A must read for anyone even remotely interested in how we got where we are today in public education policy.

I'm with Ravitch on so many points, particularly her argument that our emphasis on collecting assessment data deprives students of opportunities to develop untestable talents & skills. I thought the chapter about the unchecked power of foundations to fund business model initiatives without paying consequences for their failures was really interesting. Also, I'm happy to be more informed about the history of vouchers & charter schools. Clearly, Al Shanker was a visionary hoping competition could improve the whole education system and the implementation of this vision (like many) has been problematic.

Where I differ from Ravitch is when she offers her own education as a model of excellence. She falls into the trap many educators and education activists fall into, which is "when I was in school..." and then tell a story about the "good old days" of "high standards". She recalls the days of reading classics and watching teachers order recalcitrant students to the principal's office--while claiming little of either thing happens today. Not only do I find her assessment of YA problematic, but I take issue with her & others who exult their own experiences without analyzing the context--their access, their lower, their privilege.

Also, for someone who is critical of the value we place on test scores, she implicitly honors them as benchmarks without questioning who makes the tests or what is on it. Perhaps I missed something along the way, but in my eight years of teaching in NYC public schools I have never heard of NEAP, the national test she cites often to show how state initiatives and charter schools have failed students. Maybe this is why she chose to write The Reign of Error & maybe she addresses it there. I value her voice and I value her as a model of critical thinking & the courage to admit error in judgment. I just think understanding the effects of policy doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to make curriculum decisions. 3.5

The first edition of this now-revised book feels canonical because it was one of the leading works to argue against the "education reform" agenda, especially during a time when the ed-reform agenda captured two sequential presidential administrations on opposite sides of the bench. However, Ravitch is too held-back by her centrism to really make a sweeping case against the impulses here.

Sure, there's lots of damning details, along with a methodical disassembly of specific claims so thorough that she repeats each point for what feels like dozens of times. (This book really needed strong prose and a stronger edit.) But Ravitch largely holds back from tying the conclusions to any sort of ideological diagnosis, except in ways that are deeply unsatisfying, and which makes her actual suggestions for improvements kind of half-hearted.

For example, she correctly notes in several places that poverty and inequality account for much of the differences in educational advancement. But it seems to have taken her until 2015 to suspect that education reformers were purposely focusing on accountability, testing, teacher ranking, and other changes as a way of avoiding confronting actual poverty! More strangely, her suggestions for combating the problem are milquetoast junk like prenatal care—undoubtedly important, but so out of proportion with the scope of the problem that it makes me wonder whether Ravitch really gets it. She seems to operate on a scope of policy roughly bordered by Clinton on the left, and Romney on the right, which robs you of any programs for fixing the systemic problems she addresses.

So instead, we get a focus on litigating specific claims and bouncing around between threads that leads to muddy writing and a book that feels padded out at only 300 pages. Even worse, parts don't seem to relate to each other as a suggestion in one section can be contradicted by a proposal in another. For example, Ravitch rightly points out that the inequality in school funding is a moral disaster; more affluent school populations receiving more resources is so regressive as to be appalling. But at the same time, Ravitch wants to maintain and even strengthen local control and local funding of schools—steps that would enshrine and embolden those very school spending differences!

These contradictions and missteps lead to a work that feels like it's debunking a lot of ed reform writing—especially the ed reform writing at the time of original publication in 2010—but doesn't really function well as a polemic or even as a coherent book. Was it a worthwhile read? Yeah, sure. But was it a necessary one? Nah. Read Ravitch's articles for the NY Review of Books and you'll get the gist. Or read some more leftist critiques—such as Class War or The New Prophets of Capital, for example—for a better diagnosis of the problems we face and solutions we need.

Ravitch writes a detailed and well researched discussion on the issues of the American school system, albeit dated by its 2010 publication. With a cutting review of the failures of No Child Left Behind, testing, and corporate and billionaire philanthropist “reforms,” the book clearly shows what is wrong. Where it fails, however, is in showing how to make it right. Ravitch is vague, outdated, and under false illusions as to the appropriate changes to save the American school system, with claims as to the value of a standardized “reading list of classics” and the need to educate students for a “useful life.” A good read for the history of how our system fell, but not a good resource for how to stand it up again.

