Ravitch Quits a Publication That's Boosting Bloomberg
BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 13, 2008
LINK

A prominent education journal will suggest in its next issue that Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to improving schools would make him a good candidate for president. But the idea is already running into resistance, with one of the journal's board members, the historian Diane Ravitch, resigning as a protest of what she called an effective presidential endorsement.

The article, which will appear in the spring 2008 issue of Education Next, opens with an illustration depicting a defiant Mr. Bloomberg standing atop Tweed Courthouse, the Lower Manhattan headquarters of the city Department of Education. He grips a long sword in one hand, carries a shield decorated with the New York City seal in the other, and is dressed in full knight's armor.

Headlined "New York City's Education Battles," the article describes Mr. Bloomberg's education plan as a victorious destruction of what had been a "personal patronage mill." It also says that the management changes have been a mixed bag for students, whose math scores the journal says are rising, while reading scores are flat.

It ends on a positive note, arguing that, despite critics' attempts to burst his bubble, "Bloomberg just may have outsmarted everyone."

The mayor's presidential potential is addressed in a sidebar, which concludes, "With all that cash on hand, why not go for the whole ball of wax? If he does, Americans might have a renewed opportunity to ponder the state of American education."

An editor's note by the magazine's editor in chief, the Harvard government professor Paul Peterson, also tackles the presidential question, applauding Mr. Bloomberg for tackling head-on a problem that he says the current presidential candidates have failed to address.

Ms. Ravitch, a professor at New York University who has followed the changes in the New York City schools under Mr. Bloomberg closely and has been a vocal critic, told The New York Sun that she resigned from the board of Education Next after reading the article. "How can a magazine with an editorial board endorse a candidate for president when no one on the editorial board was consulted?" she said.

She said she was also protesting inaccuracies in the story, which she said is "based on ideology, not evidence." Math scores have risen, she said, but only among fourth-graders. A respected national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, last year concluded that New York City eighth-graders had made no significant progress on math and English since Mr. Bloomberg took control of the schools.

Mr. Peterson said yesterday that he had not received Ms. Ravitch's resignation letter, and he said he would be disappointed if he does receive it.

He said the article is balanced and an example of good journalism. He added that his personal opinion is that he would be happy to see Mr. Bloomberg jump into the presidential race.

"It would put education on the national agenda," Mr. Peterson said. "We would start talking about education policy, and I think that would be good. That would be good for our schools."

In an interview, the author of the main article, Peter Meyer, said he agrees with Ms. Ravitch that the city's education results during the Bloomberg administration have been minute. "It is pretty amazing that, six, seven years into this, we barely see a blip," he said, adding that had Ms. Ravitch been given an instructional role in the city schools there would have been more improvement.

But Mr. Meyer said of the mayor, whom he interviewed for the story, "I think he'd make a great education president."

He said Mr. Bloomberg's potential to elevate education as an issue is just one reason to support him. "He would make a great manager of the bureaucracy, I think as he has proved in New York," Mr. Meyer said. "I think he would be good for education and good for education reform."

The article describes Mr. Bloomberg as a compact man who "carries himself like a linebacker." It says the mayor was "sobered" by last year's NAEP test results. "Even though there was some progress in math scores for eighth-graders, overall the results for them weren't what we would have liked them to be," Mr. Bloomberg is quoted as saying.

Contacted yesterday, two other Education Next board members said they would not support a Bloomberg presidential run.

A professor of political science at Stanford who chaired Mayor Giuliani's education advisory team before Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race, Terry Moe, said Mr. Bloomberg is a good manager but he should not run for president. "What's the point except to serve as a spoiler?" he said.

The president of the Fordham Foundation, Chester Finn, said he is leaning toward Senator McCain.

"We elect mayors to fix schools and such; we elect presidents to keep the nation safe in a dangerous world," Mr. Finn said. The Fordham Foundation led by Mr. Finn and Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance are sponors of education next, which is sponsored by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

New York Sun
Why I Resigned
BY DIANE RAVITCH
February 15, 2008
LINK

A story on Wednesday in the The New York Sun reported that I resigned from the editorial board of Education Next. I resigned because Education Next published a deeply flawed account of Mayor Bloomberg's school reforms. I resigned with regret because I admire Education Next. I have found it to be the most consistently interesting and lively publication about American education currently available.

That is all the more reason why I was surprised to read Peter Meyer's article, "New York City's Education Battles," which is a thinly veiled puff piece for reforms that have been both costly and ineffectual. As a member of the editorial board of Education Next and as someone who has written extensively about education in New York City, I was stunned that I did not see the article until after it was published.
The article treats school reform in New York City as a matter of conflicting opinions, of "he-said, she-said," rather than as a matter of verifiable fact, even when facts are available.

For example, Mr. Meyer says that the New York Times reported "no significant progress in reading and math" between 2003 and 2007 for city students on the federal test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress and "little narrowing of the achievement gap." Mr. Meyer then quotes a hedge fund manager and blogger, Whitney Tilson, who said that the Times' story was "lousy" and that city students actually made gains in three of the four measures.

But the NAEP scores are not a matter of opinion; the facts can be easily checked — google NAEP TUDA 2007 and look at pages 50-51. Anyone who does check will learn quickly that New York City students made no statistically significant gains between 2003 and 2007 in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading, or eighth-grade math. There were no significant gains for black students, white students, Hispanic students, Asian students, or lower-income students. New York City was the only city (of eleven tested) where eighth-grade reading scores declined for black, Hispanic, and lower-income students, and the achievement gap grew. Only in fourth-grade math did city students make statistically significant gains. If facts matter, Mr. Tilson's opinion is wrong.

Despite these dismal outcomes, writes Mr. Meyer, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein "defended the results." Mr. Klein said they showed "good progress." But at the same time, Mr. Meyer says, the mayor and chancellor were "sobered." Why would they be sobered if they thought the results showed "good progress?" Certainly they were not chastened enough to throw out the failed reading program that they had mandated citywide in 2003 nor did they open an inquiry to find out why eighth-grade students made no significant gains in math.

The two graphs accompanying the article were even more misleading than the text. One shows state and city test scores in math and reading between 2001 and 2007. The text on this graph says, "Both Mayor Bloomberg and his critics seek to prove their points by comparing city and state trends in student test-score performance. Each side picks certain tests and certain points in time to make their claims and counterclaims."

But it is not simply a matter of opinion about when the Bloomberg school reforms began. The state Legislature passed the mayoral control law in June 2002. The mayor and chancellor spent the fall of 2002 considering reform proposals. In January 2003, they announced what they planned to do the following September.

At the very time that they made their announcement, New York City students in fourth and eighth grades were taking state tests. When the scores were released in May (for reading) and October (for math), there was a large jump in the city's fourth-grade scores, with double-digit gains in some of the poorest neighborhoods.

Others were jubilant about the good news, but newspaper reports said Chancellor Klein's reaction was "muted." He knew that these were not his gains since his new programs would not be implemented until September 2003. The graph in the article, however, leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein should get credit for the test score increases in the two years from 2001 to 2003, before their programs started.

Another graph shows a closing of the achievement gap between black students in New York City and black students in New York State. This is an irrelevant factoid. The term "achievement gap" invariably refers to score differences between black/Hispanic students on one hand, and white/Asian students on the other. Thus, this graph celebrates the closing of a gap that is of no significance, while ignoring the achievement gap that is of greatest concern.

I admire Mayor Bloomberg but I do not admire what he has done to the public schools. I hope that the state Legislature, when it reconsiders public school governance next year, abolishes the bumbling, tyrannical Department of Education and restores an independent Board of Education, appointed by the mayor.
The school system needs checks and balances. It needs a regular, independent audit of graduation rates and test scores. It needs a leadership in which education decisions are made by educators. Such changes won't solve all of our schools' problems, but they will end the pointless turmoil of the past five years, provide honest information about academic progress, and reestablish the role of the public in public education.

Ms. Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution. She also is the author of "The Great School Wars," a history of New York City's public schools.