A longtime critic of education fads, Ravitch says that at first she didn’t realize that No Child Left Behind was just another of those fads. She also identifies two other fads — choice and charter schools — that will also fail to create lasting improvement in schools. She admits being seduced by the rhetoric of choice. “In part, I was swept along by my immersion in the upper reaches of the first Bush presidency, where choice and competition were taken for granted as successful ways to improve student achievement,” she says. But the data have not supported that assumption. She cites Milwaukee’s 20-year voucher experiment, which she contends has helped neither the neediest students nor the public schools left behind. She’s grown disenchanted with the charter-school movement as well. While such schools often do enroll poor students, they tend to attract those students who are already the most motivated, since many of the schools require lotteries for admission. She notes that New York City Chancellor Joel Klein is among those smitten with charters. He wants to see 10 percent of the city’s students in charters. “Who is talking about the other 90 percent?” she says. “When you look at the results for charters, you can always find one with great results and another with terrible results. On the whole they don’t have better results than regular public schools.” As an historian, Ravitch cites experience to warn that the current push for charter schools is dangerous. “What is stunningly successful in a small setting, nurtured by its founders and brought to life by a cadre of passionate teachers, seldom survives the transition when it’s turned into a large school reform.”
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