The two most distinguished education researchers in the nation are Gene V. Glass and David C. Berliner, both of whom have held the highest positions in their profession and are universally admired for their careful research and long history of defending the highest standards in the research community.
Together they wrote an essay-review of my book SLAYING GOLIATH.
The review can also be accessed here.
They found the book to be fair-minded and unbiased. And they liked it a lot!
They did some genealogical research about me and my family.
They refer to this blog as “the most influential communications medium in the history of public education.”
They describe the book “as the efforts of a historian to find the facts and follow where they lead.”
They write “We sincerely thank Ravitch for her careful documentation of the greed, anti-democratic actions, and just plain stupidity displayed by so many of our nation’s leading political and business leaders who attempted to fix education….
“In the following, we provide a flavor of the book by brief examples from each chapter. We hope that this whets the appetite for a full reading by anyone concerned with the attacks on public education by those whom Ravitch calls the Goliaths. With her slingshot and stone, she joins a noble battle to preserve this uniquely American invention, which Horace Mann called the greatest invention of mankind….”
I think you will enjoy their insights, as when they indict Common Core as Bill Gates’ biggest folly, concluding that his love for standardization causes him to confuse schooling with DOS, the Microsoft operating system. They say that the “philanthro-capitalists” believe that schools should be run like businesses, like their own businesses. “They ignore the fact that the vast majority of businesses fail. They are incredulous when their schools fail.”
Glass and Berliner have written a valuable review (they are not entirely uncritical, as they still call me to account for the sins of my years on the other side).
I hope you will read it in its entirety.
I am immensely gratified to receive this careful and thoughtful review by two of the nation’s most respected scholars.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Our elders in the education profession speak. What are we learning? What are we doing to #PRE (preserve what is working, restore what we lost that was working, and enhance our public schools)?? We must continue to do whatever we can to help our public schools. Are you with me?
YES!!!!
Ich bin ein Berliner?
I would proudly call myself a David Berliner. LOL. He’s brilliant.
This review by Glass and Berliner is excellent because the authors go to great pains to document the points they made.
I contrast this with the shockingly lazy and entitled review in the NYTimes by privileged private high school and Yale graduate Annie Murphy Paul, who appears to believe that self-important reviewers like herself should not have to bother providing evidence when they smear other writers. For example, Annie Murphy Paul makes this stunning attack on Diane Ravitch without offering a single quote or piece of evidence from the book she is reviewing to document her criticism:
“Those who take part in the education reform movement — a staggeringly wide range of individuals, from young people who join Teach for America to principals of innovative charter schools and officials of philanthropic foundations — are without exception malign and corrupt…”
I was quite shocked to see Murphy Paul stating as absolute fact that Diane Ravitch’s book says every single young person who joins Teach for America is malign and corrupt. I read on to see what evidence she would provide for this and I found — nothing. Not one quote. Not one example.
What a shoddy piece of writing and a true indictment of her own privileged education. She had no need to provide any evidence to back up her main criticism of Diane Ravitch supposedly saying every single young person who joins TFA is malign and corrupt. Not a single quote from the book to substantiate this attack.
Murphy also claimed as absolute fact that Diane was “not correct” about the Common Core standards. I read on to see why Murphy believed she wasn’t correct. Because Murphy says so! She says Diane was not correct and that is that – the privileged Yale grad has no need to offer a reason when she pronounces someone wrong because Annie Murphy Paul is so very important that her word is all that matters. She said it was true and like many entitled overprivileged people expects that is more than enough. I guess backing up opinions with evidence is for the little people. Not privileged Yale grads like Murphy Paul.
And the chutzpah of her last line:
“…Ravitch has let go of some admirable intellectual practices and well-founded convictions. She would be wise to recover them.”
Annie Murphy Paul should look in the mirror. Surely she was taught at Yale that you don’t make a sweeping claim without offering a single bit of evidence or example from the book to back it up. Perhaps Annie Murphy’s criticism of Diane Ravitch is true, but her entitled view that she is far too important and properly educated to have to provide any evidence to support her attacks is truly an embarrassment. Perhaps Paul would be wise to recover basic intellectual practices, if she ever had any.
Excellent commentary NYCpsp! Can you share a link for AM-P’s article?
Duane,
I am unable to posts links here for some reason. But the article was:
“Diane Ravitch Declares the Education Reform Movement Dead”, in the NY Times, date on article is January 21, 2020.
Another quote from Annie Murphy Paul that demonstrates her complete misunderstanding about this issue.
