The death and life of the great American school system

While I was in college, I had to write a ten page paper for my ENGL 102 class. My choice was to write about No Child Left Behind, and it's fallout nearly, at the time, 12 years after it's passage into law. The highly structured, and business-like model that had been known for cutting school that were underperforming and rewarding those who did well, had good intentions, but it was surrounded by a merid of complications and loopholes that would make it ineffective overall as a piece of education reform. It worked not only to drive a wedge between teachers, school systems, and the state and federal governments, but to also convince parents the misconception that testing, and accountability, upon which NCLB was built, was a system that could change education for the better. This misconception continues to this day.

During my research, I came across Ravitch, and her, then, latest book specifically about the failings of NCLB. Now, almost a decade later, and I finally managed to pick up her book, and read it. What did I think? Well, as someone who not only write a lengthy paper on the topic, but also went into the field of education, I can say that I did not learn much, but that does not mean that the average parent or person on the street might get the same experience.

Ravitch's book begins with her background in education, including her time as an education historian, and Assistant Secretary of Education under President H.W. Bush. She has written numerous books, and has also studied at length the various results of NCLB, and has now changed her mind on the topic. This, in fact is what I find most refreshing of all. In our age of passing the proverbial buck, and always blaming the other party, Ravitch explains not only why she supported NCLB in the first place, but also says that she is sorry she did so. This is incredibly reassuring to the reader, as they see not only what made the plan initially so appealing to the leaders at the time, but also how it managed to fail so quickly, and how no one outside education has stopped to consider it's implications.

Sadly, this book does have some small issues that it cannot really help, but do harm it none the less. One of these things is the books age. It was published in 2010, and this does show in the organization of how her argument is presented. What we know now is that Charter Schools tend to have little effect on the education of students when compared to their public school counterparts, unless one is talking about extreme cases, like say, Detroit Public Schools versus your average charter school. However, here Ravitch is forced to see that there is not enough data for us to really draw a conclusion on charter schools overall for them to be seen as good or bad, strictly by the data alone. One the one hand, this can be seen as a refreshing balanced look at the argument on both sides, and coming to a conclusion of no conclusion. Yet, it can still be frustrating to read for pages only to come to the literary equivalent of a shoulder shrug and “I don't know.”

Another weakness of this book is that it can be depressing at times. Ravitch spends long chapters working to try and prove her point that NCLB does not work. Fair enough, but after a length of time, this reader was left wondering if any aspiring educator would want to choose being a teacher after reading this book. She spends so much time lambasting NCLB, that one cannot help but wonder if there was anything good going on in education at all. This can make the book a slog to get through, as, of course, element X in NCLB does not work, just like element R before it, and Q before that. It gets repetitive after a time to hear the same point made over and over and over...

Nevertheless, for when it was made, I liked what this book sought out to do: tell the layperson what was going on in education during the NCLB era, and how it has changed since then. If you are a parent and you wonder why schools operate the way they do, this may be a good place to start. It is well researched, focused and well written, with an overall spotlight on how the larger government decisions affect the students in the classroom. However, if you are going into education, or have been it for some time, you may want to read elsewhere, or better yet, pick up one of her later books. The more recent information may prove to be of stronger benefit. I give this book a three out of five.