What Question Would You Ask Diane Ravitch?
March 8, 2011 11:26 AM   Subscribe

EducationPolicyLectureFilter: What question would you ask Diane Ravitch, supporter-turned-critic of No Child Left Behind?

Diane Ravitch is a former Assistant Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush. She once supported No Child Left Behind, but now says she doesn't think it will improve education.

I'm not an educational policy expert, but I'm going to see Mrs. Ravitch give a lecture this evening. I'd like to have a good question in mind for her that might yield a surprising or thought-provoking answer. What question would you ask?

I really just want a question that would allow her to either say something insightful, or something that others could draw insight from.

LiberalFilter-type questions are fine for background purposes, but I definitely won't be asking any.
posted by pmed to Education (10 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ravitch wrote a book in 2004 about the politicization of textbook writing. It's a great read. I'd ask her to comment on the current state of school textbooks, or more specifically, on some of the problems that have recently emerged with politically biased textbooks in major state markets.
posted by decathecting at 11:37 AM on March 8, 2011


What surprises you most about the current state of public education?

If you could only change one thing about the way things are today, what would it be?

Given the current discourse on the promise of data systems and measurement in education, what can't instrumentality and measurement and data do for education?
posted by vitabellosi at 11:39 AM on March 8, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: My mistake. Apparently she actually served under George H. W. Bush, as well as Clinton.
posted by pmed at 11:44 AM on March 8, 2011


I would ask if she thinks it is important/a good thing to have national standardized tests at all, or if it was the implementation and rewards and punishment system of NCLB that leads people to cheat and jouke the stats that was the problem.

Also, I would ask what some better ways of tracking student and school success are because surely they are out there and I bet she knows some good ones.
posted by rmless at 12:02 PM on March 8, 2011


WOW! How cool. I'd love to hear her talk. She kinda our Obi-wan, ya know... our only hope.

If I could ask one thing: I'd like to hear more about her ideas for saving public education, ideas that are prescriptive in nature. She's done a great job identifying what's gone wrong, I'd like to hear how she thinks we find our way back. Pragmatically. Can we save public education? What solutions would she prescribe? Are any of them really even possible?
posted by RockyChrysler at 12:02 PM on March 8, 2011


Ravitch is a highly-regarded intellectual, and she'll draw plenty of well-informed audience members. Consider not taking up question time that someone who has their own question can use.
posted by mkultra at 12:47 PM on March 8, 2011


I don't really know what you mean by "LiberalFilter," so perhaps this won't apply, but: for Ravitch as for most other formerly convinced neocons (in whatever area of policy) who've later abandoned the broadly Friedmanite free-market/anti-social-welfare agenda, I think the best questions to ask are about the change of heart itself: what prompted it, how long it took to build to a decisive change of view, what she now thinks of the abandoned political program and why. You might do well to listen to the interview with Ravitch on April 8 podcast of Doug Henwood's Behind the News, and/or read his commentary on the interview, to get some idea how Ravitch views this change, and then follow up on anything you don't think she addresses well there.
posted by RogerB at 12:55 PM on March 8, 2011


Personally, I'm a big fan of big-picture questions. Specifically, I wonder what assumptions are expressly or impliedly made by various standardized tests and other metrics about the purpose of education. For example if the purpose of education is to produce drones for industry, some metrics might make more sense than others. I'd also be curious as to whether her answer to bigger picture questions has changed. I'm pretty sure you'd get a well thought out and interesting response to that kind of question.
posted by Hylas at 1:19 PM on March 8, 2011


I'd ask: Bill Gates recently gave a TED talk about "How state budgets are breaking US schools", where he says that it really is young vs. old, education vs. healthcare - if we don't solve what we're doing in healthcare, we're going to be de-investing in education.

Is there any way out of this deadlock?
posted by at at 2:50 PM on March 8, 2011


Does she have any examples of systems (schools, districts, states) that are doing a good job, in her opinion, of educating students? What are they doing that is making a difference?
posted by tamitang at 4:19 PM on March 8, 2011


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