http://schools.nyc.gov/accountability/Reports/Data/TestResults/2009/ELA/2006-2009_ELA_Citywide_ALL_Tested_web.xls; New York City Department of Education, “NYC Results on the New York State 2006-2009 Mathematics Test (Grades 3-8),” http://schools.nyc.gov/accountability/Reports/Data/TestResults/2009/Math/2006-2009_Math_ALL_TESTED_CITYWIDE.xls.

  20 Meredith Kolodner, “City Students Are Passing Standardized Tests Just by Guessing,” New York Daily News, August 11, 2009; Diana Senechal, “Guessing My Way to Promotion,” GothamSchools, August 17, 2009, http://gothamschools.org/2009/08/17/guessing-my-way-to-promotion/; Javier C. Hernandez, “Botched Most Answers on New York State Math Test? You Still Pass,” New York Times, September 14, 2009. For the conversion charts for the New York state tests in English and mathematics, see New York State Education Department, “English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematic [sic] Assessment Results,” www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/.

  21 NYC Public School Parents, http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com.

  22 Carl Campanile, “Gates’ $4 Mil Lesson,” New York Post, August 18, 2009.

  23 United Federation of Teachers, “Teachers Want Chancellor Klein to Do a Better Job,” press release, June 26, 2008, www.uft.org/news/better_job/; Elissa Gootman, “Bloomberg Unveils Performance Pay for Teachers,” New York Times, October 17, 2007; Randi Weingarten, address to the UFT Delegate Assembly, June 24, 2009, www.uft.org/news/issues/speeches/resignation_address/.

  24 David M. Herszenhorn, “Charter School Will Not Go Into School for the Gifted,” New York Times, June 24, 2006.

  25 New York City Department of Education, “Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein Announce Achievement of Major Milestone in the Creation of 100 Charter Schools,” press release, February 10, 2009.

  26 Vanessa Witenko, “Most Vulnerable Students Shut Out of Charter Schools,” InsideSchools.org, May 19, 2009, http://insideschools.org/blog/2009/05/19/most-vulnerable-students-shut-out-of-charter-schools/.

  27 Jennifer L. Jennings, “School Choice or Schools’ Choice? Managing in an Era of Accountability,” paper, Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association, New York City, August 2007.

  28 Hemphill et al., The New Marketplace, 1-7.

  29 Ibid., 58.

  30 David M. Herszenhorn, “In Push for Small Schools, Other Schools Suffer,” New York Times, January 14, 2005; Samuel G. Freedman, “Failings of One Brooklyn High School May Threaten a Neighbor’s Success,” New York Times, May 7, 2008; Hemphill et al., The New Marketplace, 35-38.

  31 Gootman, “Bloomberg Unveils Performance Pay for Teachers”; Gootman, “Teachers Agree to Bonus Pay Tied to Scores,” New York Times, October 18, 2007; United Federation of Teachers, “55/25 Update,” www.uft.org/member/money/financial/5525/.

  32 Erin Einhorn, “Only in N.Y. Schools Can Get an ‘A’ and ‘F,’” New York Daily News, December 12, 2007; Leonie Haimson, “Testimony Before the City Council Education Committee on the DOE School Grades,” December 10, 2007, http://nycpublicschoolparents.googlegroups.com/web/testimony%20school%20grades%2012%2007.doc; Jennifer Jennings, “In NYC, More F Schools than A Schools in Good Standing with NCLB,” Eduwonkette blog, September 16, 2008, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/09/in_nyc_more_f_schools_than_a_s_1.html.

  33 New York City Department of Education, “Chancellor Klein Releases 2009 Progress Reports on Elementary, Middle, and K-8 Schools,” press release, September 2, 2009; New York Post, “An Avalanche of A’s,” September 4, 2009; New York Daily News, “Stupid Card Trick,” September 4, 2009; Jennifer Medina, “As Many Schools Earn A’s and B’s, City Plans to Raise Standards,” New York Times, September 4, 2009.

  34 Jennifer Medina, “Teacher Bonuses Total $27 Million, Nearly Double Last Year’s,” New York Times, September 5, 2009; Diane Ravitch, “Bloomberg’s Bogus School Report Cards Destroy Real Progress,” New York Daily News, September 9, 2009.

  35 Hemphill et al., The New Marketplace, 2, 11-12; Meredith Kolodner and Rachel Monahan, “Four Schools in Bottom 10 in State Tests Were Newly Opened,” New York Daily News, July 13, 2009 (the headline said four, but the story identified five new schools in the bottom ten).

