Nebraskans Deserve the Truth About Education Reform

Guest post by Katie Linehan

Last night, Diane Ravitch, a staunch opponent of education reform, addressed a crowd of approximately 1500 in Omaha. The event was sponsored by the Sherwood Foundation and presented by MOEC (an organization consisting of 12 metro area school districts). This morning, Ravitch will meet with community leaders at UNO.

Teaching is one of the hardest, most under-appreciated jobs out there. Teachers deserve respect. Teachers (and the people of Nebraska) also deserve the truth.

Ravitch contributed to the well-funded proliferation of mistruths about school choice and public charter schools gripping this community. Of course, Ravitch has a right to her own opinion.  It's okay to dislike the idea of charter schools.  It's not okay to say no evidence exists showing charters are working (black students living in poverty, on average, gain an additional 59 days of learning in math and 44 days of learning in reading every year in urban charters).  It's okay to say poverty impacts school performance.  It's unfortunate to coddle and instill low expectations for under-served children.  

When Ravitch said Nebraska has among the highest NAEP scores in the country (and suggested this was due to Nebraska rejecting reforms), she misrepresented the facts. We don't rank in the top 20% in math or reading. In 2015, Nebraska ranked 13th in 4th grade reading. We ranked 11th in the nation in 8th grade reading. We ranked 12th in 4th grade math and 14th in 8th grade math.

Some may say ranking in the top 20 overall isn't too bad, but consider that Nebraska has a much larger percentage of white students (approximately 20% above the national average) and a lower rate of student poverty, which impacts performance averages (not because non-white and poor students can't do better, but because these students frequently lack equal access to great schools).

Furthermore, Nebraska has failed to keep pace with the rest of the nation in terms of overall improvement and we have some of the largest achievement gaps in the nation between black and white students (for example, in 4th grade math, white students in Nebraska rank 13th in the country; black students in Nebraska rank 39th).

In any scenario where Nebraska ranks nearly last in black student performance, while failing to keep pace with improvement for all students, something must change.  Students stuck in failing schools deserve better.  But Ravitch would (and did) reject the notion that failing schools exist at all.  Ravitch also suggests, again and again, that poverty determines destiny.  Such beliefs undercut her own claim that no crisis exists in our traditional school models, at least if you happen to be poor or black.  

Katie Linehan has worked for over a decade with under-served youth in Omaha. She attended law school before working as an aide to the vice-chairman of the Nebraska Legislature's Education Committee. Katie also worked at Success Academies, a high-performing, high-poverty charter school network in NYC before returning to Nebraska to advocate for meaningful education reform.