Posted by Eugene Volokh:
How About A Willingness To Misrepresent The Results Of Studies?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_12-2005_06_18.shtml#1118786627
Would you get marked down for that? I'm speaking of [1]this CNN item,
reporting on [2]this study:
States Ranked: Smartest to Dumbest
The smartest state in the union for the second consecutive year is
Massachusetts.
The dumbest, for the third year in a row, is New Mexico.
These are the findings of the Education State Rankings, a survey by
Morgan Quitno Press of hundreds of public school systems in all 50
states. States were graded on a variety of factors based on how
they compare to the national average. These included such positive
attributes as per-pupil expenditures, public high school graduation
rates, average class size, student reading and math proficiency,
and pupil-teacher ratios. States received negative points for high
drop-out rates and physical violence.
I have an idea: Let's have a Baseball Teams Ranked: Most Talented to
Least Talented, and grade a team's talents based in part on how much
it spends on salaries, how large its farm team network is, how many
fights the baseball players get into, and so on. What, you say?
Doesn't make sense? Some teams waste lots of money, while others spend
less but do it more efficiently? A baseball player's tendency to fight
may be unsporting, but doesn't show lack of talent?
My point exactly. If you want to measure how well-educated a state's
students are (something that you might label "smarter" without much
journalistic license), do that. You might have to use imperfect
proxies, such as proficiency exam scores or graduation rates, but
that's the best you can do. (After all, won-loss records are imperfect
proxies of baseball talent, too, but we rely on them.)
But don't separately count per-pupil expenditures or average class
size. If spending more and having smaller classes improves
performance, then that will show up on the performance measures. And
if it doesn't show up there, then why count it as "smart"?
I've enabled comments; please keep them on-topic, substantive, and
polite.
UPDATE: Just to preempt a possible objection: It's also possible to
characterize the study as misdesigned, for including the spending
factors. But I'm most galled by the inaccuracy of how the study's
results are misleadingly characterized. "Top-ranked," while a bit
tautological, would at least not make any unsupported claims; but
"smartest"? That's just not a candid way of reporting on what the
study measured.
References
1.
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/package.jsp?name=fte/smartstates/smartstates
2. http://www.morganquitno.com/edpress.htm
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