The Death and Life of the Great American School System Book Review

Her changed opinions pertain to the progressive education experienced in the 1960's and 70's that brought about the ability to choose and test methods of instruction. Nevertheless, Ravitch supports the idea associated with the left since she believes that choice and testing have failed to deliver. Although she had initially supported testing and choices, her transformation regarding the same has increased her doubts on whether the old system is capable of providing quality education. Notably, the first decade of the 21st century witnessed the majority advocating for reforms in testing accountability and choice. Most personalities including President George W. The school system has become a national controversy, where varied personalities are coming up with various proposals. Despite these efforts, nothing seems to work.

Although some schools are discriminated, schools determined an individual's future, where one’s salary is equally proportional to where he/she schooled. Ravitch offers to take us through the mess created by the school system. She has an entirely new viewpoint regarding how education should be pursued. Conservatives began acknowledging patterns in failure in schools leading to the idea of a national standard, which was one way through which the problem could be overcome. Meanwhile, liberals advocated for allocation of more funds to performing schools. In addition, the use of tests was considered the only way that could be used to identify schools performing poorly. Poor minority children attended most of these schools, meaning that no minority child had the opportunity to pass at the beginning of the 21st century; the fall of 2001 (96).

Further, most conservatives were compassionate about the testing system since it provided more room for segregation. Ravitch holds that testing failed to fulfill its promises since it subjected government officials to directed more resources to exploring on how education could be delivered efficiently rather than examining education in its essence. As a result, minimal effort was devoted to promoting a better curriculum, including voucher schools, which offered limited benefits to those who attended schools (138). Similarly, charter schools separated the most ambitious students without producing better results continuously (106). Arguably, a significant percentage of charter schools were located in low-income neighborhoods, and their students were selected with the lottery. In other words, charter schools sought to enroll only the best students while ignoring the minority populations since only motivated and ambitious students were likely to seek admission to charter schools.

However, the assumption was wrong since good education cannot be measured by testing students, shaming their teacher for inefficiency, and shutting down schools. Equally, Bush's initiative was based on erroneous assumptions regarding improving the school system. It assumed that publicizing test scores would promote school reforms. It overlooked the relationship between changing government structures and school performance. Even more, it concluded that threatening teachers in non-performing schools would lead to a higher test score. Teaching to the test was done with little attention put towards instilling sound skills. However, testing is a wrong concept as Ravitch points out. She explains that test teaching is inexact as manifested by the public's opinion. Besides ensuring schools remain accountable for failure, testing has created a culture of distrust (232).

As a result, students were subjected to low standards of education. Arguably, identifying productive teachers can only be possible after they have taught for a given duration of time; more than two years. Thus, Obama's initiative meant that teacher had to wait more than long if their efforts are to be rewarded accordingly. An ideal solution would be measuring and teaching effective teaching. In particular, continuous assessment, training, and developing teachers would do better than just rewarding them by their student's performance levels. Further, the collapse and regulation of financial market trigger Ravitch to see the need of deregulating the American education in order to pave way for a new education system that will improve the outcome of those graduating (235). Choices have distinct consequences that may be either good or worse.