Diane Ravitch And Steven Brill Talk Education Reform

C-SPAN:

The founder of The American Lawyer magazine and Court TV tells the story of a coalition of unlikely allies in the fight to change a school system that many parents believe is failing the nation's children. He debates education solutions with former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch.

Read the whole story: C-SPAN

Comments

[mbesner]

12:53 PM on 08/28/2011

I'm a retired high school Math teacher and I know what is really going on in urban classrooms. In their discussion Ravitch and Brill (who by the way was patronizing, smug, arrogant and annoying) never addressed student accountability. Has Steven Brill ever taught a group of 33 students who would rather be anywhere and who exert little, if any, control over their behavior? His attitude and his distortion of the problems in education show that he has not; it is his failure that he cannot imagine the improbability of success in such a setting.

[am10]

11:11 AM on 08/23/2011

Brill was a little obnoxious here and there, but he still seems to be open minded on some of the issues. I'm glad he broke the rubber room story, but would like to see him shadow a teacher for a few months to see where he goes with it.

[jpfan]

01:01 AM on 08/22/2011

Brill came across as somewhat defensive. I don't know much about him so I checked out his bio on Wikipedia. Since, he's a fan of public accountability, I think people should know that he's been involved in more than one disastrous business deal.

He established the company called Verified Identity Pass Inc. According to the Wall Street Journal "The company raised $44.4 million last year, but said it was “unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor.” and has since been involved in numerous lawsuits. It went belly up in 2009 without notice and stiffed 23,000 of its subscribers (according to Wikipedia).

No wonder he got so defensive when the topic of money and hedge funds were brought into the discussion. So this is someone who blew 44 million on a failed company but now has somehow become an expert on education! Pretty funny.

[sawyer0413]

09:57 AM on 08/22/2011

This is a very common misunderstanding of business. Failure is not "failure" unless one fails to learn from it. There are many reasons for the failure of a business. Clear failed, in my opinion, because the travelers it targeted, high frequency business travelers, did not see the benefit, because it was available in so few places.

Also understand that business failure may not have meant a failure to recoup money ... profit and cash flow are two very different things.

All said, Steven Brill is many things, including a trained reporter and lawyer (although he did not pass the bar). Evaluate his ideas. They are good, bad, or somewhere in-between.

[Southsidemom]

11:56 AM on 08/23/2011

Thanks. The notion of learning from failures is under-used in our society today. We could all do better if we reflect on both our successes and failures before we assert solutions. That's what we're asking teachers across the country to do at The VIVA Project www.vivaproject.org-- bring their real classroom experience to collaborate on public policy that will actually support intellectually rigorous classroom work. We need their wisdom to make our public schools work. Unfortunately, too few ask for their direct input.

[Hlynn]

11:03 PM on 08/21/2011

I watched this very contentious conversation on TV today and was extremely disappointed that Ravtich did not, even one single time, bring up the fact that schools reflect what is in their communities.

Brill brought up over and over the accountability found in business that he contends is lacking in education and Ravitch did not ever bring up that teachers are not evaluated on their skills but on the behavior of their students, which they can't control. That doesn't happen in business. If an employee is slacking off, the supervisor doesn't get consequences, the employee does. Not so in education. If the student doesn't show up for class, participate, do work--or even disrupts the class--the student is not held accountable, the teacher is.

I can't believe she didn't even once bring up the participation of parents, either. Not one single time and they discusses charter schools quite a bit, and she also never brought up that students get dismissed from charter schools for infractions and those students then go to public schools where they cannot be dismissed.

I was really looking forward to this interview and it was a bitter disappointment. I'll never get that hour back.

[eceresa]

08:57 AM on 08/22/2011

In business, a supervisor is sometimes evaluated on the success of his or her team.

Of course, that supervisor can fire a team member that refuses to show up or work.

[Hlynn]

12:55 PM on 08/22/2011

But teachers can't fire students, and their job is dependent on the behavior and work ethic of the students.

[YoungWarthog]

11:42 AM on 08/22/2011

On Wall St. the CEO gets hugely rewarded even when the company fails! Is that "accoutability"?

[Hlynn]

12:57 PM on 08/22/2011

Yes, that is accountability in the world of business. It's odd how so many people don't see that contradiction when applied to schools, and yet they--like Brill--claim they don't have an agenda.

[eceresa]

10:54 PM on 08/21/2011

Teachers and their unions have pretty much always been on the side of reform. But most of the people who are called "reformers" in the media these days are against it.

That complicates things, since we're faced with a situation where what's commonly called "education reform" is actually making things worse.

[Hlynn]

01:06 PM on 08/22/2011

Good point. People must think teachers have a lot more power than we actually do. We don't get to decide what to teach, what materials to use, or how to teach; those decisions are made by others. Then we, not they, get blamed if the results are not perfect.

What other field of work are constantly harangued about being "excellent"? Where, in politics, in business, in any field at all are all people expected to be "excellent" when given so little autonomy?

And why are there only charter schools? Why aren't there charter police departments and fire departments? Why not charter state park staff? All those people are paid by taxpayers, but how many are written about in newspapers and complained about for not being "excellent"?

These so called "reformers" have a very aggressive agenda to end public education and make it privatized as charter schools to make investors wealthy. But since charter schools regularly kick out students who don't fit in, what will happen to those children when there are no more public schools?

[dbaker1972]

09:52 PM on 08/21/2011

Brill came across as defensive and disingenuous. I hoped to hear some really good arguments about education reform. What I got instead from Brill was the same ol' demonizing of the teachers unions. I'm not saying that was all he said (of course he said much more), but nothing was new. Moreover, I found his comment that teachers who do union work are being paid by taxpayers to do so to be really disingenuous. Of course it's partly true, but how about the hedge fund managers who contribute money to his organization who have gotten bailed out by taxpayers? Virtually everyone is in some indirect way is being "paid by taxpayers". Besides, is that an argument against the teachers' unions? Bottom line, I'm no great fan of much of what the unions do, but I found Brill to me making ineffective arguments for how to fix education.

[SoCalifTeacher]

02:04 PM on 08/21/2011

Parents...why so many schools are failing.

[Hlynn]

01:10 PM on 08/22/2011

Society itself is failing, but somehow schools are supposed to be able to overcome all that no matter how many negative influences from the surrounding communites come into the schools.

Businesses would never put up with that. They often post signs reading "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone". They can choose their suppliers and reject customers. And still people try to compare schools unfavorably to businesses. It makes no sense.

[Consequence]

03:56 PM on 08/22/2011

If those parents are teachers, then yes...

[rick nelms]

05:17 PM on 08/25/2011

All parents SHOULD be teachers or they have failed their children.

[umbrarchist]

01:25 PM on 08/21/2011

What is a historian of education? Powerful low priced computers have only been around for 20 years and really cheap computers only for less than ten years.

But when have educators suggested a National Recommended Reading List? When have they suggested mandatory accounting in the schools?

So with cheap computers are the schools obsolete but does the system need the social engineering that the schools do on the kids? Now there are free books for the computers.

All Day September by Roger Kuykendall
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2295/all-day-september

THE YEAR WHEN STARDUST FELL by Raymond F. Jones
http://winstonscifi.blogspot.com/2010/04/synopsis-for-year-when-stardust-fell-by.html
http://www.readcentral.com/book/Raymond-F-Jones/Read-The-Year-When-Stardust-Fell-Online

Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton
http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/abstract/eightkeys.html
http://www.onread.com/book/Eight-Keys-to-Eden-6514/

The Fourth R by George O. Smith
http://www.onread.com/book/The-Fourth-R-17950/

Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/4826/black-man-s-burden