![]() A TALE OF TWO PREDISPOSITIONS! The Post and the Times offered dueling spins. What makes them see things as they do? // link // print // previous // next //
TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2009 Where do red-neck racists with brain problems come from: Is that Benedict Careyor Benedict Arnold? In this mornings Science Times, Carey tattle-tales on the whole human racespecifically, on our tendency to attribute moral greatness to ourselves, as opposed to The Others. Naughtily, Carey starts with an oblique reference to the current debate about uses of torture. But lets focus on the factsthe facts that Carey has discovered in some ongoing research. Stumbling Blocks on the Path of Righteousness, Careys headline says. And yes: We thought of the growing progressive world as we scanned his tattle-tale work. Heres the way he started:
Turn on the news, Carey invites. It was hard not to think of the growing world of progressive news, where readers and viewers are constantly urged to see themselves as far more moral than the limbic brain-damaged red-necks and racists who parade around with their troubling boobs and their clownish tea bags. Youre just better than others, progressive news teaches. But uh-oh! We humans are inclined to think that way, Carey tattles:
We humans! Were inclined to think were morally better than otherseven, perhaps, when were not! And omigod! This holier-than-thou effect can be quantified now, Carey soon suggests:
Wait a minute! Even Cornell students are subject to this delusion? Didnt Olbermann go there? (Is there any chance that this happens at Stanford?) Overpaid corporate stars to the side, those Cornell kids overstated their own vast moral greatness when it came to the purchase of daffodils; 83 percent said they would buy, but only 43 percent actually did. (What percentage of their peers bought dils? Drat! Carey doesnt say.) In fairness, studies of the purchase of flowers can only take us so far. That said, we were intrigued by the comments of one of Careys psychologist fellersNicholas Epley, University of Chicago, who devises these buzz-kill experiments:
For ourselves, we first observed something like the holier-than-thou effect in the early 1970s, when a well-intentioned journalist, observing from afar, explained that it must be teacher laziness which was keeping other Baltimore schools from achieving the remarkable test scores recorded by some Baltimore schools. (By happenstance, we knew that the teachers in one of those schools were blatantly cheating on these tests. But we just couldnt convince him! See THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/8/05.) But weve been endlessly struck by this holier-than-thou approach as we watch the spread of our new progressive media. We progressives are the good people, we are constantly told in these venues; the others are just racists and red-necks, limbic brain-damaged tea-baggers! (Sometimes, they have fake breasts!) In our lifetime, there has always been a strong strain of this moral self-glorification in American liberal politics. It tends to harm progressive interests. But it sure feels good going down! Last night, watching our TV machine thing-y, we were stunned by one example of this holier-than-thou self-glorification. We plan to discuss that example tomorrow. In the meantime, wed say that Carey played a mean Benedict Arnold in this mornings Science Times. For ourselves, wed have to say that his red-neck tendencies have never come through quite so clear. A TALE OF TWO PREDISPOSITIONS: To what extent have the provisions of No Child Left Behind improved student achievement? If we actually care about what is true, that question is hard to answer. But: If we simply want to promote our predispositions, that can be easily done. In yesterdays Post, Margaret Spellings presented a groaning op-ed column, filled with technical errors and shortcuts (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/4/09). Unsurprisingly, her errors and shortcuts helped her conclude, as she constantly does, that No Child has been a howling success. (Spellings was Bushs Ed Sec. The Post never fails to give her space in which to push her poorly-founded assertions.) Last week, though, the New York Times put its thumb on the scale in the other direction. When Sam Dillon reported those new NAEP scoresthe same NAEP scores from which Spellings was workinghe instantly claimed that the new test scores show that No Child has pretty much flopped (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/29/09). On what basis did Dillon discard No Child Left behind? The new test scores only cover four yearsbut we made more progress during an earlier twenty-year period, he absurdly noted, at the start of his front-page news report. On the same day, the Washington Post ran a news report which quickly said that the new test scores provide fuel to those who support No Child. Sadly, weve always tended to discuss our public schools in these spin-drenched ways. To what extent has No Child Left Behind improved student achievement? To be honest, its hard to tell from