Paradigm Shifts in Education: Diane Ravitch- An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else

 An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else 

by Diane Ravitch

An Education book cover

Author, Scholar, Activist Diane Ravitch

Many thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Diane Ravitch’s fascinating new book An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else. I’ve been following Ravitch’s blog for nearly 13 years, and I’ve come to appreciate the articles she shares as well as her insights. Her posts have become a welcome part of the start to my mornings, but more importantly, the articles she shares, the researchers and journalists she references, and the issues she highlights have expanded my awareness about issues in education, both nationally and around the world. I’ve previously read The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Reign of Error, but I didn’t know too much about Ravitch’s background beyond what she’d share on her blog. I was aware of how seismic her shift in beliefs were when she came out against standardized testing, school choice, and other reformist movements in education, but at that point, I knew she held some positions within the Bush I administration. Ravitch’s new book provides much more insight into her personal life, her experiences with education, and how she eventually became a proponent of school reform in the 80s and 90s but gradually shifted to a different mindset after realizing the failures of educational reform. As she frames this shift in her introduction, she “went from being a staunch conservative to being ‘woke’”, and I loved learning more about how this shift occurred, and why, based on her life experiences, it really wasn’t surprising that someone like Diane Ravitch would continue to question her own beliefs and ideals and move towards beliefs and ideals that supported student learning, teachers, and schools. What was most fascinating, and also somewhat sad, was how Ravitch’s views, whether conservative or progressive, seemed to repel one group or the other. She shared an anecdote about leaving Columbia to work in the Bush I administration, and when she returned to Teacher’s College, she wasn’t welcomed back. Similarly, during her time in the US Department of ED, democrats controlled Congress and informed her that they would not allow any of Bush’s policies to pass. These experiences helped to highlight that many eras of American life were (and continue to be) polarized, but Ravitch’s experiences throughout this book help to remind us of  “the importance of admitting error, of keeping an open mind and regularly looking at evidence, of listening to people with whom I disagreed.” I really appreciated this mindset, especially today when it seems that nearly everything we read or encounter is either meant to make us enraged or is manipulated to induce a kind of emotional response rather than to calmly think the information through and consider its meaning. Furthermore, Ravitch’s experiences remind us that we do have the right to change our opinions, and that as we continue to grow, learn, and live, this is a natural outcome. Our values, our preferences, and even our priorities will change over time, and we should be able to admit either when we were wrong or why these aspects of our selves have changed.

Ravitch’s book straddles the line between a kind of memoir and a philosophical reflection, examining how one’s ideas and beliefs shift over time. She begins the book discussing her family and her experiences growing up in Texas among a large Jewish family. I really enjoyed learning more about Ravitch’s family, and the kinds of experiences and encounters she had with racism and classism in Houston. Furthermore, it was interesting to learn about the expectations for women at the time, and how despite pushing young female students into home economics, Ravitch always wanted to write. I found it really interesting, though, that someone who is primarily known for education didn’t study education or really think about becoming a teacher. The chapters that focus on her experiences at Wellesley were also fascinating to read. Not only do they portray a picture of what college life was like in the early 60s, but Ravitch also had some famous classmates, and it was cool to read about the shows she put on with them. More importantly though, I enjoyed reading about her love for learning and writing, and I could see how this desire to continuously learn, to be intellectually curious, led her to continue to ask questions about schools and systems of learning.

I won’t go too much into her personal biography, but Ravitch’s chapters focusing on her marriage and her emerging scholarship of the New York school system are both fascinating and sad. As she begins to grow and develop as a writer and focuses more and more on education in NYC, events in her marriage challenge her beliefs and ideas. As Ravitch reminds readers, this was a much different time when women had fewer options, and her marriage to a more traditional man from a wealthy family probably led her to continue to accept her husband’s wishes for her. Yet, it was amazing to learn about how gained a foothold in a small publication, which led to new opportunities to learn and study with scholars of the history of education and school systems at Columbia, which eventually led to Ravitch writing a book and earning her PhD.

I found these subsequent chapters to be the most interesting, as Ravitch begins to learn more about inequality in schools and to recognize their potential as the great equalizer in American society. Her own personal story about her beliefs and ideals in schools is fascinating and seems to come largely from her own experiences as well as the research on the history of education in America. It was fascinating to read about the many times she attended functions at the White House, how she became a member of think tanks and helped to shape policy and curricula in different states. Although she discussed helping to write the California state History curricula and standards, I was wondering whether she ever worked with Jerome Bruner, who was responsible for many important shifts in American education in the 1960s, and largely helped to shape the idea of a spiral curriculum. His constructivist ideas helped to shift American education away from the behaviorist trends that dominated education and are still in practice in some form in many schools. Nevertheless, Ravitch discusses the many educational and political luminaries with whom she worked during the 80s and 90s, and it was fascinating to learn about this. However, what I found most fascinating was to learn about the policies she worked on during her tenure in the Department of Education during the Bush I presidency. While she had primarily positive things to say about Bush I, the whole policy was based on belief—belief that if they talked about higher standards, then it would someone trickle down to teachers and students, who would believe in themselves and work harder to achieve. They didn’t advocate for any additional funding or programs, but asked teachers and schools to do more with less (sound familiar?). In many ways, it reminded me of how the Regans addressed other issues with pithy sayings like “Just Say No.” It’s a nice sentiment, but really provides no real support or guidance. And now, as the department is eviscerated and its own secretary has deemed its role useless, is it any wonder why the public sentiment towards the Education Department has become so negative?

