Nice sense making of this. I haven't read the book, but one thing that has fascinated me about Dr. Ravitch is despite her shifts in position she has always shown a decided contempt for social science research. When she believed that charter schools and high stakes tests would increase achievement, she embraced those ideas over the objections of people who were relying on pedagogical and psychological data that challenged those beliefs. Then when she did her ideological about-face she rejected research showing that rigorous curriculum and explicit teaching bolstered learning. Her ideology may have taken a 180 degree turn, but her contempt for data over belief has been a consistent hallmark of her approach to the problem of American education.
Thank you for highlighting the nuance of this conversation. I appreciate how you outlined Ravitch's journey as I only came to know her in her "anti-charter" era, much of which I agreed with based on my personal experiences teaching in charter early in my career. But the "solve poverty" approach is unhelpful for educators. And I would argue: downright dangerous. Thinking that students are struggling with reading simply because they are poor (not denying that it does play a role) contributes to negative bias, especially in underserved communities. Content-rich and knowledge building curricula works. It's been true in my own experience teaching and coaching in historically underserved communities. Oh, and there's data to support it!
Ravitch's classist conclusion is as revolting as it is wrong. Public education is for the common good, so we must be committed to the best outcome for each child. There isn't another ethical position for an educator to have. Sadly, as is pointed out, "the rich kids" are *not* doing okay.
This comment nails it: "But in the process of changing her mind, she has abandoned nuance in favor of blanket condemnation and take-no-prisoners rhetoric, attacking her perceived opponents with the zeal of a convert." Although Ravitch often states how she was friends with Jeanne Chall (The Great Debate) and does agree with Chall about the role of phonics in reading acquisition, she goes on to excoriate Emily Hanford when she makes the very same points. Ravitch has absolutely no nuance in reflecting upon the good, the bad, and the ugly of the science of reading movement. I've stopped reading and engaging with her blogs for this reason. Thanks for filling in so many of the gaps related to her shifting positions.
Hmm...my school's been using CKLA for a couple of years, and I haven't found a teacher who likes it. So, the example given of Diane dismissing it seems more relevant to me. That said, I don't have enough information because I've never taught this curriculum. However, my biggest problem is with the polemics written here. I'm open to many things in CKLA, but my school's listed as Title 1. Most of our kids do a small portion of each lesson. They're overwhelmed with the vocabulary, and they don't connect with the content because of language, culture and age. We should give it time, but we need more classroom research done in actual classrooms; most importantly, we need to please stop until we confirm and reconfirm its validity. I feel like those 80 year old educators described below, just stop, please just stop. The mystery of educators sniping back and forth.
It's certainly possible to use CKLA, or any curriculum, in a way that doesn't work well--and no curriculum is perfect. But I've been in classrooms using CKLA that were in Title 1 schools--and spoken to many teachers in such schools--where it worked very well. For my book, I followed a second grade class using CKLA in which over half the students were from non-English-speaking families (most of them Ethiopian), and they were fascinated by most of the content, including the War of 1812.
It's very different from what most elementary teachers are used to, so it's important for teachers to get support and guidance in how best to implement the curriculum. It can seem like an overwhelming amount of content, but kids don't need to "master" all of it. As a CKLA teacher once explained to me, "it's not about mastery, it's about exposure." The curriculum is structured so that the important stuff comes back, later in the year or in subsequent years, and kids eventually get it, even if they don't on the first time around. It can also be hard to implement in higher grades if kids haven't been exposed to it in earlier grades, because the content at higher grades often assumes background knowledge built by the curriculum.
And there has been classroom research showing the efficacy of the Core Knowledge approach (see https://www.educationnext.org/how-building-knowledge-boosts-literacy-and-learning/ ). It would be nice if there were more, but it takes years to see the effects of a knowledge-building curriculum on standardized tests, which are considered the only valid measures. Those studies are extremely expensive and difficult to carry out, and I don't know of any others in the pipeline. So waiting for more classroom research isn't really an option. There's plenty of other evidence supporting a knowledge-building approach.
