I’ve rearranged the sequence of Slekar’s points.

• Don’t wait for superman. You already have super teachers. Support them!
• Accountability is code for blame.
• NCLB is a system designed to “prove” that public schools are failures.
• Participation in a system designed to “prove” that public schools are failing is unethical and I would hope offensive to anybody’s religious values.
• My son is not a data point to be used by politicians and talking heads to “prove” that public schools are failing.
• The boycott of NCLB is in support of public schools.
• NCLB narrows the curriculum. This is bad because a rich curriculum supports learning.
• The tests have sucked the life out of teaching and learning,
• The system doesn’t measure what it says it does.
• Tests weren’t designed to evaluate teachers.
• Where are the experts?
• A College dropout like Bill Gates and a second rate basketball player like Arne Duncan in charge of education policy, really?
• The new reformers need to spend an extended amount of time in schools.
• High stakes testing seems to only be able to predict socioeconomic level.
• Control for poverty and our scores beat international scores.
• Read Valerie Strauss, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, and Alfie Kohn.
• Research, evidence, research, evidence.
• Finland.
• Punitive systems do not work.
• NCLB is a failure. Achievement gap remains.
• We love our public schools. They are the bedrock of democracy in this country.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-d-slekar/how-to-boycott-nclb-in-90_b_843972.html

I bought this book after reading Dave Ellison’s column in the Daily Review on Monday.  Ellison’s column about the book and its author led me to post a blog entry.  Ellison wrote (in part) that Ravitch’s “wrenching transformation” from supporter to opponent (of high-stakes-testing and school choice) was based on data, and certainly Ravitch does offer up some helpful data to support her conclusion that various “school reform” strategies have failed to produce improvements in education.  But there’s really nothing new here, and I don’t expect this book to “convert” anyone who previously disagreed with Ravitch’s views (which are clearly very similar to Dave Ellison’s views and my own views).

In fact, I didn’t really perceive a “wrenching transformation” by the author; perhaps the transformation was so complete that she wasn’t able to clearly articulate her earlier views.  While reading the book, I felt that Ms. Ravitch’s earlier support of particular school reforms was not very strong, and she mostly “went along” with the views of others on the topics of high-stakes testing, school choice, and business-like management of schools.  Her real passion seems to be curriculum and instruction, and her “transformation” seems mostly to be a realization that popular reform movements (specifically, evaluating teachers primarily based on student test scores) had ruined or eliminated the curriculum that matters so much to her.

Throughout the book, Ravitch repeats and recycles many of the same facts, analysis, and conclusions, over and over, again and again. Of course, it makes sense to “remind” or “refresh” readers when making a new connection to earlier material in a text, but that’s not the problem. Instead, each chapter appears to be written to stand alone.  (At times, I even wondered if the book was simply a collection of columns or essays that she’d written over the past year or two, but I can’t find any support for this theory.)  Perhaps Ravitch recognizes that many readers won’t have time to read the entire book, and thus she wants each chapter to be meaningful and “complete,” even if read in isolation from the rest of the book.  (In fact, a number of logical and rhetorical contradictions are apparent when reading the entire book.)

I must stress: I agree with nearly all the ideas and arguments in Ravitch’s book.  And she makes many very strong arguments (but unfortunately, without much persuasive evidence or data).  My frustration comes not just from the painful amount of repetition, but from frustration that Ravitch’s arguments simply don’t seem likely to persuade anyone who doesn’t already share her views.

In the end, I simply found myself wishing for a much shorter, better-organized summary of the ideas discussed in this book.