Ravitch continues her story, noting how the Clinton years brought in some eventual reforms, but I found the chapters that dealt with Bush II and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to be the most fascinating and relevant to my own experiences. I began teaching in 2000. I was actually student teaching during the 2000 election and remember just how the kind of unsettled nature of the election reflected my own uncertainty about graduation and entering the workforce. Ravitch’s own skepticism of NCLB was exactly what I remember experiencing sitting in a schoolwide PD meeting where our principal informed us that within 9 years, we needed to have all students proficient in Math and Reading. Although none of the teachers were opposed to student achievement, we were all working towards that goal every day, I think that all of us realized the improbability of this lofty goal. There was incredible variability, and I remember that I had students who rarely came to school or who had such severe behavioral problems that they were routinely referred for in-school suspension, where I had to somehow make worksheets for them to learn the materials we worked on in class. NCLB, as Ravitch mentioned about another policy, looked good to the public, but was not realistic in schools. Furthermore, she notes that many of these reformist policies were top-down approaches that punished schools that didn’t meet the standards. Furthermore, by attempting to align student performance to teachers, NCLB and its descendants like Race to the Top, created a system rife for cheating and/or avoidance. Furthermore, with so much weight on standardized tests, teaching became more test-preparation oriented, with fewer lessons focusing on concepts or ideas and more and more of a drilled down focus on skills and rote practice. It’s a section of the book that elicits a little PTSD from my last years in the classroom, but through Ravitch’s skepticism and questions about the nature of standardized testing and the punitive nature of these reforms, she helps to highlight the great cost that this era of American education had on students, teachers, and schools. Prior to the NCLB chapters, Ravitch discuses the shift in NYC’s schools with Bloomberg and Klein, which seems to be one of the loci of the reformist movements that ushered in the kind of corporatization of schools. It was actually shocking to read about some of the events that happened both in schools and personally to Ravitch and her partner, Mary. Throughout this experience, Ravitch continued to question and meet with individuals with whom she disagreed or questioned to learn more about how or what the other side thought. If anything, I think this is one of the key take-aways from Ravitch’s book—that it is important to listen and attempt to understand those with whom you may disagree. It’s a point she continues to reference throughout, and it also helped her to gradually understand the scam of school reform. She was able to begin to see how school choice, charter schools, and vouchers were used for purposes other than what they were initially designed for. Or how the reforms often addressed issues of choice or vouchers as a means to provide opportunities for families in poverty, but when looking at the outcomes, the results often tell a different story. It is Ravitch’s willingness to listen to others, but also her insistence on reviewing the facts and outcomes that informed her decisions to no longer advocate for vouchers, choice, or standardized testing.

With social media and the internet leaving a long digital trail of our lives, our thoughts and ideas, and our writing, there’s a lot for people to sift through and explore our thinking. We often see how people’s old tweets or posts are dredged up to possibly catch them in a lie or challenge their current beliefs. While Ravitch doesn’t have anything to apologize for, she offers a wonderful exploration of how our lives and experiences inform our values, ideals, and our priorities, but also how these can shift over time with further experiences, interactions, and learning. Throughout it all, Ravitch reminds us to keep our minds and ears open, to consider other’s perspectives, but to also evaluate our own positions against the evidence and ideas. I also appreciated her closing thoughts where she acknowledges how the books and articles she read influenced her thinking and ideas, and how it is important to sometimes take a step outside of our comfort zone and connect with a writer, book or ideas that challenge our assumptions and thinking. It may not shift our perspectives, but it may offer us further understanding of another perspective, which is something that we do not often see today. This is a great book to read for anyone who is involved or interested in American education. Since I am a regular reader of Ravitch’s blog and have read some of her books, I found this book to be fascinating. Highly recommended!

PS- I felt like there was so much to write about in this book. However, I forgot to mention how much I loved reading about Ravitch’s interactions with Bayard Rustin. I graduated from West Chester University and lived right next to Rustin Park. I minored in African and African American Literature, a program that was run through the Douglass Institute, and Rustin’s legacy was incredibly important to many of my professors and me. I couldn’t believe that Ravitch had Rustin sing in her home! It was really amazing to read.