Summaries, Chapters: 9-11: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all" 

- Mario Savio

These chapters really open up the eyes of Diane Ravitch and see how little progress our public school education system has succeeded. When you implement a free market business model like many of the hedge fund managers, business executives directors, and even former Mayor Bloomberg from New York City has done, the failure is exposed for all to see. 

Diane Ravitch recalls when she was child how teachers like Mrs. Ratliff put so much love, dedication, and efforts making learning fun. Teachers back then were not so pressured on getting students to meet state requirements. Standardized testing really put teachers to the brink of quitting or getting fired. Like any corporations today, they focus on busting up teachers' union and started to cut their salaries and the school's budget if performance is lacking. Other issues when relying on companies to run the school can bring other issues. For example, corporations like Ford Motor Company and the Carnegie Corporation came up with the idea of putting the control of the school system in the hands of local parents to help loosen tensions caused by race discrimination in the New York City School System. This caused quite a bit of problem including increasing tensions between the African-American and Jewish communities in New York but allowed the school system to be decentralized and put in control of localized school boards. Though some issues were slightly resolved, other problems emerged as the quality of the education within certain districts decreased.

Professor Linguist Noam Chomsky said, "The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on - because they're dysfunctional to the institutions." - Schools on Trial 

Professor Chomsky was referring was the constant ranking and sorting students based on their performance in school. His assessment is based on continuing of standardized testing and even characterize it as a form of indoctrination to embrace an economic and social system that has little use of thought, let alone resistance.

I strongly agree 100%

Reference: Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Education Malpractice by Nikhil Goyal

Summaries, Chapters: 5-8: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

The New York City schools system during the time when Mayor Michael Bloomberg as in office was the beginning of what will soon be the market business model. Numerous drastic measures were imposed on teachers, unions, and school board members. Mayor Bloomberg did not want an independent school board during his time at the office, but instead wanted direct controls of the schools and no one undermining him. He wanted direct control so badly that he was relocated the Board of Education’s headquarters near the city hall. He sold the original building to real estate developers which they turned it into residential condominiums. The objective plan was to implement the plan CHILDREN FIRST which he announced in January of 2033 on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The plan consisted the following parts:

1. Each school was assigned literacy and mathematics coaches to monitor and enforce the program.
2. Eliminate thirty-two community school districts and replace them with ten large regions and was headed by a superintendent.
3. Created a privately funded Leadership Academy to train principals and others that wanted to become principals to become more business-like educators.
4. Eliminated local school boards which reduced parental involvement

These reforms which Bloomberg imposed to the school’s district in New York City was a corporate model of tightly centralized, and hierarchical to run like a business and management consultants’ firm.

When you look at the NCLB and CHILDREN FIRST policies, they are almost the same. When President Bush took office in 2001, the NCLB policy was approved by Congress. One of the biggest issues of the NCLB was the standardized tests that teachers had to give to the students. Recent studies mentioned that the testing system caused a rising number of dropouts among Black and Latino communities. Other studies from Walt Hany of Boston College says that the standardized tests had a negative impact in the Texas districts.

   “As teachers spent more time preparing students to take standardized tests, the curriculum was narrowed such subjects as science, social studies, and the arts were pushed aside to make time for test preparation. Consequently, students in Texas were actually getting a worse education than before-one tied solely to taking the state tests.” ³ pg.146

Summary on the first few chapters from the book The Death and Life of the Great American School System

The first few chapters cover the beginning of the restructuring of the public school system. Diane makes the argument on how public schools must have a strong curriculum that is grounded in the liberal arts and sciences with plenty of opportunities for children of all ages. After carefully viewing the school system during the late 1960s, Diane wondered why the education system had been decentralized in the first place. After numerous massive researches and studying the history of the school system, she discovered that system had been decentralized in the nineteenth century.

In the 1980s the Department of Education had to meet Republican standards which often met no federal meddling. In other words, it was where "Big Government" that was not allowing future students the proper tools to compete in the global market. The public school began to be run like a business type corporation and was shut down if it was not performed well. During the Bush and Clinton Administration, public schools had to be reformed including deregulation and privatization.

"Months after his inauguration, President Clinton tasked Vice President Al Gore to devise ways to "reinvent" the federal bureaucracy. With the help of David Osborne, Gore created the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, whose purpose was to adopt private-sector management techniques to the public sector. Many of its recommendations involved privatizing, cutting jobs, and implementing performance agreements in which agencies would receive autonomy from regulations in exchange for meeting targets." ¹¹

Diane Ravitch’s conservative view on using the business model to build school curriculum turns “No Child Left Behind” policy that required students to take standardized testing that ultimately scored the school’s performance as well as the students learning capability. However, the when NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was implemented, Diane became increasingly disillusioned and realized that the law bypassed curriculum and standards, and it ignored the social economic status of the children's lives. These standardized tests consist mostly mathematics and reading. The federal government demanded that school generates higher test scores in basic skills. This was a problem, as it ignored such important studies as literature, science, civics, arts, and geography. However, Dian realized that these testing procedures had nothing to do with education. Many teachers believed that the students need a good foundation of knowledge and skills that help them develop a well-furnished mind.
out
to be a huge mistake, as bad policies, and economic reform made schools worst. As mentioned in the book the following is that "A well-educated person has a well-furnished mind, shaped by reading and thinking about history, science, literature, the arts, and politics."

What really struck me the most was Chapter 3: The Transformation of District 2 which certain school districts improved, however, the population of Hispanics and African-Americans shrunk while the number of Asian and Caucasians students grew. In other words, in a 1995 data report, forty-three schools within the district Asian and whites outperformed Blacks and Latino students.

"The lowest-performing schools were highly segregated, even though a majority of the district's students were white and Asian, nine schools were more than 75 percent African American and Hispanic." ²¹