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New Government-Sponsored Education Study Profiles Minorities

By Ed Basquill

Basquill@iglou.com

          The US government did a new study that should be controversial, because it profiles minorities. The study assigns “levels” to minority groups, in an experiment designed to show no difference in education methods when racial profiling is taken into account.

          There are several things one should know before getting worked up about this study.  First and foremost, it isn’t a total lie to call it a new study, although that would be “a stretch.”  It is only a new analysis, but it is done mostly through data mining of Department of Education databases.  The results are also open to interpretation.  The New York Times headline for this study was Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study.  The dateline for the New York Times article was July 15, 2006, and the study was released months earlier.  As any good liar knows, facts and truths are not the same thing. My attention getting title has just about the same level of truth as the New York Times, but from a different sensational perspective. It is even for the same reason: to advance my agenda and gain readers.  The difference is I am admitting I have an agenda. This would be an appropriate moment to insert an apology to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter; I used to think they were just mean. They are gentle, gentle with the truth if a bit harsh with the rhetoric.  If you just want to read headlines, Coulter’s humor averaged with the New York Times point to the truth.  My agenda is to educate; it is to do a critical analysis of the study, and encourage you to “think” and read from original sources, like the study itself.  This analysis should make one very uncomfortable regardless of ideology, and see what it really means in the eyes of someone who is an adjunct professor teaching statistics in a major university.  Also ask yourself, if I had titled this article “Re-hash of old data implies parent’s priorities still by far most important factor in pre-high school education” would you have even read this far?  The headlines, mine or the New York Times, do not begin to describe the data. They are unfair to the work the researchers performed but pretty exciting, aren’t they?

          John Stossel wrote an article that completely debunks the New York Time’s article, but stops short of explaining what was really going on with the study. He quotes from the study where it says that “private schools outperformed public schools by an average of 14 to 18 points,” which shows the study directly contradicts the headline.  The New York Times quotes a part of the study where it seems to describe public schools performing near private ones, but omits qualifiers that are in the study.  The harmony of the two views is profiling. They use a technique where you assume white children outperform black children just because they are white. They attempt to prove that if you adjust for racial demographics, public and private schools are about even. When one is discussing police traffic stops or national security, we call this “profiling.” 

          The study sets out to compare public versus private schools based on the assumption that white children perform better than black children at school, and uses the magic of statistics to adjust for it.  Why is our government behind such a study? Even supposing that racial difference were the major driver in intelligence, for which there is no evidence, why would an organization trying to improve itself study a parameter that can’t be changed?  Political gain is the only answer.

          Most of the data collected by the Federal Department of Education is available online to anyone at the Institute of Education Statistics website. I encourage you to explore it yourself.   A look at the data shows results that are much more useful than playing race cards, but less exciting.  For example, there is a data set named “computer availability in the classroom 1998+” that compares standard scores of students who go to schools with no computers available, versus various levels of computer access.  It shows no improvement in reading or math scores for 4^th or 8^th graders based on computer availability. It is currently popular to spend gobs of taxpayer money getting every classroom “wired,” even to the point of doing away with books in favor of giving every student a laptop.  The data would imply that the three basic R’s might be less stylish but a better investment.  This is an example of a good use of statistical studies, as a tool to evaluate things that can be changed, like spending priorities.

I was extremely interested in one category of demographic data “Factors Beyond School.”  In the category was a data set titled “Books in the Home (2001+.)” It showed a 34 point edge in homes with many books in the home compared to no books in the home.  The parental investment in reading and learning, even for themselves, gave twice the edge of paying to go to a better, private school.   Computers in the home showed no such edge.  This is not exciting because it is not news. It merely confirms what anyone involved in children’s education already knows, the parents are the most important thing. A strong family unit is a winning environment.

          “Books in the Home” is not a measure I would have chosen, but it is ingenious. Think of the famous quote by Erasmus “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”  Books in the home are a great measure of the priority of education in the home.   As Anatole Broya said, “The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait."   

The number one thing to notice about the study is the fine print.  The scores being compared when they talk about “points” are based on a scale of 0 to 500. That means when we say that private schools perform 14 to 18 points better, it is like saying they performed 3 points better out of the intuitive 100. If the leftist journalists at the New York Times wanted to do an article trashing private schools, they could have done so without “making stuff up.” They could have just pointed out that private school parents pay twice, by paying taxes plus private tuition, to be only 3 percent better statistically in this study, a valid point to be entered into the arena of ideas. Entry into this arena requires that the reporters be literate in the sciences, and have at least a couple books on their bookshelves as well.    I’m sure New York Times reporters can read, but as Mark Twain said,   “The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."  The lack of statistical evidence for differences in the schools is implicit evidence for my point; it takes a parent to raise a child, the difference is the parent. A good school is preferable, but a well disciplined and encouraged child will succeed even in the worst school.  Perhaps an appropriate use of racial demographic study would be to analyze how the crisis of absent fathers relates to the statistics.  The problem with this approach: it might actually help people, rather than grow a radical government school program with a bias towards studies that help grow the business of government rather than the business of families and people.  Yet, please note this is my opinion based on external information and not statistical inference. The data doesn’t really say much of anything. The correct headline for a story covering the study should be: “Massive Federal Education Bureaucracy Produces another Study Proving Nothing, Funding Increase Planned.”.

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