these important new data. But as a general matter, nothing seems to stop the Post from pimping the wonders of testing-based programsand the New York Times will often be there to turn up its nose at apparent success. When those NAEP scores were released last week, the contrast was so silly and so pronounced that we thought the time had finally come to offer a few general speculations about the way these two newspapers tend to approach such issues. Lets start with the Washington Post. We really think the time has come to offer a bit of a warning: When you see the Post gush about testing-based programs, we would suggest that you might recall this: In these days of failing newspapers, the Posts parent company makes lots of cash from Kaplan Inc., the papers so-called education division. Last November, the Posts Frank Ahrens reported some dollar figures:
Kaplan, the Posts education division, now provides 53 percent of company revenue, Ahrens reported. And yes, Kaplan seems to deal heavily in educational testing services. Wikipedia always says it best. Heres the way its nameless scribes begin their report about Kaplan:
For ourselves, were interested in argumentless so in motive, not at all in business practice. But it has gotten hard to read the Posts education coverage without thinking of the newspapers tie to Kaplan. For ourselves, we support annual testing in public schools; we cant imagine running a low-income system without some (potentially) objective measure of progress. But the Posts knee-jerk affirmation of All Things Testing gets increasingly hard to take. Its increasingly hard to read this papers news reporting, and its editorials, without wondering if some Kaplan-based conflict of interest has infected the papers overall judgments. Has Kaplan Inc. gotten into the water? We wonder more and more. Spellings piece was a technical groaner, about a very important subject. But it effusively praised No Child Left Behind. The Post rushed the piece into print. This doesnt mean that the Times reporting is better. Last week, we thought Dillons overt spinning against No Child Left Behind was massively worse than Maria Glods milder spinning in the Post, which tilted in favor of No Child Left Behind. What explains the way the Times reports on the public schools? What follows is guesswork: You always have the High Manhattan desire to sneer at Dummy Bush. But we sometimes think we spot a world view lurking behind some Times reportinga tired but well-intentioned world-view which seems to be hanging around from its hey-day in the newly liberal mid-1960s. Weve decided not to go into this today, because our sense of this is so airy. Well simply suggest that you might wonder at times about the Posts great love of All Things Testing. Again: We strongly support annual testing (competently conducted and sensibly used). But the Post sometimes seems to be conducting a long, ardent love affair with testing. Every time they fail to edit Spellings self-endorsements, a name now pops in our headand yes, that name is Kaplan. Final note about last weeks test scores: Until recently, no one has really had an inventive to cheat on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is especially true of the NAEPs long-term trend assessment, which doesnt even report results on the state-by-state level. As far as we can tell, no teacher or principal would have an incentive to cheat on this program; neither would a state department of education. In other testing programs, people do have large incentives to cheatand cheating has often occurred. Especially in the NAEPs long-term trend assessment, such incentives have never seemed to exist. That said, the NAEP is important because its widely viewed as the gold standard of testingthe nations report card. In the main NAEP program, fourth-, eighth- and twelfth-graders get testedand states will sometimes get yelled at now for their statewide results. Incentives to cheat have thus been invented, at least on the main NAEP (as opposed to the long-term trend NAEP). If we were running a news division, we would give our reporters an assignment: Find out how the NAEP gets administered. See if theres any chance, from the state level down, that anyone has started to tinker with this programs procedures. On the main NAEP, are states attempting to tilt their statewide student samples, thus producing higher statewide averages? Do schools which take part in the NAEP feel under pressure to produce good results? If they do feel any such pressure, could they gimmick the programs procedures? The history of the past forty years is clear: As soon as testing programs get tied to accountability, someone somewhere starts to gimmick their procedures. As far as we know, such problems have never infected the NAEP. We should all try to keep things that way.
Final point: The Post and the Times will cover this topic when the cow jumps over the moon. Theyre too busy offering dueling spins about what the new NAEP test scores mean. And the Post is too busy rushing Spellings bungled words of self-praise into print. Again. What else is current? |