Education Reform

I read a commentary by Sara Stevenson, a librarian at O' Henry middle school, about how she believes the attempts to reform education could be doing more harm than good. The reform for public schools consist of standardized testing and “identifying” and getting rid of the teachers who are doing a bad job. A bad job can be considered as not successfully being able to teach a class as big as "45 students." Many parents and teachers are vocal about their opposition to this and their "advocate" is Diane Ravitch. Ravitch was assistant secretary of education for both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and currently works at New York University.

Ravitch shows us that in "1964" when U.S students took the first international test to see where we stood with the rest of the industrialized nations we ranked "12 out of 12." It seems we have not improved or gotten worse in that ranking.

One point Stevenson makes is that "Finland is ranked number one" on that international test and they don’t have standardized testing. She also points out that Finland also has only "four percent" of children in poverty compared to the "59 percent" here in Texas who “qualify for free or reduced lunch.” She states that poverty shouldn’t be a crutch but just a “reality” in why our school system is failing even with the reform. I don’t think statistics on poverty should have an impact on how a child learns if anything the school should be a safe haven not a testing war zone.

Stevenson realizes that many teachers will be fired as well as leave because of these stringent rules and tests that are put in place and she states that we should be asking questions such as “who will take those teachers places?” and “will we break free of our addiction to data?”

I feel like Stevenson could have spoken more for herself in this commentary instead of using Ravitch quotes more than speaking for herself and really stating her own opinion. I think Stevenson’s intended audience are those people who see the changes in school as a negative and disagree with the Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top reforms. I have to agree that education reform is doing more harm because everyone I know that is still in school is not retaining anything they are learning, they are just memorizing facts for the next test they have to take and forgetting them as soon as that test is over.