Gary Stern

TJN

BRIARCLIFF MANOR –

Education analyst and provocateur Diane Ravitch on Friday morning dismissed standardized testing and data crunching as false idols that detract from the joy of learning.

She told about 400 school technology people and administrators that today's education "reformers" in Albany and Washington believe that only the private sector can be innovative and that test scores and student data can be used to somehow privatize public education.

"They think that test scores are the most important product of education," she told the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center "Tech Expo" at the Girl Scouts' Edith Macy Conference Center. "We are the most over-tested country in the world."

Ravitch said testing is being used to impose standardization and top-down control and to punish divergent thinking. She was glad that thousands of New York parents did not let their children take last week's state English language arts tests.

"I hope there will be many more," she said.

Ravitch, 75, served in two federal administrations and has become a leading voice of parents and educators who question the direction of modern school reforms. She has built a vast audience through the use of technology. She said her blog — dianeravitch.com — has had over 11 million page views in two years. Her Twitter account has 82,000 followers.

She said technology opens the minds of students, allowing them to "take ownership of their learning," while helping educators to bypass the influence of publishing companies.

"You can show poverty," she said. "You can show terrorism. You can show the realities of life."

But she said policymakers, politicians and education companies are hijacking the technological revolution to "create a lucrative marketplace" for vendors, publishing companies and charter schools.

She said that while New York got $700 million from the federal government for participating in Race to the Top, school districts will have to spend much more on materials and training to deal with the Common Core, teacher evaluations and testing.

"That $700 million will be the most expensive Trojan horse in history," she said.

More than 600 people came to Bedford to hear Ravitch speak in January. On Friday, she was using a walker after a recent fall. But she said she blogged several times on her way to Westchester.

Ravitch served from 1997 to 2004 on the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test often cited to show the failure of America's schools. But she said the results have been distorted by reformers.

She said the main reason for poor student performance is poverty, but reformers don't want to talk about it.

"They say that anyone who talks about poverty is just making excuses for bad teachers," she said.

Twitter: @garysternNY