[Mpls] Delusion & Illusion in Educational Opinion

[Michael Atherton]

The Star Tribune's Op Ex section this Sunday
focuses on Education.  Included in the section
is a table titled, "Gauging school performance."
The editors conclude that when compared to other
large metropolitan school districts Minneapolis'
performance is "...typical and in some cases
better..."  This is pure garbage!  It's one of
the biggest statistical lies I've ever seen in
print.  It certainly makes one wonder about either
their creditability or their intellectual ability.

Here's a simple rule:  You can't compare percentage
scores from different tests.  We all know that different
teachers give tests that have differing degrees 
of difficulty.  Scoring a 98% on Mr. Ratburn's
test is different than scoring a 98% on Ms. Fickle's
test.  Not to mention that the distributions and
norms differ from class to class, city to city,
state to state, and nation to nation.  So when
Tribune creates a column titled "Test passing rates"
it's statistically meaningless and far more than
that it's misleading and deceptive.  And, as far
as I'm concerned downright dishonest or just plain
stupid.  Of course if you read the small print you'll
see that they admit that "Each state uses a different
test."  Then why would mislead the public by listing 
passing rates in the same column?

Just to illustrate how idiotic this is I'm going to
draw a logical conclusion from their misrepresentation.
Here are the numbers for Minneapolis vs. Atlanta:

				   Minneapolis 	Atlanta
Number of Students		48,155	56,586
Poverty				67%		80%		
Pupil/teacher ratio		14.7		14.7
Per pupil spending		$10,348	$8,623
Dropout rate			14.4		7.6
Test passing rate			55/47		66/44
(reading/math)

Well darn, if it doesn't look as though Atlanta does much
better with a more difficult student population and with
less money.  Maybe we should have recruited a low level
administrator from Georgia to be our new superintendent
and reduce Per Pupil Spending by $8431.  

Of course, this is all meaningless unless these statistics
were standardized and I don't believe any of them are.
[You can't even depend on Numbers of Students because you
don't know if it included special education student.]

So what's happening here?  Why would the Tribune want
to imply that the MPS do as well as other big city school 
districts? I have my guesses, what are yours?

Michael Atherton
Prospect Park