A Critique of Diane Ravitch's First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!

Introduction

A critique involves focusing on the analysis and evaluation of a certain paper or work. Mostly critique looks at the strength and weaknesses of the work given. While critiquing an article one has to read several times while using a critical eye. A critique is mostly not the author of the work but a person who has different opinion pertaining to the work of the author. The paper will critically analyze the essay about First, Let's Fire All the Teachers! By Diane Ravitch. The paper will discuss the summary of the work, my own critique of the essay and the conclusion.

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The essay is written by Diane Ravitch who is a professor in Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University. She has extensively written about education and the history of education. She was an assistant secretary of education during the era of President George Bush. Her essay is about the performance of the high schools found in poverty-stricken districts. Students from the poor districts have issues in learning because they cannot read and write in English and they do not attend school regularly because of poverty in their homes (Ravitch). The students are mostly forced to miss school for them to babysit as their parents go to look for work and they are not prepared to learn because they do not get room and time to their homework and they are hungry most of the time

The teachers in those schools are been accused of poor performance and low rates of graduation in the schools even though they are dedicated and idealistic. The neighboring schools which have children who are born in the United States are doing well because the school attendance is good with children coming from stable background hence no absenteeism or lack of time to do school work. George Bush the president of America by then signed a law that "No child left behind" during the reign of Obama he wanted to retitle the rule rejecting any excuses on low performance and low rates of graduation.in Central Falls, Rhode Island the school committee together with the secretary of education and the presented combined effort to fire teachers who were in the low performing schools.

In my own view schools should be compared directly without looking at the circumstances which surround the schools. For instance, the schools which have American children and those that have immigrants are not comparable. The immigrant's children have a lot of issues which affect their learning. To begin with, they are not able to fluently read and write in English and they came from poor backgrounds as compared to the American kids. This poor background affects their performance in school. The graduation rates of these two school are different because the performance of the students is also different. Teachers in the low performing schools are more hardworking and determined as compared to the high performing schools.

I feel that the performance of students is not based on the teachers there are many factors which should be considered when a student performs poorly. Firstly before the government decides to fire teacher it should look at the background of the student. For instance, in the essay, Davine talks about the school in the poor districts performing poorly which is due to the circumstances found in the homes of the students. The students are not conversant with English simply because they, not Americans, they do not attend school regularly because sometimes they babysit as their parents go searching for work. Another issue is that students do not have the same capacity of understanding. Some are slow learners and others are fast learners hence despite the teachers' effort to teach students only perform according to their level of perception.

With the example given of a high school having a 4% of students who are capable to do the math and 55%who are proficient in reading hence having a graduation rate of 75.6% and another school with has 7%proficient students of math and 55% proficient readers hence 48% graduation rate. This comparison means that the graduation rates of schools vary and when the government is looking at the graduation rates should consider the standards that govern graduation in that particular school. This general rules should not just be applied blindly.

Conclusion

To conclude, students' performance and graduation rates are paged on different things. The government should consider several aspects before crowning a school as poor performing. Firing teachers won't solve the issue of low performance and graduation rates. Where will new teachers who are able to raise a graduation rate of a school come from? The firing of teachers will not also solve the poor background of students living in poor districts and poor families. The government should instead look for ways to help needy students instead of firing teachers'.Graduation standards are determined by schools and nobody should just generally view them but instead have an insight into the standards.

Work Cited

Ravitch, Diane. "First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!." The Huffington Post 3 (2010).