A NYC teacher who calls his or her blog NYCDOENUTS has written a wonderful review of “Reign of Error.”
Teachers understand that this book may be (to use Arne Duncan’s favorite phrase) a “game changer.”
You see, big money can buy legislators, it can buy ads, it can buy media.
But words and ideas can beat big money in a democracy, if we organize.
NYCDOENUTS concludes:
“In the final chapters of the book Ravitch takes the next step by offering many solutions to our current problems in education. It is in this final third of the book where I believe she exceeds her previous book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. The solutions she offers are nothing radical or earth shattering, and none of them would change the system overnight. However they are real solutions (not the next big thing that will be thrown out in 3 years, after several billion dollars are wasted and millions more have dropped out) that would bring real positive results over time. Things like reduced class size, wraparound services, and strengthening the teaching profession. These are real solutions that any teacher who has spent more than two years in a classroom knows are necessary for progress.
“Ravitch has done all of the hard work for us activists. She has made many clear and well researched arguments, and advocated for the real reforms that real educators want. Reign of Error may just be the catalyst that finally pushes back the tide of education reform. Once the public is truly informed and sees through the lies, double talk, and half truths, of the reformers it will be impossible to stop the push back.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Although those are reaL solutions, Dr Ravitch stopped short of the real real solution. First the problems caused by poverty aren’t going to be fixed in the near future. So we must realize that kids will blossom at different times and in different ways. This means systemic change. Something that will affect kids immediately upon implementation.
Taking kids from where they are is not just a slogan. It must become real. Milwaukee Public Schools started the process by eliminating letter grades. This leads to a proficiency ladder. Of course climbing that ladder, all students at the same place at the same time using artificial tests will not happen. No matter how much we pretend kids are the same, they aren’t.
Cimbing the proficiancy ladder will only work once we accept and realize all kids progress differently. There is no shame in that.. The first reality is to make proficiencies something that can be demonstrated, utilizing the childs backgroung to show that they have learned. Learning is learning and can be demonstrated in many ways.
Secondly, we must accept that unlike robots or the stepford kids, the child will progress at different rates. Thus rendering grade levels moot. Those who progress faster can go to college for some classes sooner. Those slower, will get support but we will wait for them to blossom. It now becomes, not when they graduate but that they graduate as the main issue.
Many other issues are here http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-are-they-afraid-of_830.html or here http://www.wholechildreform.com. Only a certified nutcase would believe that kids blossom the same or learn / demonstrate learning the same. Although I agree with Dr. Ravitch, I also believe we must go further. Although we must make every attempt to sove societies problems, until that happens, we can’t afford to ignore the needs of todays kids.
The issue about proficiency is noit that everyone will make it at the same time, it’s about what about those who don’t?
Good points. I suppose it is all about finding a way to agree on what a public education should be and should provide.
I have always found IGE to be the most intelligent way to approach educating elementary students. I haven’t really dealt with how high school should approach the coursework.
If students were able to function on their true levels for math and ELA until they were indeed proficient, without the negative attitudes about “what grade level the kids ‘should be’ in” then that stigma would be wiped away. If a child is an above level reader, then let him/her read with kids of his/her same level. If that same child is poor in math, then let him/her be in an appropriate math class. Once a student reaches a certain level of acceptable proficiency with the basics required to absorb, assimilate, synthesize, the let him/her have at it … go into whatever areas are of personal interest … and actually produce engaged, excited students with the desire to extend and discover … not to “pass some standardized test” or even make “grades” which are subjective even when claimed to be “objective”.
Education should be about teaching. learning, growing, expanding, becoming, contributing, developing, enjoying, etc.
I was once taking a Writing class called the Ohio Writing Project. We had to write our personal “credo” and my first statement was “All students can learn, but not the same things at the same time or the same pace”. Of course, I was shut down. That was in 2002. I still maintain the same stance.
I was told in my oral exam for my masters degree that I should never tell anyone in an interview that I thought IGE schools were the best model or I would never get hired. I have a feeling they were right. There is no trust that “mere teachers” can do anything on their own without strict supervision.
So we became data collectors and bean counters and test pushers … and the job of teaching became a clerical job in many ways, hoping that teaching could be squeezed into the schedule.
Even so, I do not believe that schools should be owned by big business or that they should exist as some clone of other schools rather than creative entities powered by teachers with ideas that are trying to get out …
I think maybe that the problem with public schools might just be the administration, the control of every little thing, and the forced waste of teachers’ time where they need to keep records to just “prove” that they deserve to even have a job.