Re: College costs, data slants, conflicts of interest, and "research"...

[aburke5054@aol.com]

The Consortium updated its figures - in now says that 8% of students 
who begin high school in CPS earn a four-year degree by their mid-20s.

The Consortium identifies low ACT/SAT scores, low high-school grades, 
and drop out rates approaching 50 percent as reasons why relatively few 
CPS students finish at four-year schools.   No doubt many kids don't 
have the money to go on to college (and many aren't aware of money that 
is available to them), but that fact remains that many kids are coming 
out of CPS without the skills they need for college.

Their latest study says that course attendance is 8 times more 
predictive of ninth grade success than test scores and that missing 
even a week disadvantages a child.  This seems to me to be important to 
know and it strikes me as terribly important to do something about it.  
Some of the Consortium's analyses and interpretations might be 
truncated, but they are taking on hard problems that need to be taken 
on.  Figuring out what to do about the facts they discover is far more 
important than running around claiming that the Consortium is bashing 
schools by telling the truth about them or claiming that the ruling 
class has bought off Consortium researchers.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Csubstance@aol.com
To: Bussardre@aol.com; arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 1:27 am
Subject: [arn-l] College costs, data slants, conflicts of interest, and 
"research"...

7/26/07

Just one more addition to my recent note about how Andy Stern, the 
University
of Chicago, and Eli Broad team up to bash Chicago high schools.

That "study" that claimed that only six percent of Chicago high school
students ever graduated from reputable four-year colleges also left out 
a major
factor that hinders the ability of most Chicago teenagers (and 
virtually all of
the families who pay union dues to SEIU) from going to "quality" 
four-year
colleges is the most simple:

The cost of a college education.

1. The University of Chicago completely ignored the underlying economic
inequities as a possible explanation of why a smaller percentage of 
Chicago kids

finish college quickly as compared with, say, Chicago's more affluent 
suburbs.

2. The president of the Service Employees International Union failed to
notice a fundamental class inequity in the distribution of access to 
"quality"
college because he was too busy hanging out with corporate "reform" 
guys like
Eli
Broad and citing the kinds of data and studies that are funded by guys 
like
Eli Broad.

Just one other small piece of interest.

There are few major people in the "Consortium" who have avoided major
financial and other conflicts of interest. From Tony Bryk to John 
Easton and
Melissa
Roderick, they are all conflicted massively. At the least, such biases 
should
be included in the footnotes to the studies they produce -- and 
whenever
anyone cites those studies.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

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