book review

[Susan Ohanian <SOhan70241@AOL.COM>]

Ordinarily I would not share a review of my book with you. But this one seems
noteworthy in its claims of my "errors." HA! Wait until he sees my January
piece in Phi Delta Kappan. Then he'll really be steaming.

By the way, I have received a fan letter--from a teacher who decided, on the
basis of the review, that the book must be pretty good. She ordered it
immediately from amazon.com--and sent me a fan letter before she even got the
book.

Susan


November 1999
Out Of Order

   by David Ruenzel

ONE SIZE FITS FEW: The Folly Of Educational Standards, by Susan Ohanian.
(Heinemann, $16.95.) In this diatribe, longtime teacher and fervent
progressive Ohanian comes across like a hectoring right-wing radio host. In a
mere 150 pages, she lambastes--and this is a partial list--USA Today,
Education Week, corporate greed, the California Department of Education, and
everything and anything having to do with the movement to set curriculum
standards.

In earlier books such as Who's in Charge?, Ohanian emerged as an astute
critic of educational folly. But One Size, with its self-righteous, sarcastic
tone--particularly grating is her insistence on calling standards advocates
"Standardistos"--is less analysis than an ad hominem riff, portraying
standards as the dark machinations of Fortune 500 executives and conservative
think tanks.

Of course, this generalization isn't even halfway true. The standards
movement was launched not by a cabal of elites but by popularly elected
governors responding to public demand for greater school accountability. Much
of this demand came from activist inner-city parents who wanted a better
education for their children. But Ohanian doesn't acknowledge anything that
would dilute her argument that standards are the work of know-nothing elites,
contemptuous of teachers and students alike. Standardistos, she tells us in
no uncertain terms, are people with "a scope and sequence chart mentality"
who say, "Let them eat cake; let them take calculus."

It's unfortunate that Ohanian takes such a dismissive approach because it
undermines her legitimate, if often overstated, points. Ohanian smartly
challenges, for example, the "let's see how world class we can be" aspect of
the standards movement, which in California has produced standards like this
one: "Seventh graders will analyze St. Thomas Aquinas' synthesis of classical
philosophy with Christian theology." Sure they will. Ohanian is also right to
ask why students should feel motivated to meet rigorous standards when many
will end up in low-paying jobs that require only a minimal education.

But Ohanian loses credibility when she accuses advocates and policymakers of
promoting standards as a "guarantee of educational equity." Even the leaders
of the California standards movement that Ohanian so ridicules--a whole
chapter of her book is devoted to the insidious trend of
"Californication"--make no such claims. And with all the ink she gives
California, she fails to mention that test scores in the state have been
steadily rising over the past few years, a development that more than a few
observers attribute to standards and a strengthened core curriculum.

At the heart of Ohanian's anti-standards progressivism is a belief that
"teachers are the curriculum," and she argues here that teachers can only be
effective when they control what goes on in their classrooms, free from
onerous outside directives. Though this view has been embraced by certain
private schools, it's fantasy to think it will ever hold sway in
taxpayer-supported schools.

Ohanian writes that her experience teaching kids of all ages and abilities
has demonstrated the ruse of standards. Few would deny that one person's
experiences and insights can have powerful societal and political
implications. But sometimes, as in the case of this too-often spiteful work,
the personal just seems all too personal.

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