Is Ravitch Really A Great Historian?

November 30, 2010

Given Diane Ravitch’s clear record of selectively and misleadingly citing the evidence on current education debates, we should wonder whether her much-lauded historical work contains similar distortions.  Someone so willing to pick and choose the evidence to serve her argument about current debates may well have the same proclivity to advance her preferred historical interpretation.

Detecting how Ravitch selectively reads the current evidence is relatively easy because the full scope of current research is knowable without too much effort.  But the full set of historical evidence from which an author chooses is less easily known to a lay reader.  How can anyone beyond the handful of scholars who have reviewed the original documents on a particular subject know whether Diane Ravitch or any other historian is correctly selecting and interpreting historical evidence?

The reality is that we can’t.  Most people tend to think that a historian is good because he or she writes well and makes an argument that is generally preferred by the reader.  It’s even unreliable to fully trust the opinion of other historians when assessing the quality of historical work.  Very few historians are intimately familiar with the same material, especially if the topic is highly specialized — like the history of American education.  And among those few historians their judgment on the quality of another person’s work may be colored by their professional interests in advancing similar interpretations or hindering opposing ones.

In short, it is very hard to know whether someone is really a great historian.  It is certainly harder to know the quality of historical work than empirical social science, especially when data sets are widely available and analyses can be replicated without too much effort.

Given that it is hard to know the quality of historical work and given Diane Ravitch’s distortion of the evidence in current debates, I’m inclined to doubt the quality of her earlier historical work.  Ravitch may have changed her views on some things but I highly doubt she has changed her standards of scholarship.  So, if her scholarship is lousy now, perhaps it was lousy before.

I’d be curious to hear examples that anyone may have of where Ravitch was sloppy or misleading in her historical work.  I bet they are out there even if they are harder to discover than her current sloppy and misleading work.

12 Comments | methodology | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Ravitch is Wrong Site

November 29, 2010

Why serious people continue to care about what Diane Ravitch says is a mystery to me.  I know why rabid union-members and their allies keep lauding her and citing her as an authority — they like whoever repeats their talking points.  But why do journalists, like Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post, continue to act like Diane Ravitch matters?  Why does the Wall Street Journal give her valuable real estate on their editorial page to repeat untrue distortions, like:

To qualify for Race to the Top money, states and districts were expected to evaluate their teachers by using student test scores, even though research consistently warns of the flaws of this method. [Not true, as a Brookings blue ribbon panel just concluded that the research shows value added testing can be a helpful tool for teacher evaluations.] Similarly, the Obama administration is pressing states and districts to replace low-performing regular public schools with privately managed charter schools, even though research demonstrates that charters don’t, on average, get better academic results than regular public schools. [Again, not true.  Ravitch ignores the positive results of high quality random assignment charter evaluations in Boston and New York and instead focuses exclusively on a lower quality evaluation by Macke Raymond)]

Let’s say out loud what many people know but few have publicly said.  Diane Ravitch has undergone a personal, not an intellectual, transformation.  Because of that personal change she has acquired a new set of friends, including AFT boss Randi Weingarten.  Ravitch is basking in the admiration of these new friends for her remarks, but they are not well-thought-out or intellectually honest positions.

We devoted an entire week on JPGB to feature Stuart Buck’s documentation of how Ravitch is not an intellectually serious person anymore.  Now Whitney Tilson has organized an entire web site on his new blog that lists a host of critiques of the personally-transformed Diane Ravitch. It’s an extremely useful resource to which you can refer gullible journalists, like Strauss and the WSJ editors, whenever they start treating Ravitch as if she were a credible authority.

12 Comments | teacher union | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Texas lends knife to suicidal California

November 24, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

More great Kotkin on what is quickly turning into my favorite subgenre of economic discussion: Texas rules and Cali drools.

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Posted by matthewladner

Acting White

November 22, 2010

Stuart Buck, the University of Arkansas graduate student and author of the well-reviewed book, Acting White, suggests that high academic achievement for African-American students is hindered by negative social pressure from peers.

Now Dan Willingham reviews a new study on the subject:

It used a sample of over 13,000 students, averaging about 15 years old. Social acceptance was measured with a simple 4 question interview that asked whether they felt socially accepted, and the frequency with which they felt lonely, felt disliked, or felt people were unfriendly to them.

The study took measures at two time points and examined the changein social acceptance across the year. The question of interest is whether students’ academic achievement (measured as grade point average) at Time 1 was related to the change in social acceptance over the course of the year.

For White, Latino, and Asian students, it was—positively. That is, the higher a student’s GPA was at Time 1, the more likely it was that his or her social acceptance would increase during the coming year. It was not a big effect, but it was present.

For African American and Native American students the opposite was true. A higher GPA predicted *lower* social acceptance during the following year. This effect was stronger than the positive effect for the other ethnic groups.

Thus, it seemed that the simpler version of the “acting white” hypothesis was supported.
But the story turned out to be a bit more complicated.

Further analyses showed that there was a social penalty for high achieving African Americans *only* at schools with a small percentage of black students. The cost was not present at high-achieving schools with mostly African-American students, or at any low-achieving schools.

