Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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NY Times Tierney picks the wrong study
New York Times columnist John Tierney earlier this week took up the cause of private schools who he says were unfairly spun as the big losers in a recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Tierney’s take wasn’t exceptionally thoughtful. He took the usual anti-public school tack — scapegoating unions, dismissing public school success and making a case for the cost effectiveness of private schools, if nothing else. And mostly he talked off the top of his head, citing only two studies to support his arguments.
It just so happened that both studies involved Paul Peterson, whom Tierney neglected to mention is often funded by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based school choice advocacy group with roots here in Dayton.
Most surprising to me was that Tierney reached way back seven years to cite this 1999 study:
“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.
Don’t remember this study? Since it included Dayton, I remembered it. Let me help refresh your memory. This is the Paul Peterson led study that saw it’s conclusions renounced by the research group compiled the data. Here’s an excerpt from a story that ran in the Dayton Daily News in 2000:
An educational research company that compiled data for a school voucher study that showed blacks did better at private schools says gains in one city were overstated by the lead researcher.
The study, led by Paul Peterson, a government professor at Harvard and a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, examined three privately funded experimental programs in New York, Washington and Dayton.
It showed significant gains, based on scores on standardized math and reading tests, for black students who received vouchers to help pay for private school.
Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, which gathered data in New York, has issued a statement that calls the findings premature and cautions against jumping to any policy conclusions, The New York Times reported in Friday’s editions.
`If you ask the question,When I offered students vouchers, did I make a difference in their test scores,’ right now you come away saying, `No, there’s no impact’ ” said David Myers of Mathematica.
Researchers admit the gains among black students were concentrated heavily in Washington, where the improvement was twice as great as in New York and one-third greater in Dayton.
But Peterson stood by his conclusions, saying, “An average is average.”
The study measured test scores among 1,400 poor students given vouchers worth $1,700 a year to attend private school.
Researchers found that between 1997 and 1999, black children on vouchers raised their percentile rankings on standardized math and reading tests on average by 6.3 points.
Their scores were compared with a control group of students who were not awarded vouchers by lottery and remained in public schools. But the study, released about two weeks ago, found no similar improvements among other ethnic groups.
Advocates of voucher programs used the study to bolster support for their cause. But critics of vouchers criticized the study initially, saying it was tainted because it was done in cooperation with pro-voucher organizations supporting the three programs.
This was the best study Tierney could find to bolster the case for private schools? There hasn’t been a more definitive or independent study in seven years? I’m not sure how much he helped the cause.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, My Favorite Posts
Comments
By Oldprof
July 22, 2006 10:21 AM | Link to this
Just for the record, I also have been at Fordham events. The scholars they brought in were respectable and did make a lot of sense. Fordham chose to ignore their recommendations and instead to chase the goose of charter schools. If it had worked I’d have given it credit, but all they’ve proven so far is that the better-funded schools are more likely to succeed. We already knew so—By Mary
July 22, 2006 4:23 AM | Link to this
As indicated in a later blog about politics, I thought Tierney’s column made a lot of sense. I have been to one of the Fordham Foundation sponsored programs at Sinclair Community College and also thought they were very professional and made a lot of sense. As far as public school transportation and other extra expenses, most school districts do more than the law requires. Schools are only required to transport K-8 outside a certain mile radius. Most school districts transport high school and extracurricular to far away places all days of the week with added insurance and overtime drivers.By Oldprof
July 21, 2006 9:35 AM | Link to this
We don’t need to look very far to note that Tierney, the Fordham Foundation’s hacks, and others are vapid thinkers who don’t understand the basics of fair comparison. For example, Tierney and Fordham both persist in blathering that “private and charter schools perform as well, or better, at lower cost per student.” Yes, OK, but on the other side of that equation are the inequities. Public school districts must provide transportation for many private and charter students—and at the costs of fuel today and considering that efficient routes for all those students can’t be planned, what do you think THAT is worth as an asset to the non-publics? Private and charter schools are excused from over 100 costly administrative mandates from state and federal government—how much does THAT asset get counted for, on the balance sheet? In the long run, we’re never going to have an educated populace unless incompetent thinkers like Tierney or “Checker” Finn (as the current Fordham “education gadfly” identifies him) are limited in their access to the media and roundly countered when they spout inaccuracies. As Harlan Ellison put it, they’re entitled to their opnion—but that opinion isn’t entitled to respect.By doug
July 21, 2006 12:28 AM | Link to this
The bar is pretty low for helping the cause of private schools Scott. I’m sure Tierney’s readers put down their paper and said “Darn right”. In today’s world, conventional wisdom rules public opinion. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith said it best when he defined conventional wisdom by saying: “We associate truth with convenience,” he wrote,”with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being…… Everyone wants less taxes so everyone says that publc schools are wasting our money and doing a terrible job even when they are not. Everyone wants to bask in the self esteem of believing that back in the day the school they attended was great and today kids aren’t being taught very well at all. No study that says a public school system is doing a great job managing money and producing results will pass the conventional wisdom test (See Mason City Schools). Only studies that say private schools are doing great will be paid attention too. We are a society that is informed as they want to be. Not very right now.