I liked your report on research showing the importance of a knowledge based curriculum; however, the implementation of it is key to its efficacy. Your points would be great if they were actually implemented where I am. In fact, I disagree with the point of view which relegates knowledge as less important. When you focus on knowledge; however, you can have problems putting in place what knowledge is correct. The focus on vocabulary is fantastic, but can be overwhelming in the complexity of each school context. Also, I've had several teachers point to racism in CKLA. I trust their view on that, but that doesn't change the importance of knowledge in the classroom. Things get knotty when you see them in your practice.
My point on classroom research was off-topic, but I am frustrated with the differences in knowledge from my learning experience in grad school (ESL) and my experience teaching in second language learning overseas and in the public schools. For example, my county doesn't allow classroom research in the same school where a teacher's located. You're not even allowed to do classroom research unless it's organized into the county protocol, which is very undeveloped, and frankly useless. This is why there's so little research done by teachers in their classrooms. I want more research and support for research done by teachers in their classrooms. Thanks again for your response, and, yes, I'm sensitive to outside pronouncements as they relate to my experience.
There's an industry that has us changing curriculums in the same way the fashion industry gets us to change hem lines, and they do it to keep us buying new curriculums. And part of how they operate is to manufacture and drum up the reading wars. They sell us Common Core, and testing, and SoR as a panacea, and then they pivot to Core Knowledge and who-knows-what next.
But it's not about benefiting children; it's about selling curriculums (sometimes they're just the old ones rebranded). And a one-size-fits-all curriculum is like a one-size-fits-all shoe; it's a procrustean bed that teachers are mandated to make everyone fit "with fidelity."
I don't know if she has good intentions or not, but Wexler is part of this industry.
As an aging woman, I hate to name one's age as a culprit in the face of inconsistencies. However, the last couple of decades have been pretty wild rides, socially, educationally and in terms of reconciling what we "thought" we knew about people and institutions that we've relied on, only to have all of it challenged, and very less likely confirmed, leaving us with a bit deflated and disappointed.
I have two highly educated parents (both in their 80s) who were dedicated educators in their public-school systems. However, I find it is difficult to talk to them lately. So much as changed socially that it is almost difficult to find common ground when talking about the schools their grandchildren go to. There are so much more stresses and external pressures placed on students, teachers and parents now. I don't think we can underestimate the undermining impact that technology has played in this flip/flop positioning and lack of energy to see investments through to their completion. My Mom always lets me know when she's "done" with talking about something; It's like a timer goes off and she announces "Well, we won't solve all the world's problems today...." and then I know it's time to move on!
I think these times are difficult for our elder population. They don't have the time or energy to be instigators of change and research and innovation. They just want to "Be", --and that is okay.
My guess is that Ravitch is just done with "Education". Her way out may be to just walk out the door and disown her earlier stances so she's not held in contempt later and she can find some peace.
Very late to the party, sorry. When asserting that DR has changed, I think it only fair to ask, "compared to what?" Who would have thought in 1999 that Republicans would support, first, the No Child Left Behind Act, and, second, Common Core. But, they did. She has held fast against the federal overreach, the weak and fuzzy CC Standards, at the same time her former mostly GOP allies for "high standards" surrendered to the hype and Bill Gates' large checks. While on the Fordham Institute board she objected to taking Gates' money saying it wasn't needed and it would corrupt the organization, and it has. Has she changed her stripes more than some of her former allies, such as Checker Finn? I don't think so. She is still a strong advocate for clear, high, and enforced standards.
The only book of hers I’ve read is the excellent Left Back. I’ve been aware of her ideological turn, but haven’t followed her closely.
In a review of the 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Katharine Beals (who makes an important point that the topic of what parents want is conspicuously absent from Ravitch’s thinking about solutions) notes that Ravitch does NOT appear to have changed her mind on curriculum. She still “stresses it”, and “still supports a challenging, content-rich core curriculum of the sort promoted by E.D. Hirsch and his Core Knowledge Foundation”.