  36 New York State Education Department, “English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematic [sic] Assessment Results,” www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/; for New York state and New York city scores from 1999-2006, see www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/2006/ela-06/Grade3-8ELA-2006.ppt and www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/2006/math-06/Grade3-8Math.ppt. After the first two years of mayoral control, the Department of Education began adding the score gains of the year 2002-2003 to its own total, although these tests were administered before the mayor’s reforms were implemented. When the 2002-2003 scores were released, department officials did not treat them as their own. See David M. Herszenhorn, “City English Scores in Statewide Testing Show Marked Gain,” New York Times, May 21, 2003; Elissa Gootman, “Math Scores Rise Sharply Across State,” New York Times, October 22, 2003. After 2007, the city’s scores on state tests continued to rise, with the most extraordinary gains occurring in 2008-2009. Gains from 2006 to 2009 should be viewed with caution in light of the state education department’s purposeful lowering of expectations during that period. The New York State Education Department changed the tests in 2006 when it extended them to grades 3-8 (previously only grades 4 and 8 were tested). Test scores from 1999-2005 are discontinuous with those from 2006 onward and should not be compared, but education officials regularly made comparisons across the years.

  37 National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment, Mathematics 2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2007), 50-51; National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Trial Urban District Assessment, Reading 2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2007), 50-51; Jennifer Medina, “Little Progress for City Schools on National Test,” New York Times, November 16, 2007. Some experts questioned the fourth-grade math gains, because 25 percent of test takers were given accommodations (such as extra time), a proportion far larger than in any other city tested and double the proportion that received accommodations in New York City in 2003. Elizabeth Green, “N.Y. Gave the Most Breaks for School Exam,” New York Sun, November 21, 2007.

  38 New York City Department of Education, “New York City Public School Students Make Gains on 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Tests,” press release, November 15, 2007; Medina, “Little Progress for City Schools on National Test.”

  39 Elissa Gootman and Sharona Coutts, “Lacking the Credits to Graduate, Some Students Learn a Shortcut,” New York Times, April 11, 2008; Javier C. Hernandez, “Students Still Sliding By, Critics Say,” New York Times, July 13, 2009; Jennifer L. Jennings and Leonie Haimson, “Discharge and Graduation Rates,” in NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know, ed. Leonie Haimson and Ann Kjellberg (New York: Lulu, 2009), 77-85, www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nyc-schools-under-bloomberg-klein-what-parents-teachers-and-policymakers-need-to-know/7214189.

  40 Javier C. Hernandez, “A New High School, with College Mixed In,” New York Times, March 19, 2009.

  41 Elissa Gootman and Robert Gebeloff, “With New City Policy, Gifted Programs Shrink,” New York Times, October 30, 2008.

  42 New York Times, “New York State Test Scores,” August 4, 2009, http://projects.nytimes.com/new-york-schools-test-scores/about.

  43 David M. Herszenhorn, “A Gold Star for Schools: Overview,” New York Times, May 19, 2005; Sol Stern, “Gotham’s Telltale Reading Tests,” City Journal , Autumn 2006.

  44 Quoted in Michael Winerip, “Test Scores Up? Cheer (Don’t Analyze),” New York Times, June 29, 2005.

  45 James F. Brennan, “New York City Public School Improvement Before and After Mayoral Control,” in NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Pare
nts, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know, ed. Leonie Haimson and Ann Kjellberg, 105-113; Joel Klein, “Chancellor’s Testimony Before City Council Education Committee on DOE’s Preliminary Expense Budget,” March 26, 2009, http://print.nycenet.edu/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2008-2009/20090326_budget_testimony.htm; Nicole Gelinas, “NYC’s Fiscal Future,” New York Post, October 27, 2009.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1 Ebony, “5 Questions for Marian Wright Edelman,” January 2004.

  2 Frederick M. Hess and Michael J. Petrilli, “The Politics of No Child Left Behind: Will the Coalition Hold?” Journal of Education 185, no. 3 (2004): 13-25.

  3 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, CA, 2000, 2, 9-13.

  4 For an excellent overview of the law, see Frederick M. Hess and Michael J. Petrilli, No Child Left Behind Primer (New York: Peter Lang, 2006).

  5 Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn Jr., eds., No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2007); for Betts’s reference to choice in California, see 148-152.

  6 Julian Betts, “California: Does the Golden State Deserve a Gold Star?” in No Remedy Left Behind, 130.

  7 Elissa Gootman, “Report Assails Tutoring Firms in City Schools,” New York Times, March 8, 2006.

  8 The chief executive Officer of Kaplan (a major supplier of tests and test prep materials) said on a PBS program that his business had grown from annual revenues of $70 million in 1991 to $2 billion in 2007 “on the back of testing growth of all kinds.” The other major testing companies—McGraw-Hill’s CTB division, Pearson’s Harcourt Assessment, and Houghton Mifflin’s Riverside unit—would not disclose their revenues. The same program said that tutoring was a $4 billion industry, whose growth was propelled by NCLB. “The New Business of Education,” Nightly Business Report, February 18, 2008, www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/080218i/. See also Thomas Toch, Margins of Error: The Education Testing Industry in the No Child Left Behind Era (Washington, D.C.: Education Sector, 2006); Karla Scoon Reid, “Federal Law Spurs Private Companies to Market Tutoring,” Education Week, December 8, 2004.

