PART 2—IT ALL COMES DOWN TO US (permalink): It’s hard to fathom how poorly the mainstream press corps tends to function (though that’s an old tale around here). Consider the Washington Post report to which we linked on Monday. Help! In this rather typical news report, Nick Anderson writes about a semi-controversial reading program, Success for All. (Why is the program controversial? Some people think it’s too “scripted”—Jonathan Kozol, let’s say.) “The evidence is that it improves reading achievement for children in younger grades,” Anderson quotes an expert saying.
Success for All “improves reading achievement for children in younger grades?” Presumably, this means that the program “improves reading achievement” as compared to other programs. If so, that’s a very good thing, of course. And indeed! When Anderson visits a school which is using the program, he seems to say that Success for All has produced a notable degree of success: ANDERSON (1/2/11): At Grasonville Elementary School, where about 30 percent of the 475 students come from families poor enough to qualify for meal subsidies, Success for All is credited with helping students achieve perennially strong reading test scores. The Queen Anne's County school, just east of Kent Narrows, began the program in 1997.
Grasonville Elementary has used Success for All for the past fourteen years. But are this school’s “perennially strong reading scores” in some way out of the ordinary? You’d think a reform-lovin’ paper like the Post would want to answer so basic a question. But argh! Anderson makes no attempt to report Grasonville’s reading scores, or to compare its reading scores with those of similar schools. Nor does he cite any other evidence, from any quarter, in support of Success for All—though one day later, a colleague did, in a Post blog item (see below).
(For the record, Anderson seems to suggest in the passage above that Grasonville serves a low-income population. In fact, on a statewide basis, 45 percent of Maryland elementary students “qualify for meal subsidies;” Grasonville’s student population is a bit more affluent than that of the state as a whole. Beyond that, the school has many fewer minority kids than the state as a whole—about 19 percent, as compared to roughly 45 percent statewide. For all data, start clicking here.) In short, Anderson makes no attempt to examine the central claim of his piece—the apparent claim that Grasonville’s reading scores are higher than one might expect, due to its reading program. For ourselves, we’ll only say this—after looking at Grasonville’s reading scores, we don’t see a sharply unusual degree of success. (This is notsurprisingly strong. meant as a criticism.) Grasonville’s black kids seem to do no better than the state’s black kids as a whole, for example—although we’re dealing with small numbers. But Anderson makes no attempt to evaluate the claim at the heart of his piece, even as he seems to report that Success for All has helped this school achieve “perennially strong reading test scores”—reading scores, one would assume, which are
Why do our biggest newspapers function in such puzzling ways? We can’t answer that question. But they have functioned this way for a very long way, as they cover a wide array of important subjects. Our education reporting has always been weak; our political reporting has long been dismal. Moving forward, this places a very large burden on the nation’s progressives and liberals.
Moving forward, it’s largely on us.
Our nation’s discourse is a wreck—a parody of sound intellectual function. Our big news organs routinely produce groaning work on the nation’s most important political topics. Meanwhile, one other major sector works to undermine the discourse. As our biggest news organs flounder, major conservative organs pump disinformation into the system about all major issues.
How can a modern society hope to function in these unfortunate circumstances? In this new year, we will be focusing on the burden which falls to progressives in this unfortunate cultural moment. How can progressives build an accurate, truthful discourse which is convincing and helpful to average citizens? Simple story: If we want a less ludicrous national discourse, it all comes down to us.
We’ve complained about the press corps for years. In the new year, we’ll focus on a newer question:
How should we liberals proceed? Sadly enough, it all comes down to us.
Tomorrow—part 3: Observing a few of our instincts
