Ideas on Education Reform and Economics

I have been making my way through Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System this summer and it has frequently started my brain on fire. I highly recommend this book to anyone regardless of whether or not they are directly involved in education. I am currently pursuing my masters degree and the eleventh chapter of Ravitch's book plus another short article was recently assigned for analysis and reflection. This chapter got me particularly fired-up and, until I have time to expand upon the ideas in the piece I submitted for assessment, I would like to share that reflection below.

The Purpose of Reform in Education

Travis Bassett

Any time a reform is undertaken in education, it must be done with a purpose that is clearly communicated; it must be ruminated upon extensively to ensure this purpose is, in fact, one that will actually lead to long-lasting improvement; and it must be implemented with fidelity and the realization that no single reform is a “silver bullet” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 229) that will fix all that ails public education in the United States. These are the main ideas presented in chapter eleven of Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Sandra Alberti’s article titled Making the Shifts (Ravitch, 2010; Alberti, 2013). Both present a quality argument for change and then do something that is rare in most “discussions” in today’s society about any reforms: They offer up logical, well-reasoned, attainable suggestions for how to achieve the ideals they so soundly argue are needed.

Diane Ravitch is particularly adept, throughout her book, at picking out the many afflictions of public education today, offering a scathing analysis for why each affliction has come to be, and then offering, in compelling fashion, a transformational, beneficial alternative and a foundation of a path that will lead to attainment of that transformation. Her focus and clear explanations of the complexity and multiplicity of the problems facing education today are sure to be embraced and greatly appreciated (with a shout of joy and sigh of relief, no doubt) by anyone acting in a “front line” capacity in education today. Ravitch states “The fundamentals of good education are to be found in the classroom, the home, the community, and the culture but reformers in our time continue to look for shortcuts and quick answers” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 225). Her ideas are also supremely accessible in part due to her rejection of polarizing approaches to reform while embracing the reality that problems are complex, solutions more so, and, because of this, society needs to work cooperatively to implement reforms in education to benefit all of our children for the sake of the future of that very society: “Without the effort to teach our common cultural heritage, we risk losing it and being left with nothing in common but an evanescent and often degraded popular culture” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 233).

Ravitch’s ideas and her approach to presenting those ideas are particularly worth engaging in today’s state of attitudes about and towards public education and the educators who undertake the economically essential task of providing society with well-informed, well-mannered, rational economic actors. Her points regarding the free market and how it is not “the right mechanism to supply public education” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 241) are especially salient. She further develops this critique elsewhere in the chapter when she states “Our schools will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market. Markets have winners and losers” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 227). This chapter, if not this entire book, should be required reading for anyone in government who thinks they know what is best for public education.

Nearly every day, all across our country, school children and adults recite the pledge of allegiance. The closing line, with liberty and justice for all, embodies the core of what the Founders tried to create in this great experiment we call America. That line cannot be realized unless every single child in our country has access to a high-quality education that prepares, challenges, and inspires them to be the citizens our Founders wished so dearly they would become.