The 2013 blog post you linked to suggests otherwise, but I’ve been down a bit of a rabbit hole in her blog archives, and I’m not convinced she’s actually changed her mind that much about curriculum. She doesn’t criticize Hirsch and even gave him a slot on her blog to write about the vagueness of state standards and argue for the need for specificity in the curriculum (just a month after that post railing about how developmentally inappropriate those NY standards were). Hirsch’s ideas were also the topic of another guest post in 2019 in which the writer defends Hirsch against “willful misreading” of his work. In neither does she come out and say she disagrees with him.
In the comment section of the post you linked to, she writes, “Can you imagine testing 6-year-olds about Mesopotamia or ziggurats and cuneiform?” "Testing"
And in the comment section on a 2016 post:
“I was on the board of Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation, and I long supported the idea of a common curriculum. The Common Core has shown us how hard it will be to bring that to pass. As Hirsch belatedly discovered, it is mostly skills, not the kind of content he favors. If there are fights over the Common Core, you can imagine the fights that will occur when you try to define “what every American should know.” I have worked on state history curricula, and I can tell you it is a knock-down battle among ethnic and religious and racial groups to get their story told the way they think it should be told.
I have also learned that you can give exactly the same curriculum to all students in a class or a school, and there will still be achievement gaps. The knowledge gap is not the only gap. The income inequality gap is even more important.”
So maybe she’s ok with telling first graders about Mesopotamia, but not with expecting them to remember it or be tested on it? Thinks the developmentally inappropriate part isn’t listening to a story about it, but being expected to “identify” or “explain” it? Or thinks knowledge-rich curriculum is important in theory, but impossible in practice on any large scale? Or thinks it’s all well and good, but won’t solve income inequality, which is her top priority? She doesn’t seem to be striving for clarity or coherence (or nuance, as you point out) and doesn’t seem too motivated to try to explain her thinking to her critics.
In the last chapter of Left Back, she writes, “If there is anything to be learned from the river of ink that was spilled in the education disputes of the twentieth century, it is that anything in education that is labeled a ‘movement’ should be avoided like the plague.” So the seeds of her transformation might have been there for a long time.
Thanks for the link to the review. It can be hard to pin down where Ravitch stands on the issue of knowledge-building, and she would probably say that she's all in favor of it, in the abstract--just not in a prescribed curriculum.
I too read Death and Life of the Great American School System, but many years ago, so I don't remember it that clearly. She may well have stressed curriculum in that book, as Beals says, but she certainly doesn't stress it in her new book. She basically doesn't mention it, except perhaps to dismiss the idea indirectly. When she says she opposes any state or district "mandates," she may be including any mandate to use a particular kind of curriculum. She says that quite clearly with regard to a curriculum that requires systematic phonics instruction.
And I think it's been true for a while that she doesn't see knowledge-building curriculum as a lever for education reform and addressing inequality. I've never spoken to her, but when I was researching The Knowledge Gap, I managed to find her email and asked her about her views on knowledge-building curriculum. As I recounted in the book, she told me that she believes "poverty is a bigger problem than curriculum" and that standardized tests "reflect family income, not knowledge or learning." That was in 2017.
As for Ravitch's objections to CKLA's unit on Ancient Civilizations: The list of things students are expected to be familiar with by the end of the unit isn't equivalent to things they will be tested on. Maybe that's the way she took it, but it's certainly not the way CKLA is used in practice. If they're "assessed," it's primarily done informally through oral discussion -- especially in first grade -- and it's not like every child is held accountable for knowing every item on the list. It's possible Ravitch sincerely believed six-year-olds would be grilled on these concepts, but before holding the curriculum up for ridicule, I think she should have investigated further.
Thank you for this post. I find it so odd that teachers and educators fight science and data and research etc. What are we teaching if not for kids to be educated yet we turn a blind eye on educating ourseleves? What the what?
An allegiance to broad-scale reform on either side of the debate does not do the local context justice. So I appreciate your pause for nuance, Natalie.
Educators need more time away from the operational grind to cultivate wisdom in their situation, otherwise we become susceptible to thought leaders who have a knack for punchy lines that hit a nerve. Alfie Kohn used to be good at this (in a bad way).
