I am very pleased to let you know about the publication of a newly revised edition of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
Perhaps you read it when it was first released in 2010. It was big news at the time, because I broke ranks with the conservative think tanks and policymakers who had once been my allies. I spoke out against the misuse of testing and the dangers of privatization. This was unexpected from someone who had been an Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of President George H. W. Bush, who served as part of three conservative think tanks, and who had written many articles about the “crisis” in American education.
I thought I had made a clean break with the Bush-Obama agenda. But in time I realized that I had not completely escaped the old, failed way of thinking (like a state, tinkering with people’s lives from afar). The book continued my longstanding support for a national curriculum and predicted that it would be smooth sailing now that the culture wars were over. I was wrong again!
In this new revision of the book, I have removed any endorsement for a national curriculum or national standards or national tests, and I explain why. The controversy over the Common Core standards taught me that the U.S. will never have a national curriculum, and furthermore, should never have one.
I also explain why a national curriculum and national examinations will not reduce the achievement gap among different racial and ethnic groups and will not reduce poverty. The advocacy for them–from the same people who support privatization–continues to be an excuse for avoiding the issue of poverty. And I rewrote the chapter on “A Nation at Risk,” showing how it dodged the most important issues in our society, which were economic and social, not educational.
Yes, there is a “crisis” in education, but it is not a crisis of test scores or failing schools. The crisis is caused by policymakers, federal officials, foundations, and business leaders who are imposing failed ideas on the schools. These impositions are hurting students, teachers, principals, communities, and public education itself. They have failed and failed, again and again, but those who support the Bush-Obama agenda of competition, choice, testing, and accountability refuse to re-examine their assumptions. Their inability to recognize their own failure has created disruption (which they admire), turmoil, and massive demoralization among educators.
I hope you will consider reading the book. I think that D&L continues to speak with passion to the terrible and real crisis in American education, a crisis caused by non-educators who want to turn our schools into job-training units, who want to emphasize standardized testing to the detriment of students, educators, and public schools, and who foolishly think that privatization will improve education.
I hope it doesn’t take a 100 years for the majority of our citizens to really understand what you are saying. Thanks for making public what has been thought to be impossible for the public to understand
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Richard Feynman said that about the challenger disaster, but he might just as well have been talking about education.
He also said about doing science:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Wonder how many of the readers here have even heard about Richard Feynman, much less read any of his works???
No idea, Duane.
But I do know one thing: much of the stuff he said has direct applicability to education “reform”, which Feynman would undoubtedly have considered to be “Cargo Cult Science”
“these things [VAM and “gritology” are perfect examples] are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way–or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one.” — from Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman
Congratulations. How you do everything is a great mystery. Energizer bunny is left in the dust. Honing the message is essential.
This book really turned my head around. I had no idea how or why Bloomberg managed to subvert education and provide so much reforminess but this cleared up everything. If there are any readers of this blog who haven’t read this book yet, you really owe it to yourselves. There is no other book, no other anything, that will give you such a clear understanding of how and why things have gotten to be how they are.
Same here, Arthur….after I read the first edition, I immediately used Diane’s book as core reading for my university public policy class on A History of Public Education in the US. Since I now teach in lifelong learning, my students are elders, and generally highly educated and economically successful people, who are in class by choice.
Most found the information to be eye opening, but some were firmly convinced that poverty does NOT influence student outcomes. These were mainly oriented to a conservative political bent and since I still give periodic lectures on the subject, I find that some with closed minds do think charter schools, and Eli Broad, are on the right path despite any evidence to the contrary. They all read the LA Times and are primarily influenced in their opinions by what the Broad-paid reporters claim to be truth in journalism, but what we know is too often biased opinion.
These student opinions often are offered in high decibels and make me foam at the mouth.
The now updated book set me on my own personal journey, and I joined this site as a member about three years ago. I also changed my academic writing to reflect in layman’s terms how the US is suffering from the redistribution of wealth upward…and how children respond in public schools across the nation, with outcomes now being quantified.