“But her portraits of these valiant fighters are curiously selective. Not included among them are the mothers and fathers, many of them people of color, who engage in activism in favor of bringing charter schools to their neighborhoods, seeing these institutions — though new and untried — as a better alternative to the public schools they already know.”
Diane Ravitch also didn’t talk to the Christian parents who loved their anti-LBGTQ charter school. Is Annie Murphy Paul outraged about that, too? Those primarily white Christian parents believe their school is a “better alternative to the public schools”, too. No doubt Annie Murphy is upset they didn’t have their say.
I bet if Annie Murphy Paul actually spoke to most of the parents who chose charters because they really had no alternative but a failing school, they would say that they wanted a good, highly funded school for their child that did not have to teach the most difficult kids, and the fact that it was a charter and not a public school was not their demand. I challenge Annie Murphy Paul to find some charter parents who demand that their charter not be transparent and that their charter have no local oversight. I challenge Annie Murphy Paul to find a large group of charter parents who are fighting to make sure their children have NO rights and charters should simply dump any kids who charter CEOs don’t want to teach.
It takes some chutzpah for Annie Murphy Paul to express so much sympathy ONLY for the “people of color” she seems to believe matter — the ones who insist that charters should be above any transparency who insist their children should have no rights and charters should be able to treat their kids anyway they want. Are there many of those parents? I doubt it. But like Eliza Shapiro, Annie Murphy Paul only seems to see the poor kids that rich people put in front of her as their spokespeople.
By the way, as a parent who saw for myself exactly how that charter “demand” is manufactured, I know that Annie Murphy’s implication that most charters are started by desperate parents who then have to spend a long time finding powerful people to help them is simply not true. I watched paid canvassers gathering signatures for “a new school” (no mention that it was charter) and the paid canvassers were not parents and didn’t even know anything about what they were collecting signatures for. The signatures were used as proof to promote an utterly false story about “demand” as the reason to open a charter that was supposed to prioritize at-risk kids but dumped that priority because when you are a charter with billionaires behind you, can do what you want.
It’s a shame that the NY Times can’t get anyone to cover charters who doesn’t embrace every single charter myth as the truth, but feel the need to raise questions if anyone dares to challenge those myths.
Thanks for that info!
Her review linked to that pro-charter article by Eliza Shapiro and Erica Green as evidence of demand. Their evidence was a 5-year-old press release from a charter lobbying group.
The Times reviewer thought I should have presented “both sides.” Fine people on both sides.
That is not the book I set out to write.
Why doesn’t Greta Thunberg present both sides? Why didn’t muckrakers?
Yeah, both sides to a many sided problem, eh!
They just opened up comments on her review after a few days of no comments allowed. I notice it was flooded with pro-charter comments so maybe the NY Times gave a heads up to the charter PR firms to make sure to notify their parents.
I hope people go there to comment.
African-American parents aren’t clamoring for private charters where their child has no due process and charters can humiliate them or punish them whenever they want to get them out.
The ones who choose charters want good, well-funded schools that don’t have to spend a large portion of their resources on the most expensive students. It is white people like Eliza Shapiro and Annie Murphy Paul who insist that means that every African-American parent in charter is fighting to stop transparency and oversight because they all believe that charter CEOs should be able to do anything they want to their children, and if that means they humiliate and kick out their children whenever they want, with no due process, that is supposedly what parents are demanding.
The charter lobbyists are terrified of my book. They are all over Twitter singing the praises of the review. Why didn’t I present the arguments for charters? Why? Because I don’t agree with them.
Beautifully said, NYC!
Thank you for your politeness to the “Yale grad” with your example of a very long teaching of the definition of “an embarrassment”.
Your last sentence is powerful enough to any Yale grad in a future like:
“Perhaps Paul would be wise to recover basic intellectual practices, if she ever had any.”I love it”. May
“The shortcomings of standardized tests are many. They measure children’s socioeconomic status more than what happens to them in school.”
And the misuage of the term “measure” in relation to what standardized tests do is so embedded in education discourse that even those that should know better continue to use that false discourse.
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing exemplar of the non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
Duane,
How do you assert that the tests “measure nothing” when they consistently rank the most affluent kids at the top and the poorest at the bottom.
The tests assess and evaluate, albeit quite poorly and invalidly, students supposed learning of something no doubt, however, the tests are not measuring devices. And yes there definitely is a correlation between test scores and SES status with the highest correlation coefficient actually being between the test scores and the mother’s level of education (which can be seen as a proxy for SES status).
A correlation is not a measurement. It is a statement on the statistical relationship between two variables. Nothing more.
What you are hinting at is the reliability of the test scores to correlate to SES. Reliability is one aspect of the testing scheme. A test can be reliably right or wrong, but it says nothing about the validity of the process (which Wilson has shown).