  9 National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2007), 9, 27.

  10 Margaret A. Spellings, editorial, Forbes.com, January 23, 2008, www.forbes.com/2008/01/22/solutions-education-spellings-oped-cx_dor_0123spellings.html; Andrew Dean Ho, “The Problem with ‘Proficiency’: Limitations of Statistics and Policy Under No Child Left Behind,” Educational Limitations of Statistics and Policy Under No Child Left Behind,“ Educational Researcher 37, no. 6 (2008): 351-360.

  11 Hess and Finn, No Remedy Left Behind, 327-328.

  12 Ibid.

  13 David J. Hoff, “Schools Struggling to Meet Key Goal on Accountability,” Education Week, January 7, 2009.

  14 National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2008).

  15 Linda Jacobson, “NCLB Restructuring Found Ineffectual in California,” Education Week, February 20, 2008; Caitlin Scott, Managing More than A Thousand Remodeling Projects: School Restructuring in California (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, 2008).

  16 Caitlin Scott, A Call to Restructure Restructuring: Lessons from the No Child Left Behind Act in Five States (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, 2008), 1-3.

  17 Sam Dillon, “Under ‘No Child’ Law, Even Solid Schools Falter,” New York Times, October 13, 2008.

  18 National Science Foundation, “All Students Proficient on State Tests by 2014?” press release, September 25, 2008, www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112312; M. J. Bryant et al., “School Performance Will Fail to Meet Legislated Benchmarks,” Science 321, no. 5897 (September 26, 2008): 1781-1782.

  19 Sam Dillon, “Students Ace State Tests, but Earn D’s from U.S.,” New York Times, November 26, 2005; National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2007). See also Kevin Carey, “Hot Air: How States Inflate Their Educational Progress Under NCLB” (Washington, D.C.: Education Sector, 2006).

  20 Chester E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli, foreword to The Proficiency Illusion, by John Cronin et al. (Washington: D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Northwest Evaluation Association, 2007), 3.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Angela Montefinise, “Lost Lessons in Test-Prep Craze,” New York Post, January 28, 2007.

  23 Laurie Fox and Holly K. Hacker, “Dallas-Fort Worth Students Struggle with TAKS’ Short-response Written Test,” Dallas Morning News, July 20, 2008.

  24 Jennifer McMurrer, Choices, Changes, and Challenges: Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, 2007), 1; McMurrer, Instructional Time in Elementary Schools: A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, 2008), 2.

  25 Linda Perlstein, Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade (New York: Henry Holt, 2007).

  26 The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007, 8, 28; National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2007), 8, 24. See also Bruce Fuller et al., “Gauging Growth: How to Judge No Child Left Behind?” Educational Researcher 36, no. 5 (2007): 268-278.

  27 National Center for Education Statistics, Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2009), 7, 29.

  28 The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2007, 9, 27; The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2007, 9, 25.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1 Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Robert A. Solo (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 123-144.

  2 Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 27-41; Paul Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949).

  3 In 1985, in Aguilar v. Felton, the Supreme Court prohibited the provision of federally funded services to religious schools; in 1997, in Agostini v. Felton, the Court reversed its 1985 ruling.

  4 See Terrel H. Bell, The Thirteenth Man: A Reagan Cabinet Memoir (New York: Free Press, 1988), 89-98, 128-131.

  5 The John M. Olin Foundation supported my research projects at Teachers College, Columbia University, and New York University. With its financial assistance, I wrote Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms in 2000. With the Olin Foundation’s aid, Joseph Viteritti and I edited collections of essays about school reform in New York City, civic education, and the effects of commercial mass culture on children.

  6 John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1990), 2, 12.

  7 Ibid., 217.

  8 Ibid., 217-225.

  9 A good overview of the Milwaukee and Cleveland cases is available in Joseph P. Viteritti, Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 98-108.

  10 Ray Budde, Education by Charter: Restructuring School Districts; Key to Long-Term Continuing Improvement in American Education (Andover, MA: Regional Laboratory for Educational Improvement of the Northeast and Islands, 1988), www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1d/96/8c.pdf.

  11 Albert Shanker, National Press Club Speech, Washington, D.C., March 31, 1988, 6, www.reuther.wayne.edu/files/64.43.pdf.

  12 Ibid., 12, 14, 15-17, 20-21.

  13 Albert Shanker, “State of Our Union,” speech, 70th Convention of the
American Federation of Teachers, San Francisco, California, July 2, 1988, www.reuther.wayne.edu/files/64.50.pdf; Albert Shanker, “A Charter For Change,” New York Times, July 10, 1988.

  14 Albert Shanker, “Goals Not Gimmicks,” New York Times, November 7, 1993.

  15 Joseph Lieberman, “Schools Where Kids Succeed,” Reader’s Digest, January 1999,145-151.

  16 National Charter School Alliance, “Top 10 Charter Communities by Market Share,” 2008, www.publiccharters.org/files/publications/2008 Market Share Report.pdf.

  17 Diane Ravitch and William A. Galston, “Scholarships for Inner-City School Kids,” Washington Post, December 17, 1996.

  18 Scott W. Hamilton, ed., Who Will Save America’s Urban Catholic Schools? (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2008), 6.