Early education has been on the President’s mind. Speaking of chemical weapons and nerve gas in Syria, he remarked that he would much rather spend his time talking about how to make sure every 3-and 4-year old gets a good education. Obama declared his druthers once again, in an NPR interview on the eve of the government shutdown: “I have said consistently that I’m always happy to talk to Republicans and Democrats about how we shape a budget that is investing in things like early childhood education…”
It’s thrilling to see ECE assume its rightful place in the zeitgeist. The integration of early learning into the K-12 system represents a significant leap in our nation’s consciousness, an acknowledgment of the earliest years as the foundation of the entire enterprise. But the reforms du jour—to put it politely—are challenging some of the most cherished principles of child development and learning. Developmentally appropriate practice is hanging by a thread, tests moving in before kids have barely traded tricycles for two-wheelers. Early childhood educators—woefully compensated, marginalized, and ill-prepared—are feeling the heat of standards-based, data-driven education reform, which Obama has promoted, via Arne Duncan, and the perpetuation of George W. Bush’s signature legislation, No Child Left Behind.
Diane Ravitch, who has spent the better part of the past few years in combat with Duncan, continues the charge with her new book, Reign of Error, an impassioned manifesto for changing the misguided direction of American education. In her first chapter, the title of which plays on the name of the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, she warns:
Public education…born of advocacy and struggle, is now in jeopardy. This essential institution, responsible for producing a democratic citizenry and tasked with providing equality of educational opportunity, is at risk.
Ravitch’s own transformation from proponent of test-based accountability and choice to indignant gadfly-in-chief has been exhaustively documented. From George H. W. Bush’s Department of Education, where she served as Assistant Secretary, to the Network for Public Education, the advocacy group she launched last spring, this leading education historian has traveled light years from the ivory tower and the beltway, where she crafted the policies she now so adamantly disavows.
Like many alarmed by the direction of millennial education reform, I’ve been tickled by her life as a late-blooming radical. Along the way, I couldn’t help but notice that a number of people had issues with her—beyond Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp, and Ravitch’s billionaire boys club. “She’s whiny,” said one colleague, “she’s short on answers.” She’s also been called a “muckraker,” a designation she wears with pride, and she’s been castigated for her violation of civil discourse, an unwillingness to find common ground. “I try to stand up for the weak and powerless and voiceless,” Ravitch recently told Motoko Rich, of the New York Times, “and some people don’t like that.” But many do, chief among them the growing number of teachers who have accorded her the status of guru, defender of the profession.
Ravitch has heard her critics. In addition to a scathing deconstruction of testing, accompanied by graphs depicting scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), she offers a plethora of policy recommendations, embracing an ecological view of teaching, learning, and human development. First up is good prenatal care for every pregnant woman. Next, she proposes universal early childhood education—high quality with well-prepared teachers (italics, hers)—marshaling evidence by James Heckman, in the repetitive cadences of a preacher:
The case for early childhood education is based on sound research, conducted over many years. The evidence is overwhelming. Early childhood education works. Early intervention can make a lasting difference in children’s lives. It’s expensive to do it right. It’s even more expensive to do half measures or not to do it at all.
Wrap-around, or health and social, services are also part of the prescription. “If we don’t remedy the social and economic conditions that cause disadvantage,” Ravitch writes, “we are unlikely to see any large-scale change in the achievement gaps.” I haven’t done a formal scan, but the word “poverty” is as ubiquitous as her outrage. And she never fails to remind us that schools and teachers cannot do this alone.
I wish the book were shorter. Dr. Ravitch’s medicine would go down more easily in the form of a primer, the better to expand her audience. She also should have included paid family leave and home visiting among her recommendations: those first few months of life constitute prime learning time, with parents as first teachers. But no matter. The stakes for children could not be higher, or social justice more elusive. As John Dewey reminds us:
What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.
Ravitch’s message is urgent, and timely—and it must be heard.