Nice sense making of this. I haven't read the book, but one thing that has fascinated me about Dr. Ravitch is despite her shifts in position she has always shown a decided contempt for social science research. When she believed that charter schools and high stakes tests would increase achievement, she embraced those ideas over the objections of people who were relying on pedagogical and psychological data that challenged those beliefs. Then when she did her ideological about-face she rejected research showing that rigorous curriculum and explicit teaching bolstered learning. Her ideology may have taken a 180 degree turn, but her contempt for data over belief has been a consistent hallmark of her approach to the problem of American education.
Thank you for highlighting the nuance of this conversation. I appreciate how you outlined Ravitch's journey as I only came to know her in her "anti-charter" era, much of which I agreed with based on my personal experiences teaching in charter early in my career. But the "solve poverty" approach is unhelpful for educators. And I would argue: downright dangerous. Thinking that students are struggling with reading simply because they are poor (not denying that it does play a role) contributes to negative bias, especially in underserved communities. Content-rich and knowledge building curricula works. It's been true in my own experience teaching and coaching in historically underserved communities. Oh, and there's data to support it!
Thank you for freeing me on the need to read her book. I have always thought her flip flop — in the face of the evidence — was so odd.
Ravitch's classist conclusion is as revolting as it is wrong. Public education is for the common good, so we must be committed to the best outcome for each child. There isn't another ethical position for an educator to have. Sadly, as is pointed out, "the rich kids" are *not* doing okay.
This comment nails it: "But in the process of changing her mind, she has abandoned nuance in favor of blanket condemnation and take-no-prisoners rhetoric, attacking her perceived opponents with the zeal of a convert." Although Ravitch often states how she was friends with Jeanne Chall (The Great Debate) and does agree with Chall about the role of phonics in reading acquisition, she goes on to excoriate Emily Hanford when she makes the very same points. Ravitch has absolutely no nuance in reflecting upon the good, the bad, and the ugly of the science of reading movement. I've stopped reading and engaging with her blogs for this reason. Thanks for filling in so many of the gaps related to her shifting positions.
Hmm...my school's been using CKLA for a couple of years, and I haven't found a teacher who likes it. So, the example given of Diane dismissing it seems more relevant to me. That said, I don't have enough information because I've never taught this curriculum. However, my biggest problem is with the polemics written here. I'm open to many things in CKLA, but my school's listed as Title 1. Most of our kids do a small portion of each lesson. They're overwhelmed with the vocabulary, and they don't connect with the content because of language, culture and age. We should give it time, but we need more classroom research done in actual classrooms; most importantly, we need to please stop until we confirm and reconfirm its validity. I feel like those 80 year old educators described below, just stop, please just stop. The mystery of educators sniping back and forth.
It's certainly possible to use CKLA, or any curriculum, in a way that doesn't work well--and no curriculum is perfect. But I've been in classrooms using CKLA that were in Title 1 schools--and spoken to many teachers in such schools--where it worked very well. For my book, I followed a second grade class using CKLA in which over half the students were from non-English-speaking families (most of them Ethiopian), and they were fascinated by most of the content, including the War of 1812.
It's very different from what most elementary teachers are used to, so it's important for teachers to get support and guidance in how best to implement the curriculum. It can seem like an overwhelming amount of content, but kids don't need to "master" all of it. As a CKLA teacher once explained to me, "it's not about mastery, it's about exposure." The curriculum is structured so that the important stuff comes back, later in the year or in subsequent years, and kids eventually get it, even if they don't on the first time around. It can also be hard to implement in higher grades if kids haven't been exposed to it in earlier grades, because the content at higher grades often assumes background knowledge built by the curriculum.
And there has been classroom research showing the efficacy of the Core Knowledge approach (see https://www.educationnext.org/how-building-knowledge-boosts-literacy-and-learning/ ). It would be nice if there were more, but it takes years to see the effects of a knowledge-building curriculum on standardized tests, which are considered the only valid measures. Those studies are extremely expensive and difficult to carry out, and I don't know of any others in the pipeline. So waiting for more classroom research isn't really an option. There's plenty of other evidence supporting a knowledge-building approach.
