Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
The Washington
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March 23, 1999, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A17
LENGTH: 967 words
HEADLINE:
Education: See All the Spin
BYLINE: Diane Ravitch
BODY:
Now that education is widely
considered the leading domestic issue, the nation needs valid, reliable
information about the condition of American schools. As the presidential
campaign of 2000 commences, political pressures are unfortunately distorting the
national data that get reported to the public.
When national reading
results were released by the National Assessment Governing Board in February,
Vice President Al Gore appeared at the press conference to announce that reading
scores were up and that this "great progress" was a direct result of the
Clinton-Gore education program. He called on Congress to pass the
administration's proposed legislation and then departed, taking two-thirds of
the audience with him.
Never before had any federal official loftier
than the secretary of education participated in a press conference to release
scores from the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress. By
law, the reporting of NAEP test scores is supposed to be strictly nonpartisan
and nonpolitical. In 1992 NAEP's governing board rebuked President Bush for
making reference to test scores before their official release, and now again the
chair of the governing board issued a complaint about the vice president's
inappropriate political intervention.
After Gore left the press
conference, Pascal D. Forgione Jr., the commissioner of education statistics,
pointed out that reading scores for eighth-grade students had improved a bit
between 1992 and 1998, but there was "no net gain" for students in fourth grade
and 12th grade. Far from the "amazing" progress that political appointees were
describing, improvements in reading were slight at best. The vice president had
used the event to generate headlines about successes that didn't happen; worse,
he attempted to claim credit for what little progress the nation was making;
worse still, he left the impression that NAEP scores can be used to promote the
political program of whoever happens to be in office, this despite the fact that
Congress (at the behest of the Reagan administration) took considerable pains to
try to insulate NAEP from political manipulation of every sort.
Another
misuse of federal data for partisan purposes occurred in early March, when the
Department of Education issued a report showing that poor students were
registering higher test scores since 1994. The political spinners claimed that
any gains made by poor students could be attributed to current federal programs
-- especially Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, which is soon to be reauthorized. Quietly acknowledged in the same
report was the fact that students in high-poverty schools are now reading no
better than in 1990, and that 70 percent of children in such schools are still
scoring "below even the basic level of reading."
There's been some
progress recently, in other words, but not a great deal. Still, governors of
both parties have a right to be irked by the administration's effort to take
credit for the modest test-score gains posted in the past few years. They know
that the federal government puts up only 7 cents of every dollar spent on
education, and that education is one of the top two spending priorities (with
health care) in every state. Since NAEP data describe educational performance
but cannot legitimately be used to specify the reasons for improvements or
declines in test scores, it is inappropriate for anyone to cite them to tout a
particular federal program or instructional approach.
Even the usually
professional National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has recently issued
misleading data on an important public policy issue and has thereby made the
problem appear to be getting better when it is not. Less than two years ago,
NCES published a massive study showing that vast numbers of teachers were
teaching academic subjects in which they had neither a major nor minor in
college, including 39 percent of science teachers, 34 percent of mathematics
teachers, 25 percent of English teachers and 17 percent of social studies
teachers. But in January, NCES released a new survey claiming that the numbers
of "out of field" teachers were far lower: 12 percent of science teachers, 18
percent of mathematics teachers, 14 percent of English teachers and 11 percent
of social studies teachers.
Had there been a sudden and dramatic
improvement in teacher preparation? No, the agency had changed its definition of
whom to count, producing what even NCES admits is an underestimate of the
problem. The earlier survey had included all those who were teaching a subject
that was not their main field. The 1999 survey was restricted only to those who
said that a certain subject (science, mathematics, social studies or English)
was their full-time, main teaching assignment. Thus, the very teachers likeliest
to be teaching out of field were not counted: the social studies teachers
assigned to teach mathematics, the gym teachers handling science or social
studies, and others who were not assigned to teaching what they studied in
college or graduate school.
Something dangerous is happening when
government officials begin to spin federal data about education for their
political benefit or to convince the public that things are better -- or worse
-- than they actually are. Government-generated data are the primary source of
information about the overall progress and condition of U.S. education. If data
produced by the Department of Education are no longer perceived to be apolitical
and credible, the nation will lose the ability to engage in a rational
discussion about educational improvement.
The writer, a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution, was assistant secretary of education for research in
the Bush administration.
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 1999
