Ira Shor, a professor at the City University of New York, left a comment recently, wondering if “the great Mercedes Schneider” would take a look at the AFT survey showing that 75% of AFT members support the Common Core. As it happens, Dr. Schneider saw the comment and did exactly that. Dr. Schneider is a high school English teacher who holds a Ph.D. in statistics and research methods.
Here is her analysis of the AFT survey.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dr. Schneider’s link to the Schools Matter blog in her piece is also a very good read.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2013/04/the-new-republic-provides-wedding.html
Many thanks, Diane, for posting the link, and Mercedes, for another brilliant reading of data. I was suspicious of the 75% teacher agreement with CCSS the moment I read it. Thanks for the education.
Ira, I am happy to oblige. Thank you for suggesting the investigation.
I am tired of being told what I want, what I need, and what I think.
Now AFT can be clear on what I think about their so-called survey.
KrazyMathLady: by using your powers for good, you have reminded me once again that there are numbers/stats people who still conduct themselves with honor and integrity.
🙂
The more I read about how numbers and stats are used in educational research—and too often in hype and spin and obfuscation—the more astounded I am that the edubullies and their allies think that nobody is catching on. There is a kind of high-powered mix of ignorance and arrogance at work. They leave the arcane details of mathematical intimidation to their accountabully underlings and then proceed merrily on their way, assuming that math teachers like you and Gary Rubinstein [just to name two] are just as clueless as they are.
That’s called projection. They think you are as uninformed and uneducated and unethical as they are. And they can’t contain their astonishment at you calling them out for making obvious boneheaded mistakes.
The late Gerald Bracey in his last book, EDUCATION HELL (2009), mentions how high-stakes standardized testing can’t meaningfully measure crucially important characteristics like curiosity and imagination and compassion and resilience.
Then he adds one more: Daring.
Thank you again for daring to continue one of the best traditions in our country: that of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.”
Krazy props.
🙂
Happy to expose the spring-loaded device producing the illusion, KrazyTA.
Affectionately.
KrazyMathLady
“This AFT study is lousy research.
Weingarten could have just dropped the insulting, shoddy “research,” cut to the chase, and said, “Bill and I have already decided to endorse CCSS.” ”
Best ending to any blog post yet!!!! Randi spins the numbers (and truth) to suit herself.
Randi Weingarten conducting lousy research? Just to further her own personal agenda and keep her and her high end execs in business rather than acting confrontationally and oppositionally to the reform movement?
Randi doing this to her own constituents? To teachers across the United States?
Really?
Is this our Saint Randi?
Poor Randi. She really thinks she can just go on like this forever, much like Stonehenge or Days of Our Lives.
Little might she know . . . . littler does she think.
I can only speak for my school with about 90 teachers. I’d guess unscientifically that 85% have a problem. The other 15% are untenured and have no problem whatsoever.
Diane- I was a bit surprised to see this linked to on your blog. I’m sure you know that Hart research is a very reputable polling firm used by many progressive clients and they rely on the same scientific methods as every other reputable pollster. 800 is a significant sample size and it was a random sample of AFT’s teachers. Its also troubling that the blog you link to uses the anti-union Union Facts to make conclusions about AFT.
Marcus,
Mercedes has written many superb posts critical of privatization and critical of anti-teacher policies in Louisiana and elsewhere. She is a high school teacher with a doctorate in statistics. As I explained in the introduction to her post, she wrote it in response to a comment on the blog. I know that the Center on Union Facts is a scurrilous, anti-union website. If there was any error in Mercedes’ post or if her sources were wrong, please write a post and I will run it.
I used the membership counts posted on Union Facts. If these membership counts are in error, provide the link with accurate counts, and I will rework my numbers.
You have posted on my blog that “800 is reputable.” Any study that fails to disclose demographics and detailed research procedure is a questionable study, and it doesn’t matter who conducted the work. You should have provided actual demographics for this study. You can still do so. But to simply keep saying that your firm has adhered to scientific methods without providing details to prove as much is empty rhetoric.
If AFT is primarily centered in New York, then a random sample would also be heavily centered in new York. If AFT is present in only 31 states, then a random sample is only representative at best of 31 states.
These are serious limitations to that “75% of teachers supporting CCSS.”
Quality research always includes discussion of study limitations as a caution against undue interpretation of study outcomes.
Read my posting above in response to a comment by M. Schneider. Then read what is just above.
For readers who are relatively new to this blog, I want to make special note of two comments included in M. Schneider’s last two above responses: a), “Quality research always includes discussion of study limitations as a caution against undue interpretation of study outcomes” and b), “Any study that fails to disclose demographics and detailed research procedure is a questionable study, and it doesn’t matter who conducted the work.”
A lot is at stake in the ed debates, including careers, reputations and livelihoods. These are no small matters. But over the last five years—as I have followed the ed debates online and in hard copy—I have noticed that these commonplaces of professional conduct and principled citizenship on the part of numbers/stats people are adhered to much more by the critics of the education establishment than by those working for the leading charterites/privatizers and their organizations.
I have read comments similar to M. Schneider’s in postings and works by Gary Rubinstein and Bruce Baker and Daniel Koretz and [the late] Gerald Bracey and GF Brandenburg, among others, critics [to varying degrees and intensity] of the drive to eliminate public schools and deprofessionalize teaching. The above standards are a normal part of being an ethical numbers/stats person; the aforementioned hold themselves to these standards even when I think they are tempted to be more critical. However, they explicitly restrain themselves because [over and over again] they point out that the data as presented doesn’t allow them to overstep the bounds of ethical scholarship and analysis. Usually the best the [too often, handsomely rewarded] hired guns of the education status quo seem to offer are teensy weensy little notes buried in [sometimes massive and intentionally jargon-filled unreadable] reports that gently suggest that the results shouldn’t be used in individual personnel decisions, to determine the effectiveness of teachers, the quality of schools and school districts, etc. But the reports themselves trumpet results and conclusions that their own experts don’t really support IF you read the fine print.
Upright scholarship and citizenship don’t come in fine print. They are writ large, so everyone can understand what is really at stake.
Thanks again to all the numbers/stats folks who use their powers for good by speaking up and breaking through the fog of ignorance laid down by some of their peers who hope that no one has read Mark Twain: “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.”
🙂
when are we going to have the conversation on Pearson?