Dissecting Bad Journalism
News is supposed to be news, not opinion. There's usually a separate section of the newspaper for opinion. But for many years, decades even, journalists have severely blurred the lines between news and opinion. The following is a perfect example of how they do so, subtle, so that the injected opinion is not immediately caught
From the Associated Press...
Congressional Republicans on Tuesday proposed a $100 million plan to let poor children leave struggling schools and attend private schools at public expense.
There we have the straight facts. That would be news, here comes the opinion...
The voucher idea is one in a series of social conservative issues meant to energize the Republican base as midterm elections approach. In announcing their bills, House and Senate sponsors acknowledged that Congress likely won't even vote on the legislation this year.
His opinion is that vouchers are means to an end, not to educated children, but to encourage social conservatives to vote for Republicans. Exactly who this guy thinks social conservatives will be voting for if not for Republicans is not clear, nonetheless, it seems he firmly believes Republicans are incapable of actually caring about the educational needs of children.
Still, the move signals a significant education fight to come. GOP lawmakers plan to try to work their voucher plan into the No Child Left Behind law when it is updated in 2007.
The fight for vouchers has been going on for quite some time now. This would be yet another in a long line of attempts to unshackle America's children from bad education.
"Momentum is on our side," said Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., the chairman of the House education committee.
Always be leery of "sound bites" because if the quote is that short, it means the writer's used only what was convenient, and not necessarily what would reflect the ideas the person quoted was actually trying to convey.
The Bush administration requested the school-choice plan, but Tuesday's media event caused some awkwardness for the Education Department. The agency just released a study that raises questions about whether private schools offer any advantage over public ones.
Under the new legislation, the vouchers would mainly go to students in poor schools that have failed to meet their progress goals for at least five straight years.
So how was that "awkwardness" displayed? Did they all have red faces, avoiding looking the media in the eye and instead shuffle their toes along the ground? Or perhaps, more likely, the "awkwardness" was 100% imagined on the part of one Liberal journalist who is too myopic to see that he himself follows his stretch of imagination with another rare bite of facts, that clearly explains why the DOE has absolutely nothing to be "awkward" about. If the vouchers are for poor schools who are performing poorly, what would that have to do with schools in general. Every voucher program I've seen allows the parent to send their child to any school that would accept the voucher, including nearby government schools.
It should also be noted that the study the writer refers to, used "adjusted" scoring in order to force a specific result. The study itself warns in the "Cautions in Interpretations" section...
...private schools are “schools of choice.” Without further information, such as measures of prior achievement, there is no way to determine how patterns of self-selection may have affected the estimates presented.
In other words, the entire study is a meaningless guess, and more than likely a transparent attempt at pretending government schools actually perform at the same level of quality that private schools do. Also, having worked at a private school, I can assure you the picture of private school students being the cream skimmed off the public schools is pure myth. At the school I worked at, a significant portion of the student body were students kicked out of all available public school an sent to the private school as the only option. Yet students still excelled.
The criteria the scores were adjusted for were Gender, Race/ethnicity, (are they assuming certain races are stupider than others?!?) Students with disabilities (Try obtaining the proper state funding for disabilities in a private school. While learning disabilities would be a factor, all disabilities would not, thus the false criteria), English language learners (But isn't the idea of teaching children from various ethnic background in "their own" language another of the government school idiocies that people oppose? This would be a factor created because of the school, not the student.), Computer in the home (Sorry, we have 6 computers in our home, and it's almost impossible to get my kids to put aside games and do something educational on them. This is another bogus criteria), Eligibility for free/reduced-price school lunch (not offered in many private schools, therefore wouldn't be a fair test. Besides vouchers would be sending poor kids to private schools, so this would also be a meaningless criteria), Participation in Title I (available only to government schools. Another bogus criteria), Number of books in the home (Most homes I've seen have tons of "display" books like the Reader's Digest condensed books volumes, that gather dust. This is also a meaningless criteria), Number of absences (to phrase it more accurately, the number of absences the school allows before pretending they care.) In other words, selected criteria specifically designed to even out the score. A meaningless study. The DOE should be embarrassed for having their name on it, not for the reason the writer of the article implies.
If nothing else, that we have people in the DOE who are that desperate to hide the ugly reality of our failed government education system, speaks volumes for the need for vouchers.
Posted by Danny Carlton at July 19, 2006 5:57 AM