Fw: More NY Times

["GERALD BRACEY" <gbracey1@verizon.net>]

Seeing Jim Horn's comments, thought he and other ARNers might find my comments of some interest.  We have to be careful about interpreting this study, though.  It doesn't really show that the publics perform as well as the privates.  That's clearly not true in the raw data.  It shows that the privates' advantage is due largely to their clientele and the publics would match them had they the same clientele.  But they don't.  The study's adjustments for client differences are statistical.  It's a welcome finding that will surprise some, but in reality the publics need to continue to find ways of educating harder to reach kids--all those poor children, minority children, special needs children, and English Language Learners.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: GERALD BRACEY 
To: jtierney@nytimes.com ; boherb@nytimes.com ; Gail Collins ; bstaples@nytimes.com 
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 10:32 AM
Subject: Fw: More NY Times


Thought my response to a note from a friend in GA might be of interest.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: GERALD BRACEY 
To: Jerry Eads 
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: More NY Times


Tierney's funny.  Sometimes I agree with him.  On this one, though, he's clearly acting merely as a shil for Peterson and vouchers.  Yellow journalism rides again.  I'd like to know his connection to Peterson.  The study isn't one that journalists keep in front of them for quick reference.  The data are, uh, shall we say, a bit less than compelling.

The vouchers only worked in one grade for black kids and only in New York. The effect in Dayton and DC was nil. Even Peterson had only speculations on why vouchers might work for blacks but not Hispanics and whites.  The 5th grade effect in NY was so large that it made the whole thing significant.  Real researchers objected to lumping everything together.  Peterson told Times reporter Kate Zernike, "an average is an average."  How's that for high-powered statistical reasoning?

Peterson's co-investigator, Mathematica Policy Research, disowned his conclusion.  Peterson also omitted over 40% of the data in New York and didn't tell anyone he'd done that.  Alan Krueger found out about it only because he obtained the raw data from Mathematica and when he reanalyzed using the full data set, the effect for New York disappeared as well.  Mathematica said Krueger's was a fine analysis (Peterson had reasons for omitting the data he did.  Most researchers would not agree with those reasons, but the real breach in research ethics was keeping mum about it).

I can't believe that Tierney would use the tired old comparison of tuition at private schools compared to per pupil expenditures for publics.  As if there are no other sources of revenue for privates.

And, of course, Tierney fails to address what everyone else has noticed.  If the study was not positive to public schools, as he claims, why did the Spellings gang hold onto it for so long (since last year) and why did she release it on a Friday, the usual time for releasing information you don't want anyone to notice.  And especially on a Friday when everyone was focused on the wars in the Middle East with only a routine alert--no press release, no press conference?

There's a word for columns like this one: Despicable.

Jerry

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jerry Eads 
  To: GERALD BRACEY 
  Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 10:03 AM
  Subject: FW: More NY Times


  Tierney should be at least equally dizzy - -







   Op-Ed Columnist

    Spinning a Bad Report Card 
    a.. By JOHN TIERNEY 
  Published: July 18, 2006

  Thanks to a new federal report comparing public and private schools, there's no doubt that public schools have one huge advantage: the leaders of their unions are unrivaled masters of spin.

  They didn't merely celebrate the report's release on Friday, they complained that the Bush administration tried to bury it by releasing it for the weekend. They spun so well that the report was treated as a public-school triumph that "casts doubt on the value of voucher programs," as The Wall Street Journal described it. 

  But if anything, the report from the Education Department did just the opposite. It concluded, after compensating for socioeconomic differences and other factors, that public-school students score slightly better on tests in fourth grade, while private-school students score slightly better in eighth grade. Given a choice, would you rather be ahead in the fourth inning or later in the game?

  But even if you ignore that trend, even if you focus on the overall similarity of the scores in both types of school, that's still bad news for public schools. Their students ought to be scoring higher if you believe in the unions' favorite prescription for improving education: more money.

  Most private schools are not places like Exeter or Dalton. They're Catholic parochial schools and others on lean budgets. According to federal surveys, the typical private school's tuition is only about half what a public school spends per pupil.

  The public schools are spending more even if you exclude their expenses for special education, buses, lunch programs and central administration, as William Howell and Paul Peterson found in a study of New York elementary schools. The political scientists calculated that the public schools were still spending twice as much per pupil as were the Catholic schools in New York.

  General Motors would not celebrate the news that its $40,000 Cadillac performed almost as well as a $20,000 Honda. It would not have its dealers put up signs reading: "Why Pay Less? Our Cars Are Nearly As Good." But that's the logic of the teachers' union leaders who want to prevent students from getting vouchers and taxpayers from saving money. 

  For fans of public schools, about the only bright spot in this new study is that it's not as damning as previous comparisons, but that's because it's a much less rigorous study. Its authors caution that it's of "modest utility," and other scholars think that's too kind. Some critics fault its methodology and say it understates the advantages of private schools, and some don't think this kind of comparison can prove anything.

  The best way to compare schools is not to simply look at test scores one year, because it's impossible to account for the students' intrinsic advantages and disadvantages, and their varying motivations for choosing one type of school over another. Researchers can try to control for factors like family income and ethnicity or race, but these are crude measures. 

  Why, for instance, do some poor parents switch to a private school while their equally poor next-door neighbors are content with public school? Are the private-school parents more motivated because they put more value on education? Or are they just more desperate for a change because their children were doing much worse in public school than the children next door?

  The most scientific way to compare schools is with the kind of randomized experiment that has been conducted in New York, Dayton and Washington. In these cities, students from low-income families were given a chance to apply for school vouchers. After the vouchers were awarded by lottery, researchers tracked the voucher students in private schools and compared them with a control group: the losers of the lottery who remained in public school.

  After three years, the white and Hispanic voucher students were doing as well as their counterparts in public school, and the African-American voucher students were testing a full grade level higher than the blacks in the control group. The parents of all the voucher students - white, Hispanic and African-American - reported that there was much less fighting, cheating, vandalism and absenteeism in their schools than did the public-school parents. 

  Even though the private schools spent less money per pupil than the public schools, the parents were much more satisfied with them. Happier parents, better students, lower costs - those are the clear advantages of private schools and voucher programs. No wonder the teachers' unions are so busy spinning. 



  For Further Reading

    a.. "Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study," by Diana Jean Schemo. The New York Times, July 15, 2006. 
    b.. "Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling," by the National Center for Education Statistics, July 14, 2006. 
    c.. "The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools," by William G. Howell and Paul E. Peterson. Brookings, 2002. 
    d.. "The School Choice Movement's Greatest Failure," by Andrew J. Coulson. Cato @ Liberty, July 16, 2006. 
    e.. "Schoolyard Revolutions: How Research on Urban School Reform Undermines Reform," by Joseph P. Viteritti. Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2003. 
    f.. "Rising Tide," by Caroline Minter Hoxby. Hoover, 2001 
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  MaryLynn Huie

  mlhuie@joimail.com

  EarthLink Revolves Around You.