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Education pundits ‘cherry pick’ data

(Bowling Green, Kentucky) – A big problem in evaluating what is really happening in education is finding credible data. An even greater dilemma arises when misguided advocates of Kentucky’s failing public-education system pursue an agenda to misrepresent data in support of their false assertions.

For example, a recent column by Robert Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, selectively uses data from the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank, to support his assertion that Kentucky’s public-education system is improving and deserves more funding from tapped-out taxpayers.

Sexton asserts that the Manhattan Institute’s research ranks Kentucky high in the “college readiness” of its students. To substantiate his claim, he misuses this research in an attempt to show that students in the commonwealth are making better progress in preparing for college than those in other states.

Yet official Kentucky data shows remediation rates increased from 37 percent in 2001 to 43 percent in 2002 (the latest year in Manhattan’s data) among Kentucky’s four-year state colleges. The remediation rate among the state’s two-year colleges and technical schools is now an astonishing 64 percent. This is a more accurate evaluation that both highlights the remediation problem students face and suggests Sexton’s numbers are way out of line.

How could this happen? Sexton conveniently ignores disclaimers in Manhattan’s report that clearly caution against using the “college readiness” index to portray individual states’ performances. Instead, the report indicates the figures are appropriate only for regional or national comparisons.

Sexton also conveniently ignores the portion of Manhattan’s report that shows Kentucky’s high-school graduation declined between 2001 and 2002.

Our state’s graduation rate fell from a high of 73 percent in 1993 to around 67 percent in 2002, which is about the same place it was in 1996. The national average, meanwhile, rose a full point during that time. In fact, Bluegrass Institute research indicates that the commonwealth’s high-school graduation rate has remained below the national average every school year since 1997.

“It isn’t hard to see why Sexton and others cherry pick only certain parts of Manhattan’s data,” said Richard G. Innes, an education analyst with the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. “He selected dubious numbers only because they imply that Kentucky is making better progress than other states. However, his conclusions are inaccurate and harm the chances for real education reform in our state.”

For interview information, contact Jim Waters, Director of Policy and Communications for the Bluegrass Institute. He can be reached at (270) 782-2140 or jwaters@bipps.org.

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