A rare book I think could have benefited from being longer - I'd have liked to see more specific details about the impact of teacher's unions and the details of curriculum, for example, and similar topics Ravitch addresses briefly. I think she presents fairly strong arguments against school "incentivization" (in the sense of making schools for-profit private enterprises and relying on tests to structure teacher salaries and bonuses). There's a little nostalgia for the "good old days" when she was growing up, but besides one chapter on her h.s. lit teacher, it doesn't detract from her overall arguments. Recommended for anybody with an interest in education or public services in contemporary America. And (sarcastic) bonus points to the student who was so interested in the book they annotated one chapter. In pen.

While this book is a bit dated (2010), I think it was an interesting critique on the American school system that grew up in a.k.a. the one that measured our success based on reading and math test scores without any focus on other subjects or the arts. I think there was a valuable critique of the Gates Foundation, as well as the notion that schools be run as a business. I gained so much knowledge from this book, and it definitely will benefit any future advocacy I do when it comes to education reform.

I had to read this book for a class. It was definitely interesting reading about the different school systems in the United States that tried implementing new curriculum or testing or accountability just to have it all fail miserably. Most other countries have an education system that works and continually have their students pass American students in subjects like reading, math and science because they have one thing the United States lacks. And that is patience. We are not patient. We are continuously looking for the next quick fix or magic bullet that will completely overhaul the system and make us #1. BUT it will never happen until we agree to be patient, to study what works, and to implement an effective curriculum over time. Yes, time. I think many of the examples she provided would have worked if we just gave it more time and didn't make hasty decisions that made no sense in the long run. Testing means nothing. We are just teaching kids how to fill in a score sheet. How does this prepare them for the real world? It doesn't. Our education system is a complete joke.

“What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.”

"When a school is successful, it is hard to know which factor was most important or if it was a combination of factors.Even the principal and teachers may not know for sure. A reporter from the local newspaper will arrive and decide that it must be the principal or a particular program but the reporter will very likely be wrong. Success, whether defined as high test scores or graduation rates or student satisfaction, cannot be bottled and dispensed at will. This may explain why there are so few examples of low-performing schools that have been "turned around" into high -performing schools. And it may explain why schools are not very good at replicating the success of model schools, whether the models are charters or regular public schools."

This was an interesting read, both in terms of the experience of the writing and the content. Ravitch has a compelling voice that balances passion based on expertise with personable accessibility. She incorporates mounds of evidence, but the prose never becomes dry. That said, the epilogue added on to the revised and expanded edition did feel fairly redundant, and could have been cut down by quite a bit.

In terms of the content, at first I was invigorated by her arguments against the trends in testing and school choice--both areas where I agree with her. But as I continued to read, I began to take issue with some more nuanced things, particularly in the latter half of the book. For one, I noticed that Ravitch decries the focus on standardized testing (again, I heartily agree with her on this point), but also uses data from standardized testing to prove some points.

I also encountered a handful of moments of referring to or discussing children with disabilities that felt ableist--for example, seemingly creating a false dichotomy between "disabled" and "motivated" students, or equating disability with being "difficult" (in the context of test-based school & teacher evaluation), or framing disability as a problem vis a vis education. Now, I don't know if this was a failure of phrasing on Ravitch's part or a reflection of her underlying beliefs, but the issue deserves to be raised.

Finally, while Ravitch (I believe rightly) emphasizes that there are many socio-economic inequities underlying and causing poor "performance" of schools & students, and that these issues are not the schools' fault but rather the consequence of inappropriate priorities at the government level, she also doesn't question the ways in which curriculum & pedagogy, even when robust and impassioned, can perpetuate the hegemonic Western culture that then perpetuates those inequalities. In other words, while Ravitch calls for a return to a liberal arts, citizenship-oriented curriculum (as opposed to a test-driven, reading & math hyperfocused curriculum), she does not acknowledge that even the return to more varied, creative, and dialectic content & style can still perpetuate division if it's not intentionally anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-sexist, and so on. Similar to the ableism issue, I'm not sure if that's because she doesn't agree that that's true, it didn't work with the scope of the book, or perhaps some combination.

Everything considered, I still found the book to be very educational, and--again--a lovely reading experience, as far as the writing itself goes. I'd recommend it highly, with some caveats, to anyone wanting to learn more about education history and policy in the United States.