Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms

550 Pages·2000·24.325 MB·English

by  Diane Ravitch

MN •
DIANE
RAVITCH
SIMON & SCHUSTER
New York • London
Toronto • Sydney • Singapore
L E T
F
C
B A K
A Century
of Failed
School
Reforms
1 I
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Copyright e 2000 by Diane Ravitch
All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks
of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Designed by Deirdre C. Amthor
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ravitch, Diane.
Left back : a century of failed school reforms / Diane Ravitch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Education—United States—History-20th century. 2. Educational
change—United States—History-20th century. 3. Public schools—United
States—History-20th century. I. Title.
LA216.R28 2000
370.973—dc21 00-038067
ISBN 0-684-84417-6
For Mary

Contents
Introduction 13
1. The Educational Ladder 19
2. A Fork in the Road 51
3. The Age of the Experts 88
4. IQ Testing: "This Brutal Pessimism" 130
5. Instead of the Academic Curriculum 162
6. On the Social Frontier 202
7. The Public Schools Respond 238
8. Dissidents and Critics 284
9. The Great Meltdown 322
10. The Sixties 366
11. In Search of Standards 408
Conclusion 453
Notes 469
Select Bibliography 529
Acknowledgments 533
Index 535

Introduction
For most of the twentieth century, Americans have argued about their
public schools, some claiming that they are not as good as they used to
be, others that they are not as good as they ought to be. Some think the
schools should go "back to basics"; others insist that the schools should
break free of the basics. Some want higher standards; others want
schools where students pursue their own interests without any external
pressures. Some think that the schools must liberate themselves from the
dead hand of tradition, others that the schools are plagued by too many
faddish reforms.
Each generation supposes that its complaints are unprecedented.
Critics of the schools in the 1980s looked back to the 1950s as a halcyon
era; critics in the 1950s looked back on their own Depression-era
schooling as a high-water mark. But those who seek the "good old days"
will be disappointed, for in fact there never was a Golden Age. It is im-
possible to find a period in the twentieth century in which education re-
formers, parents, and the citizenry were satisfied with the schools.
As that century drew to a close, American schools were once again at
the center of acrimonious debates about their quality, their methods, and
even their purpose. The schools were expected to do something they had
never done before: educate all children to high standards. This de-
13
Introduction
mand for better academic performance unleashed arguments about the
meaning of standards, how to set them, and how to measure whether
they have been met.
Critics pointed to low scores on national and international tests; to the
widespread practice of social promotion and grade inflation; to the large
numbers of teachers who had received degrees in pedagogy, but not in
the academic subjects they were teaching; to the high rates of re-
mediation necessary in college; and to the low academic expectations
that had become ingrained in many American schools. School districts
in different parts of the country were rocked by disputes about the cur-
riculum, standards of achievement, and classroom methods. Bitter de-
bates broke out about how to teach reading and mathematics, how
much emphasis to place on multiculturalism in history and literature,
how to measure students' performance, and whether to hold students
accountable for their work in school and teachers accountable for their
pupils' progress.
Though American educators, parents, and policy makers living
through these disputes in the 1980s and 1990s doubtless thought they
were pioneers, in fact these issues have a long history. They have been
debated for the past century. The great educational issues of the twenti-
eth century in the United States centered on the questions of who was to
be educated and what they were to learn: What are schools for and what
should they aim to do? What is it that schools must do? As the stakes at-
tached to education grew higher, parents' anxiety about their children's
schooling grew as well; as the cost of education escalated, public offi-
cials insisted on surer evidence that the schools were succeeding in their
most important tasks.
History helps us understand these issues. We cannot understand
where we are and where we are heading without knowing where we have
been. We live now with decisions and policies that were made long ago.
Before we attempt to reform present practices, we must try to learn why
those decisions were made and to understand the consequences of past
policies. History doesn't tell us the answers to our questions, but it helps to
inform us so that we might make better decisions in the future.
The aim of this book is to trace the origins of America's seemingly
14
Introduction
permanent debate about school standards, curricula, and methods. In
particular, it recounts the story of unrelenting attacks on the academic
mission of the schools. As enrollments in school increased in the early
twentieth century, there was a decided split between those who believed
that a liberal education (that is, an academic curriculum) should be given
to all students and those who wanted such studies taught only to the col-
lege-bound elite. The latter group, based primarily in the schools of edu-
cation, identified itself with the new progressive education movement and
dominated the education profession in its formative years.
Thinking they could bridge the gap between school and society and
make the schools socially useful, pedagogical theorists sought alterna-
tives to the academic curriculum for non-college-bound students. Cur-
ricular differentiation meant an academic education for some, a
nonacademic education for others; this approach affected those chil-
dren—mainly the poor, immigrants, and racial minorities—who were
pushed into undemanding vocational, industrial, or general programs by
bureaucrats and guidance counselors who thought they were incapable of
learning much more. Such policies, packaged in rhetoric about
democracy and "meeting the needs of the individual child," encouraged
racial and social stratification in American schools. This book will argue
that this stratification not only was profoundly undemocratic but was
harmful, both to the children involved and to American society.
As used in this book, the term "academic curriculum" does not refer
to the formalistic methods, rote recitations, and student passivity about
which all reasonable educators and parents have justly complained. Nor
does it refer only to teaching basic skills. It refers instead to the system-
atic study of language and literature, science and mathematics, history,
the arts, and foreign languages; these studies, commonly described today
as a "liberal education," convey important knowledge and skills,
cultivate aesthetic imagination, and teach students to think critically and
reflectively about the world in which they live.
Certainly the college-bound need these studies. But so too do those
who do not plan to go to college, for they may never have another chance
to get instruction about the organizing principles of society and nature,
about the varieties of human experience. Even if they choose not to en-
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