> Failing on Facts
> John Stossel garbles the education issue
>
> By Peter Hart
> >From EXTRA!, Jan.-Feb. 2000, http://www.fair.org
> [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting]
>
> On 20/20's November 12 ABC News correspondent
> John Stossel devoted his "Give Me a Break" segment
> to taking on public schools and teaching standards.
> >From the beginning of the segment, it wasn't hard to
> tell where Stossel was headed. Anchor Barbara Walters
> introduced Stossel's report by saying, "So what's the
> matter with teachers today?" Stossel then proceeded
> with his case against "government schools" and their
> "Soviet-style bureaucracy"-which he contrasted with
> Catholic schools, which are "doing a better job for a
> fraction of the money."
>
> Ironically, Stossel's report on the supposedly low standards
> of the public education system was filled with errors. Here's
> a sampling of his mistakes and distortions:
>
> STOSSEL: "Lots of people are complaining about public
> schools, but that's not the story the teachers' union tells."
>
> FACT: While it's certainly true that some people are critical
> of public education, the public's overall impression is not
> negative. According to the latest results of the Phi Delta
> Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward Public
> Schools, 49 percent of respondents give public schools a
> grade of A or B, and 31 percent assign them a C. Only 5
> percent of respondents gave public schools a failing grade.
> It's worth noting that parents with children in public school
> graded schools more favorably; 66 percent of these gave an
> A or a B to the school their oldest child attends.
>
> STOSSEL: "SAT scores are lower than they used to be."
>
> FACT: Data from the Department of Education show a slide
> from the mid'60s to the mid-'70s, with SAT scores remaining
> relatively stable over the past 20 years. But using the SAT to
> compare students of today with students of yesteryear is a
> meaningless exercise. A much larger pool of students takes
> the test today than in the past, when they were mainly required
> by a small group of elite colleges. Most importantly, the questions
> on the test change every year, so a score from 1966 has no
> particular relationship to a similar score from 1999.
>
> STOSSEL: "Since I was in school, America has more than tripled
> spending on education."
>
> FACT: It's commonly claimed that school spending has increased
> dramatically; most often, it's said to have doubled in the past 25
> years. But prices for laborintensive services like education generally
> rise faster than prices for goods, which are held down by improvements
> in technology. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute
> has calculated an inflation rate for services, and when this is used
> instead of the Consumer Price Index to calculate real spending on
> education, Rothstein finds that spending on public schools actually
> grew by only 61 percent between 1967 and 1991-about 2 percent
> per year-and much of that increase went to special education
> programs. From 1991 to 1996, real spending has increased by
> only 0.7 percent.
>
> STOSSEL: "The U.S. Education Department says that only one in
> five teachers feels prepared to teach to high standards."
>
> FACT: Stossel appears to be referring to a Department of Education
> study released in January 1999. This study dealt with teacher
> preparedness, but it said nothing about teaching "to high standards."
> Instead, it found that 20 percent of teachers--one in five--felt comfortable
> integrating _high technology_ into classroom instruction. The Department
> of Education could find no study that more closely matched Stossel's
> description; ABC refused to provide any more specifics.
>
> STOSSEL: "This summer, the Massachusetts teachers' union
> staged this protest after almost half the state's new teachers
> flunked the competency test and kept flunking."
>
> FACT: First, as Dr. Penelope Earley of the American Association
> of Colleges for Teacher Education points out, many of those
> failing the exam were not teachers, but members of the public
> trying to get teaching credentials.
>
> Second, Stossel fails to mention the serious questions about
> the reliability and validity of the Massachusetts test. An _ad hoc_
> committee of education experts evaluated the C,ommunications
> and Literacy portion of the exam and found the margin of error to
> be "double or triple the range found on welldeveloped tests."
> (Education Policy Analysis Archives, 2/11/99)
>
> STOSSEL: "Catholic students test higher."
>
> FACT: Most private schools screen students prior to admission,
> in effect "weeding out" the low-performers; public schools, of
> course, cannot do this. This accounts for much of the disparity
> in test scores.
>
> STOSSEL: "98 percent [of Catholic school students] graduate, vs.
> 49 percent for the public schools."
>
> FACT: The graduation rate for all high school students in 1996 was
> 76.4 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
> Since roughly 90 percent of students attend public school, even if
> every private school student graduated, the public school graduation
> rate must be more than 73 percent.