So much that I learned from Diane only a few short years ago has shaped my views. I am glad, Diane, that you did this revision and will be ordering the new version today. Thank you for being my teacher.
I guess the thinking is that testing to national standards will identify gaps more accurately or precisely. Well, now that’s been done, the next step, will more resources be directed to those in need? Anyone got 100 billion, Gates, Walton, Bueller, Bueller? Send it to Detroit or Chicago and replicate Lakeside school one hundred times. Create the idyllic nurturing conditions Gates once experienced.
National standards are meaningless without the next actionable step, providing more resources to those who are behind.
The achievement gap is part and parcel of the economic gap. With a winner take all mentality permeating the culture, the gaps only get bigger.
“National standards are meaningless. . . ”
That’s all you needed to say TC.
There are no legitimate standards. There are curriculum goals, objectives, mastered practices, etc. . . . Standards, as the term is used by most in relation to educational standards and standardized testing is a bastardized term meant to imply some sort of “scientific”, objective “measurement” and validity of the concept. It’s a false concept based on the misuse and abuse of the term standard.
OH!!!! HOW CAN YOU BE AGAINST STANDARDS???
When the term is misused to appear to be something it isn’t. There have never been any educational standards of the type that have followed any of the processes set forth by the various standards organizations such as the ISO. And even though psychometricians would like us to believe that they are “measuring” according to standards, they are not. It’s all a BIG LIE!
Richard Phelps in his new book on the “fallacies” of those opposing standardized testing (so many strawmen arguments one needs a baler to bundle them up) stated in a poor attempt to equate engineering tests with educational standardized tests:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course, [why of course of course!!] but in this volume, we focus on the MEASUREMENT OF LATENT (I.E., NONOBSERVABLE) MENTAL, and not physical, TRAITS.” [my comments and EMPHASIS]
Someone please explain how one can “measure” “nonobservable traits”. (the book is full of these kinds of nonsense statements, and I’ve only read about a quarter of it so far-just got it the other day).
Does one have to wake and bake to be able to measure the unobservable? Acid flashbacks?? (I doubt that for Phelps unless he was a closet hippie.)
“Measure the unobservable” = irreality!
Irreality = neither reality, surreality, nor un-reality.
The new edition of this book will release on June 28, 2016. I understand that if most if not all of the regular readers of Diane’s blog pre-order this paperback now, that will help the book’s ranking on Amazon. The higher the rank with #1 being the highest, the more readers will be made aware of the book on Amazon’s best seller lists. If what I have been reading for years is correct, all pre-orders will hit Amazon ranking the day the paperbacks ship from Amazon on June 28th.
I know that some readers boycott Amazon but Amazon has a promotion algorithm on the internet that is 2nd to none in the publishing industry.
If not Amazon, and you want brick-and-mortar bookstores to be aware of this book, call all your local independent brick and mortar bookstores within 50 miles of your house/apartment and ask them if they will have Diane’s paperback ordered because you are interested in buying one when it arrives. If we can get independent bookstores to be aware of and support/recommend this book, they have the power to create a national bestseller and indie bookstores are not controlled by the huge media corporations. Win the indie bookstores over to our cause, and we will have a powerful ally.
For Independence bookstores, turn to Indie Bound’s store finder.
http://www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder
Much better to go the independent route.
“Algorithms” are ripe for “override” (eg, by Amazon owner Bezos, who is no friend to public schools)
Besides, Amazon is not the sort of company that teachers should be supporting, even indirectly.
That’s why I also mentioned the indie option.
That’s why I did not link to a specific book seller
Make your own choice
Yay. Congratulations. I can’t wait to read the revised book since D and L is one of my all time top ten favorites. It really opened my eyes to what was happening in public education.
“A Nation at Risk”
At risk are the schools
Of death, or of life
And only the fools
Would brandish the knife
I will echo Arthur Goldstein: Your book really turned my head around. 🙂