Word: ravitch
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...some took strange pride recently in blocking Bill Clinton's multibillion-dollar public-school construction plan. They have remained wedded to conservative shibboleths like education savings accounts and private-school vouchers, which have little appeal to the 89% of Americans who send their children to public schools. Says Ravitch: "Bush is so far ahead of the national party that the people in Washington can't even see how behind they...
...then he drove it further. "Most school systems tend to have no standards and tons of regulations," says Ravitch. "Bush reversed the paradigm, and backed higher standards and fewer regulations, leaving districts free to teach how they want as long as they get results." He reduced the regulatory authority of the Texas education agency but increased accountability by beefing up and enforcing state standards. Most important, he started tracking results by race and ethnicity, rewarding schools that boost performance--especially minority performance. He also took on state teachers' colleges, telling them that 70% of graduates in each minority group must...
Administration officials chalk up the opposition to overheated speculation on all sides, and they're partly right. But the White House has made miscues of its own. Early supporters of the national-test plan, like Finn and Brookings Institution scholar Diane Ravitch, have deserted the President because the tests were developed through the politically appointed Department of Education rather than by a nonpartisan body like the independent National Assessment Governing Board. "It's wrong to have a new national test every time a new President is elected," Ravitch says. Last month Education Secretary Richard Riley agreed to surrender control...
Parochial schools have a better record of getting children whose parents did not attend college to take pre-college courses, like advanced math. According to Diane Ravitch, author of National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide, their secret is no secret: a core curriculum. "Catholics don't ask parents what courses their children should take," she says approvingly. "They just assign them...
...Diane Ravitch, senior research scholar at New York University, who was an Assistant Secretary of Education under George Bush, is worried that these temporary setbacks will sour people on the idea of contracting private companies to run public schools. In fact, says Ravitch, schools need "an arsenal of approaches" to blast away at the public education crisis, including magnet and charter schools. "You can't tell kids in poor schools to hang on and five years from now the school will turn around," says Ravitch. "Their time...