The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch (Basic Books)
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If Ravitch discovered this modest truth through honest self-questioning and sound logic, why then can’t we all read her book and do the same? Because, as Ravitch demonstrates despite herself, school reform has little to do with a dispassionate interest in improving schools and a lot to do with the manipulation and consolidation of power. This lesson is driven home most nakedly in her discussion of the infamous so-called school reforms carried out in San Diego in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Ravitch notes that San Diego was an odd candidate for major reform since it already had what was “widely perceived” to be “one of the nation’s most successful urban school systems.” However, in the spring of 1996 the teachers’ union struck for higher wages and more input into school decision-making—and won. Ravitch reports that “the city’s business leaders were aghast.” They were also vindictive. In retaliation that fall they backed a slate of school-board candidates who supported greater “accountability.”
Union bashing, as Ravitch’s book makes clear, is often at the emotional core of school reform efforts. Teachers are presented as lazy and recalcitrant—shifty slackers who must be obsessively monitored, regulated, and punished if any real work is going to get done. Unions interfere with the efficient, can-do initiatives of management. Best get rid of them and let the unfettered free market solve all our problems.
But even more important than making sure poor kids are properly regulated may be containing the NEA, the single biggest union—not teacher’s union, but union—in the country. Though our nation has gone a long way toward rolling back the menace of organized labor, the dread monster still squats mercilessly on our innocent children. Have no fear, though. If corporate and government interests have their way there’ll be charter schools from sea to shining sea. The whole point of having class, after all, is to learn your place.
