Diane Ravitch has released another polemical book in defense of the status quo of American K-12 education and dripping with hostility towards “corporate reformers.” While this sensationalism might sell books and please government union defenders of the status quo in education, Reign of Error systematically ignores or distorts the highest quality evidence in order to reach preordained conclusions.
The debate over education policy involves establishing cause and effect relationships—the realm of social scientists rather than historians. Various groups have any number of ideas and theories about how to improve K-12 outcomes, but without rigorous measurement of educational outcomes, education policy can devolve into arm-chair theorizing.
The book contains far too many examples to begin to summarize here, so I will provide illustrative examples. The phrase “random assignment” does not appear in the text, footnotes, or appendix of this book. Random assignment studies, with control and experimental groups, are the most powerful tools researchers have to establish causality.
Random assignment studies are not always perfect, and not everything neatly lends itself to random assignment. By carefully avoiding a large and growing body of random assignment research on the academic impact of attending a charter school, Ravitch repeatedly claims that charter schools are no more successful than district schools.
Why let our best measures of the truth get in the way of a good story?
Reign of Error has a formula, and determinedly sticks to it. The Ravitch modus operandi in chapter after chapter is to introduce the beliefs of “corporate reformers” before noting some of the research that supports their viewpoint. Next she notes some criticism of that research, much of which has been purchased with funds donated by the teachers unions. This is an old tactic used by unions to muddy the water and to take advantage of the fact that most reporters have tight deadlines to meet. Much of Reign of Error is simply a scrapbook of risible tactics.
Ravitch’s Reign of Error recipe: Combine a highly slanted review of research literature with Ravitch’s arm-chair theorizing, sprinkle in a little conspiracy theory and muck-raking journalism, and there you have it—the teachers unions have been right about everything all along. Who knew?
There is nothing remotely scholarly or even serious about this latest book. It ignores the fact that poverty isn’t exclusive to America. In fact, we spend more on students in America than most other countries.
The myths Ravitch perpetuate are too numerous to correct each one, so in the next post we will focus on the glaring logical problems in the Ravitch meta-narratives.
Joint post written by Dr. Matthew Ladner and Dave Myslinski
