The Manufactured Crisis. - Review - book review

David Berliner and Bruce Biddle's book, The Manufactured Crisis, is the latest in a growing series of books that attempt to set the record straight about the general worth of America's public schools.

The two college professors say they wrote their book "in outrage" after learning that government officials and their allies were ignoring, suppressing, and distorting evidence about schools and their accomplishments.

Earlier books, written by similarly outraged authors, made many of the same points about the distorted evidence. What Berliner and Biddle contribute is a sense of who actually manufactured the educational crisis. The list is long. It includes fiscal conservatives, the religious right, the corporate elite, and a cadre of self-described "neoconservatives" such as William Bennett, Chester Finn, and Diane Ravitch, all Department of Education officials in recent Republican administrations.

The authors even finger their own kind. For example, they are particularly troubled by the policy decisions in education made because of the 1966 "Coleman Report" and the highly touted but "clever bit of propaganda disguised as a review of research" published by the Department of Education in the mid-'80s under the title "What Works: Research About Teaching and Learning."

The authors close by reminding us that effective educational reforms will not result from scapegoating educators, blaming students, or heaping indignities on minorities and the poor. When politicians and policymakers are serious about educational reform, they'll signal it by providing educators and their students with a little dignity and respect.

(The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools, by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, Addison Wesley, 1 Jacob Way, Reading, Mass. 01867, 1995, 414 pp. with index, $25 hardcover)

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