Diane Ravitch (photo by Larry Aaronson)
Our friend, the education historian and author Diane Ravitch, has yet another great piece in the current Education Week and The Washington Post Answer Sheet.
It’s called “No Child Left Behind and the Damage Done,” and it’s about NCLB on its tenth anniversary and why it needs to be dramatically reformed so we can stop its “destruction of local community institutions.” Ravitch makes the piece made even greater by giving a shout-out to Citizens for Public Schools:
When I spoke to Citizens for Public Schools in Boston, a young man who works as a chef at a local hotel got up to ask what he could do to stop “them” from closing his children’s school. It was the neighborhood school, he said. It was the school he wanted his children to attend. And they were closing it.
In city after city, across the nation, I have heard similar stories from teachers and parents. Why are they closing our school? What can we do about it? How can we stop them? I wish I had better answers. I know that as long as NCLB stays on the books, there is no stopping the destruction of local community institutions. And now with the active support of the Obama administration, the NCLB wrecking ball has become a means of promoting privatization and community fragmentation.
We also appreciate her generous praise of FairTest’s new report marking the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind:
The best round-up to date of the catastrophe that we call NCLB was published by FairTest in its report, “The Lost Decade.” It shows in clear detail that progress on NAEP was far more significant before the passage of NCLB.
To read Diane’s full post, click here.