The misuse of the meaning of the term ‘measure’ is part of the intellectual slight of hand that psychometricians, and others, use to give the whole process a false, supposedly scientific sheen of objectivity that the process does not deserve, again, as proven by Wilson and many others.
I stand by my statement:
The tests measure nothing!
Lest one thinks that I am being dogmatic about the language usage and validity concerns, I ask that someone debunk/refute my claims. I haven’t seen a legitimate one yet in twenty years of searching.
Bring it on! Please!
Duane,
How about if I said the test results reflect SES, especially mothers’ level of education and family income, and those with the highest income/SES invariably are ranked at the top, and those with the lowest income/SES are ranked at the bottom?
Because clearly they are ranking students and the results are always the same.
Yes, that is what the test results do “reflect SES. . . .”
And yes, the tests are meant to sort and separate, i.e., rank the students. That is the main function of the test as all questions are vetted ahead of time to determine if the results are discriminating enough to serve that purpose. Any questions that don’t do so, those that have too many correct or too many wrong answers, are eliminated.
Duane, I think you make good points, but they are sometimes lost because (at least my interpretation) is that some of it is semantics.
You are absolutely right that the word “measure”, strictly defined, implies something that standardized tests clearly don’t do.
I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) that you are saying that using the word “measure” when referring to tests is just plain wrong and that includes not just standardized tests but all tests, including those you design yourself and give to your students.
I agree that measure is an inaccurate word. I agree that standardized tests have been used improperly and given way too much weight despite all evidence demonstrating that they should not be given that weight.
But I still see some place for students to demonstrate some knowledge as I don’t think just them talking to teachers as the only means is enough. It’s like a written test for a drivers license or to practice medicine. Having to demonstrate some knowledge is not always a bad thing in education or life. Such tests or exams don’t “measure” a person. But they are not worthless either.
NYCpsp,
“I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) that you are saying that using the word “measure” when referring to tests is just plain wrong and that includes not just standardized tests but all tests, including those you design yourself and give to your students.”
Yes, very much so!
“But I still see some place for students to demonstrate some knowledge as I don’t think just them talking to teachers as the only means is enough. It’s like a written test for a drivers license or to practice medicine. Having to demonstrate some knowledge is not always a bad thing in education or life. Such tests or exams don’t “measure” a person. But they are not worthless either.”
I have no problem with students demonstrating what they know as long as the main focus is on helping the student learn. The question becomes “Does the standardized tests we give students do that?” And the answer is a resounding no since the students (or their teachers) never get to see which answers they got right or wrong. Without that the test is a meaningless exercise in mental masturbation foisted upon the student, using the students for something other than the student’s needs and/or wishes. Even with it the tests still have all the invalidities that Wilson and others have shown to be inherent in the test making process.
As far as a written drivers test? What good is that in demonstrating how anyone, but especially a 16 year old can actually drive? It’s a completely inadequate test for that purpose.
As far as Med/Nursing/Law/CPA board tests? Well, one of the main differences is that it is adults who are voluntarily taking them and know it is part of the process of getting the license. The amount of training and learning that one takes part in before such tests should be more than adequate to be able to succeed on the test. Even then the proof is in the pudding when the doc/nurse/attorney/CPA gets out into a position to use that knowledge. There is a reason for so many protocols to be followed in those professions–to insure that practitioners don’t make the many egregious mistakes that have been made in the past, simple mistakes that should never have occurred except for the fact that we humans are quite fallible in our judgments/decisions. Success on such tests haven’t prevented those mistakes from happening.
So while the professional tests aren’t worthless they certainly do not predict nor prevent those errors and only serve as a temporary certifying step along the way to being an adequate practitioner.
But the professional test purpose and preparation is not the same as for a K-12 academic test. We ought not confuse and conflate the two.
As far as “I don’t think just them talking to teachers as the only means is enough.” This is where I have to disagree. For one, it’s not just a matter of “them talking to teachers”. Competent teachers, through the daily interactions in class are the only ones who can adequately assess, along with the student (and parents for younger students) where the student is at in their learning process, what they may know. The key is having competent teachers with an acceptable work load to enable them to do so. And the vast majority of teachers that I’ve worked with had that competence.
Duane,
Thanks for your comprehensive answer!
” In our decades’ long involvement with NAEP scores, we are confident of the interpretation of only two trends. Young black students in the Southeast are better off as a result of desegregation; and science teaching has shifted gradually from physical science to biological science.” from the Glass and Berliner review
This cautious use of test scores seems commendable to me. Whatever the numbers show, we should approach the numbers with a healthy skepticism. This extensive, chapter by chapter review was impressive in its attention to detail. Now I see why these two “are universally admired for their careful research and long history of defending the highest standards in the research community.”
