This analysis by Kevin Carey is flawed. He criticizes Diane Ravitch's recent New York Times op-ed, in which?he?sees a contradiction?between?the author's?censure of the 100-percent proficiency crowd, those who "believe that the right combination of incentives and punishments will produce dramatic improvement,? and her reproof of President Obama for publicly praising a school with a 97 percent graduation rate but whose high school students' ?ACT scores were far below the state average? and a mere 21 percent of whose? middle school students tested proficient or advanced in math. As Carey puts it:
Got that? If you write policies based on test score proficiency rates and insist that proficiency is the only reasonable way to judge success, even in schools beset by poverty, then you're cruel, utopian, and out to destroy public education. If, on the other hand, you do as President Obama did and praise a school beset by poverty despite its low proficiency rates, because it scores well on other measures, like graduation rates, college going rates, and annual growth on state tests, then you're peddling the myth of miracle schools as part of a campaign to destroy public education.
One sees what he's getting at. Ravitch has recently?insinuated her name into the papers in part by using fiery, scornful language to argue that education ?reformers,? with their penchant for testing, are obliterating America's system of public schools, which,?she always misleadingly implies and occasionally incorrectly adduces, were previously wonderful, enlightening places. And yet when?Ravitch wishes to make her points by animadverting on a particular school, she suddenly finds student test scores a useful and worthy?measure of?that school's worth. Hence: hypocrite.
But this is an inelegant critique, for it misconstrues the op-ed, in which Ravitch is arguing, essentially, that the ?reformers? are hypocritical, that in their search for education miracles they are willing to ignore their own stated criteria for accomplishment. In short, the op-ed's main point has nothing at all to do with Ravitch's?personal views on the subject (she inserts her perspective in the concluding two paragraphs, which are the article's worst parts). It makes no difference how she feels about testing, see; the argument made in the op-ed is that those who swear by test scores, who yearn to show that poverty is irrelevant to student success, then too?often?manufacture success where, in reality, there are only poor kids and low test scores.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow