Book Club Blog #2

For this week unfortunately I was not able to participate in the book club but I did catch up with my group members and we went over the next 4 chapters in the book. In this section Ravitch discusses how New York City Mayor Bloomberg worked to reorganize the school system by “granting higher pay to school officials, pressed for merit pay, opened many charter schools, broke up large schools into smaller ones, emphasized state tests” and enforced other things in order for more people to take the school system more seriously. In 2007 they were able to win most improved urban school district in the nation. This really showed many other states that putting in the work necessary change was possible. However, as time passed the Mayor began to pass reform programs such as the Children First that implemented mathematics and reading in everyday lessons. This caused many other subject teachers to be fired and not necessary in the schools because these two subjects were the main focus, so unfortunately this wasn't such a good reform program because it limited what students were exposed to in schools.  The mayor also promised more parent involvement through this program but that never happened it actually lessened their ability to be involved because board members were hard to contact.

Other problems that was brought up was the fact that most schools were not racially integrated especially because students were limited to only attending schools that were in the neighborhood. Only students whose parents who could afford to send them away to private schools were able to avoid the local public schools, which in most times was not including minorities. I’m really thankful that the high school school I went to had a quota system that ensured racial integration, I was able to experience my high school years surrounded by people from all different backgrounds.

Again in these chapters again we see the topic of the No Child Left Behind Act and it stated that all states had to define for themselves proficiency. And make sure that 100 percent of students were at the proficient level in math and reading by 2013-2014. 

Yet, again this caused school curriculum to be narrowed because their main focus was passing the tests because if scores didn’t show this the schools would shut down. Government officials still believed they were doing good by the students but in reality they were hurting them and over all hurting the system as a whole. This is also the case for a lot of schools today they are so focused on passing these standardized test that students are no longer well rounded individuals instead the focus is these tests.