I liked your report on research showing the importance of a knowledge based curriculum; however, the implementation of it is key to its efficacy. Your points would be great if they were actually implemented where I am. In fact, I disagree with the point of view which relegates knowledge as less important. When you focus on knowledge; however, you can have problems putting in place what knowledge is correct. The focus on vocabulary is fantastic, but can be overwhelming in the complexity of each school context. Also, I've had several teachers point to racism in CKLA. I trust their view on that, but that doesn't change the importance of knowledge in the classroom. Things get knotty when you see them in your practice.
My point on classroom research was off-topic, but I am frustrated with the differences in knowledge from my learning experience in grad school (ESL) and my experience teaching in second language learning overseas and in the public schools. For example, my county doesn't allow classroom research in the same school where a teacher's located. You're not even allowed to do classroom research unless it's organized into the county protocol, which is very undeveloped, and frankly useless. This is why there's so little research done by teachers in their classrooms. I want more research and support for research done by teachers in their classrooms. Thanks again for your response, and, yes, I'm sensitive to outside pronouncements as they relate to my experience.
These are rhetorical, so I don't expect a pat answer:
Who decides what knowledge counts as "core" or "correct"?
Who writes the tests that measures a curriculum's efficacy?
There's an industry that has us changing curriculums in the same way the fashion industry gets us to change hem lines, and they do it to keep us buying new curriculums. And part of how they operate is to manufacture and drum up the reading wars. They sell us Common Core, and testing, and SoR as a panacea, and then they pivot to Core Knowledge and who-knows-what next.
But it's not about benefiting children; it's about selling curriculums (sometimes they're just the old ones rebranded). And a one-size-fits-all curriculum is like a one-size-fits-all shoe; it's a procrustean bed that teachers are mandated to make everyone fit "with fidelity."
I don't know if she has good intentions or not, but Wexler is part of this industry.
As an aging woman, I hate to name one's age as a culprit in the face of inconsistencies. However, the last couple of decades have been pretty wild rides, socially, educationally and in terms of reconciling what we "thought" we knew about people and institutions that we've relied on, only to have all of it challenged, and very less likely confirmed, leaving us with a bit deflated and disappointed.
I have two highly educated parents (both in their 80s) who were dedicated educators in their public-school systems. However, I find it is difficult to talk to them lately. So much as changed socially that it is almost difficult to find common ground when talking about the schools their grandchildren go to. There are so much more stresses and external pressures placed on students, teachers and parents now. I don't think we can underestimate the undermining impact that technology has played in this flip/flop positioning and lack of energy to see investments through to their completion. My Mom always lets me know when she's "done" with talking about something; It's like a timer goes off and she announces "Well, we won't solve all the world's problems today...." and then I know it's time to move on!
I think these times are difficult for our elder population. They don't have the time or energy to be instigators of change and research and innovation. They just want to "Be", --and that is okay.
My guess is that Ravitch is just done with "Education". Her way out may be to just walk out the door and disown her earlier stances so she's not held in contempt later and she can find some peace.
Very late to the party, sorry. When asserting that DR has changed, I think it only fair to ask, "compared to what?" Who would have thought in 1999 that Republicans would support, first, the No Child Left Behind Act, and, second, Common Core. But, they did. She has held fast against the federal overreach, the weak and fuzzy CC Standards, at the same time her former mostly GOP allies for "high standards" surrendered to the hype and Bill Gates' large checks. While on the Fordham Institute board she objected to taking Gates' money saying it wasn't needed and it would corrupt the organization, and it has. Has she changed her stripes more than some of her former allies, such as Checker Finn? I don't think so. She is still a strong advocate for clear, high, and enforced standards.
The only book of hers I’ve read is the excellent Left Back. I’ve been aware of her ideological turn, but haven’t followed her closely.
In a review of the 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Katharine Beals (who makes an important point that the topic of what parents want is conspicuously absent from Ravitch’s thinking about solutions) notes that Ravitch does NOT appear to have changed her mind on curriculum. She still “stresses it”, and “still supports a challenging, content-rich core curriculum of the sort promoted by E.D. Hirsch and his Core Knowledge Foundation”.
