"Our Schools are not for Sale, and Neither are our Children," Education Expert Says

Dr. Diane Ravitch had a clear message for the Christie administration and private interests as she addressed more than 500 audience members at Princeton High School on Nov. 4: "Our schools are not for sale, and neither are our children!"
Ravitch, a leading education policy analyst and a former Assistant Secretary of Education, drew from many findings put forth in her most recent book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools.

Included in her analysis were such topics as the rise - and inherent contradictions - of the charter school movement; programs such as Teach for America, which puts enthusiastic, but inexperienced, young people into the classrooms after only five weeks of training; and the implementation of data such as student growth scores to measure teacher performance, an approach that she called "junk science." "The more you insist that teachers be judged by [such measures], the more you narrow the curriculum," said Ravitch.

The event, which was co-sponsored by Save Our Schools New Jersey (SOSNJ), Princeton Public Schools, and Labyrinth Books in Princeton, drew concerned citizens, educators and organizers from around the state and beyond. Ravitch was introduced by Judith Wilson, Superintendent of Schools at Princeton, and Julia Sass-Rubin, a co-founder of SOSNJ and an associate professor at the Bloustein School of Public Planning and Policy at Rutgers University.

After her talk, in which she outlined what she termed the willful destruction of the public school system, or "failure by design" at the hands of leading politicians, corporations and idealogues, Ravitch answered questions from audience members. Below are some of her statements regarding particular topics at the forefront of today's debates surrounding education:

On how the U.S. stacks up in relation to other countries: "One needs to read the facts about international test scores...[U.S. test scores] reflect our large numbers of children in poverty[...] Finland [a country whose education programs have been heralded for their progressive nature] doesn't have the income inequality that our country does."

On the Common Core: "I don't support the Common Core because it has never been field tested[...] There isn't a corporation in this country that would put out a product without testing it[...] [The Common Core] might actually increase the achievement gap."

On charter schools: Do you really want a school system with the charter schools and the ones with the kids who didn't get into the charter schools? Why have two publicly funded systems?  That's a dual-track system [that supports] academic apartheid[...] The original role of charter schools was to take on the kids who were failing -- but it's become aggressive and entrepreneurial."

On promoting the desegregation of schools: "It's not a zip code issue as much as a [question of] people sitting down together and changing zoning lines to desegregate the schools[...][We need] more integration - willing integration based on collaboration between communities."