At the same time, there was never a social benefit for academic achievement, as there was for White, Latino, and Asian students.

These more fine-grained analyses were not possible for the Native American students, because the sample was too small.

So what are we to make the of “acting white” phenomenon?

A single study is never definitive, but this study indicates that academic success is not universally taken by African American adolescents as a sign of rejecting African American culture. It is specific to particular contexts and is plausible a response to discrimination.

Sounds like this mostly supports Stuart’s argument but I’m curious to hear what he thinks.

1 Comment | civic values | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Onion Reports on New Department of Education Study

November 19, 2010

Here’s the headline:

Department Of Education Study Finds Teaching These Little Shits No Longer Worth It

Enjoy!

 


Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Arne Duncan to schools: WAKE UP!

November 19, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Rick Hess has provided a summary of a speech that Arne Duncan delivered at AEI yesterday that is a MUST READ. The hyperlink function of the blog seems to be malfunctioning, so here is the link:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2010/11/bam_pow_whomp_sec_duncan_knocks_it_out_of_the_park.html

Go read it NOW.

P.S. The Longhorn family is happy to accept Mike Petrilli into the ranks of BOOM Nation. As Lyle likes to sing:

3 Comments | school funding | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Now The Wheels Are Really Coming Off the National Standards Train

November 17, 2010

Back in March I predicted, prematurely, that the wheels were coming off of the national standards train.  Andy Rotherham had declared that the adoption of national standards was “close to a done deal,” but then the Wall Street Journal came out with an editorial strongly opposing national standards.

I thought that would derail the Gates-fueled and Obama/Duncan enforced train, but it did not.  As it turns out, states in the midst of a severe budgetary pinch are inclined to promise a lot in exchange for federal and Gates dollars now.

But all of those state promises to revise their standards, change their curriculum, change their professional development, and adopt new tests were all about steps that would occur far in the future.  Now that the federal money was already handed out and new money is unlikely to be forthcoming given the midterm election, the states may change their tune.  The states are like the kind of person who, when you stop buying her all of those flowers and expensive dinners, may not keep telling you how handsome and smart you are — and the wedding plans are probably in jeopardy.

To see how the tide is turning, check out this piece by Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute in the Boston Globe.  As Jim writes:

With Rick Perry said to be a shoo-in for the head of the Republican Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), which was one of a handful of lead groups pushing states to adopt national standards, may find itself in deep trouble. In fact, Perry, as the head of the RGA, may force the National Governors Association, which together the CCSSO, Achieve Inc., and the Gates Foundation, acted as cheerleaders for national standards, to revisit its position in support of national standards….

The opening that Governor Perry has on this issue is obvious and rumor has it that he is thinking very seriously about actions that reassert state control over the education agenda (and leverage the RGA to do so). The clearest place for Perry to begin is with the dozens of states that did not participate in Race to the Top. There are also key states that did participate, and in the case of New Jersey, California and Indiana even adopted the national standards, but did not win any RTT money.

The key states to watch are California, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia. In addition to being states that either did not adopt the national standards, or adopted them and did not win federal funds, they have one additional and important commonality among them: They have had higher standards than most other states in the nation.

I think Jim Stergios is spot-on.  And as I’ve written before, getting agreement on national standards is almost politically impossible given that we are a large and diverse country with legitimate and competing visions of what schools should look like.  You could get states to pledge their support but as we are now seeing, getting the details in place is inevitably very difficult.

8 Comments | instructional reform, politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Farewell to Another Giant of Freedom

November 17, 2010

LCP Pete-best

I was saddened to hear that Lovett “Pete” Peters passed away last week.  Pete was a successful businessman, primarily in the energy sector, who went on to found the Pioneer Institute in 1988.  He cared deeply about education reform and through the Pioneer Institute played a central role in creating the conditions for the “Massachusetts Miracle,” including charter schools, testing, and standards.

I remember meeting Pete Peters as well as his son, Dan, at education conferences over the years.  Even as his age advanced (he lived to be 97), he remained sharp and insightful in his comments on research presentations.  He will be missed but his work and ideas will live on.

Please feel free to go to the Pioneer Institute web site where they have a page where you can share your remembrances.

Leave a Comment » | charter schools | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Violators of OK’s Special Ed Voucher Law Get Good Mocking

November 16, 2010

School Choice Oklahoma uses its 21st century skills to make this auto-animated piece mocking school officials who refuse to comply with state law requiring them to offer vouchers to disabled students.  Keep up the mocking, School Choice OK, and you may knock these modern-day George Wallaces away from blocking the school house door.

4 Comments | special ed, vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Is The Fox Guarding the Hen House?

November 15, 2010

Cheating in K-12 education appears to be a serious problem.  Addressing that problem may not be helped by the allegations in this Chronicle of Higher Education piece that education students are themselves frequent cheaters.

The piece is written by Ed Dante, which the editors note “is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed.”

Here’s the money quote:

it’s hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I’d say education is the worst. I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

(HT to SB)

7 Comments | scandal, teacher quality | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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