The 2013 blog post you linked to suggests otherwise, but I’ve been down a bit of a rabbit hole in her blog archives, and I’m not convinced she’s actually changed her mind that much about curriculum. She doesn’t criticize Hirsch and even gave him a slot on her blog to write about the vagueness of state standards and argue for the need for specificity in the curriculum (just a month after that post railing about how developmentally inappropriate those NY standards were). Hirsch’s ideas were also the topic of another guest post in 2019 in which the writer defends Hirsch against “willful misreading” of his work. In neither does she come out and say she disagrees with him.
In the comment section of the post you linked to, she writes, “Can you imagine testing 6-year-olds about Mesopotamia or ziggurats and cuneiform?” "Testing"
And in the comment section on a 2016 post:
“I was on the board of Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation, and I long supported the idea of a common curriculum. The Common Core has shown us how hard it will be to bring that to pass. As Hirsch belatedly discovered, it is mostly skills, not the kind of content he favors. If there are fights over the Common Core, you can imagine the fights that will occur when you try to define “what every American should know.” I have worked on state history curricula, and I can tell you it is a knock-down battle among ethnic and religious and racial groups to get their story told the way they think it should be told.
I have also learned that you can give exactly the same curriculum to all students in a class or a school, and there will still be achievement gaps. The knowledge gap is not the only gap. The income inequality gap is even more important.”
So maybe she’s ok with telling first graders about Mesopotamia, but not with expecting them to remember it or be tested on it? Thinks the developmentally inappropriate part isn’t listening to a story about it, but being expected to “identify” or “explain” it? Or thinks knowledge-rich curriculum is important in theory, but impossible in practice on any large scale? Or thinks it’s all well and good, but won’t solve income inequality, which is her top priority? She doesn’t seem to be striving for clarity or coherence (or nuance, as you point out) and doesn’t seem too motivated to try to explain her thinking to her critics.
In the last chapter of Left Back, she writes, “If there is anything to be learned from the river of ink that was spilled in the education disputes of the twentieth century, it is that anything in education that is labeled a ‘movement’ should be avoided like the plague.” So the seeds of her transformation might have been there for a long time.
I meant to link to the Katharine Beals review. She does a good job identifying Ravitch’s blind spots. https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Reviews/v7n1.pdf
Thanks for the link to the review. It can be hard to pin down where Ravitch stands on the issue of knowledge-building, and she would probably say that she's all in favor of it, in the abstract--just not in a prescribed curriculum.
I too read Death and Life of the Great American School System, but many years ago, so I don't remember it that clearly. She may well have stressed curriculum in that book, as Beals says, but she certainly doesn't stress it in her new book. She basically doesn't mention it, except perhaps to dismiss the idea indirectly. When she says she opposes any state or district "mandates," she may be including any mandate to use a particular kind of curriculum. She says that quite clearly with regard to a curriculum that requires systematic phonics instruction.
And I think it's been true for a while that she doesn't see knowledge-building curriculum as a lever for education reform and addressing inequality. I've never spoken to her, but when I was researching The Knowledge Gap, I managed to find her email and asked her about her views on knowledge-building curriculum. As I recounted in the book, she told me that she believes "poverty is a bigger problem than curriculum" and that standardized tests "reflect family income, not knowledge or learning." That was in 2017.
As for Ravitch's objections to CKLA's unit on Ancient Civilizations: The list of things students are expected to be familiar with by the end of the unit isn't equivalent to things they will be tested on. Maybe that's the way she took it, but it's certainly not the way CKLA is used in practice. If they're "assessed," it's primarily done informally through oral discussion -- especially in first grade -- and it's not like every child is held accountable for knowing every item on the list. It's possible Ravitch sincerely believed six-year-olds would be grilled on these concepts, but before holding the curriculum up for ridicule, I think she should have investigated further.
Thank you for this post. I find it so odd that teachers and educators fight science and data and research etc. What are we teaching if not for kids to be educated yet we turn a blind eye on educating ourseleves? What the what?
An allegiance to broad-scale reform on either side of the debate does not do the local context justice. So I appreciate your pause for nuance, Natalie.
Educators need more time away from the operational grind to cultivate wisdom in their situation, otherwise we become susceptible to thought leaders who have a knack for punchy lines that hit a nerve. Alfie Kohn used to be good at this (in a bad way).
She was bought off for $10M.