A right wing nut was screaming at me recently, (something they often do). He blasted out that the disparity in school funding was completely meaningless. His general tactic, besides the screaming, was what I call the outlier deception. This is used a great deal lately in spin and warrants some discussion.
When a researcher or policy maker looks at a large sample, there may be individual data points, which lie far outside the pattern indicated by the majority of data. These outliers may mean many things depending on the circumstances. One thing that is important is that it is honestly reported as an outlier. The outlier deception must reject the overwhelming pattern detected in the sample. The deceiver then replaces that data and pattern by handpicking outliers to build a dishonest case. The person makes the claim that the outliers actually represent the pattern visible from the complete sample. Schools: I mentioned, to the screamer, the graduation gap between urban and suburban areas detected in a national research project. Here in PA, we have long known that there is a tremendous public education funding gap between Phila. and wealthier suburban areas. We also have known that we have a poor graduation rate in Phila, and this has been blamed on lazy teachers and corruption/ waste by the administrators of poor districts. Low and behold, the very same problem that Phila public education faces repeats itself across the country. We need to also look at per pupil spending to see the exact picture, but I think it is generally known that the funding gap and suburban/urban income divide are national realities. If someone searches the outliers, that person will find a wealthy district that performs poorly and some small heroic urban district that performs as well as schools in the civilized democracies of the world. (These would be important outliers for further study and discussion.) But the outliers will not indicate the pattern that must be important for policy makers. After thinking about it, this outlier deception is used a great deal by corporate media. It makes sense that this screamer also relied on this tactic. Educated people, who have not been co-opted or don't have a conflict of interest, should see through this and reject the argument every time. They should point out that this is a very dishonest trick to employ so that everyone can consider the overall integrity of the presentation being offered to defend a policy decision. Thanks for your consideration, Glenn