I am giving tests today. Many of the children will not be able to tell me where France is, even after we have been talking about the Western Front for a week or so. What this says is that some of the students have not involved themselves in my lesson. Unless I can control their minds, I cannot get them to think of the things I want them to. If I can control their minds, that is dangerous. What do you do.
“What do you do?”
I never wanted to control their minds and I’m sure you never have either. That would be the antithesis of learning and would be an abuse of, mental violence against a fellow human being.
One can only present the information in the best fashion that one believes helps, allows the student to learn. If they choose not to learn, even with friendly cajoling, caring assistance then they will end up like so many students who, later when they have become adults have told me “I wish I would have put more effort into learning “X” subject”.
“The shortcomings of standardized tests are many. They measure children’s socioeconomic status more than what happens to them in school. Ravitch is wise to oppose their use in high-stakes contexts. However, at times she invokes flat NAEP trends as evidence of reform failure. But the criticism of testing cuts both ways: if test data are invalid, they neither indict nor support reform.”
Yes, but the flat NAEP trends just didn’t magically appear. Rather, the NAEP trends, of course, are sufficiently long runs of consecutive results all of which are productions of, hence cannot be separated from, the process that produced them—that process being NAEP, even if the NAEP process has been changed from time to time, which it has, necessarily and unavoidably. Variation inherent in the NAEP results can legitimately speak about—be the voice for—how the NAEP process is behaving and even how it stands to behave in the future to a reasonable extent. So if the voice of the NAEP process says, “flat NAEP trends,” then it’s flat NAEP trends. Moreover, if the context is Disruptors wanting ever-increasing NAEP results to be evidence of reform success, then Disruptors must accept “flat NAEP trends as evidence of reform failure.” Concern about data validity here reduces to being just about accuracy of data recording.
“Concern about data validity here reduces to being just about accuracy of data recording. . . Variation inherent in the NAEP results can legitimately speak about—be the voice for—how the NAEP process is behaving and even how it stands to behave in the future to a reasonable extent.”
But the main concerns, yes plural, about the invalidities underlying the NAEP process still hold. Onto-epistemological invalidities of the process obviate any valid discussion of the results. The process and any further discussions are, as Wilson puts it “vain and illusory.” Why waste any resources, time-especially student learning time, and money on a multi-invalid process?
I am always careful to say, and Diane is when she is not in a rush, that Deform has failed BY ITS OWN MEASURES, scores on high-stakes tests, which haven’t improved and haven’t shown closing of gaps between poor students and rich ones, brown ones and white ones.
The ELA high-stakes tests are not valid. They do not measure what they purport to measure. But that’s a LOOOOONG discussion.
Thanks, Ed.
A outstanding review from two truly great American scholars.
There’s a small handful of folks in this country whose classes I would happily sit in. Glass and Berliner’s? Absolutely.
Well, more than a handful. LOL. But these two are brilliant and do work that really matters.
As a coda to the discussion here, I went into the local public Library this evening so that my wife and daughter could check out a book or two. While I was there, I asked how I might recommend a new book to the library. I wrote down the title, Slaying Goliath. The lady who always seems to be there got on her computer for a second, then disappeared. Soon she returned with a copy already purchased and in circulation. I am certain I am the first to check it out. Somehow that is very satisfying in every way. My daughter tried to pull the pencil out of the cover.
Of course I began reading it. I quickly got around to the analogy about the man who was bitten by a rattlesnake that retained enough poison to hurt him even I death. Good analogy, for the most point. The difference is biological.
Snakes, you see, have a biological purpose. Most rattlers kill enough rats and mice a year to rid the world of about 5000 ticks a year, a contribution I honor by letting them live. (I once drove a rattler out of my yard with a leaf rake, gently prodding him until he was on his merry way). The deform movement has no purpose in society. Like a Python in the Florida swamp, which has no natural enemies, that movement reproduces unchecked and ruins its environment.
Thanks you, Diane and your allies in the NPE, for hunting the Python. I look forward to the rest of the book.
Enjoy, Roy!
Bill Gates’ review of “Slaying Goliath”
Brief and to the point:
“Diane Ravitch is a @$&#*%!!!”
More direct than The NY Times!
Hahaha
IMHO, on behalf of million poor people with no computer to access, I would say to the point that:
“ Bill Gates is a @$&#*%!!!” multiply billions times to write and to say to the public about his intentional harm public education in North America and other global countries. Back2basic