John Merrow reviews the miraculous but not true story of the high school in Washington, D.C., that increased its graduation rate from 57% to 100% in one year. And every one of these graduates were accepted into college! A touching story. But a false story. Made even worse by the fact that it was reported by NPR, which is a usually reliable and trustworthy source for news.
Merrow notes that in the original report, 26 of the graduating class of nearly 200 students had not yet earned enough credits to graduate. How, then, could the school have a graduation rate of 100% and a college acceptance rate of 100%?
A little digging, he said, would have revealed the fact that a local D.C. community college accepts all students who have a high school diploma, a GED, or the equivalent, so gaining college acceptance is not a high bar to cross.
He then recounts how NPR walked the story back and did some investigation, finding the original story to be wrong. There was no 100% graduation rate, and many students earned credits with “credit recovery,” sitting in front of a computer for a week to get a semester’s credits. How phony is that!
He writes:
Further evidence that the 100% college acceptance story is bogus comes from academic results. Only 9% of seniors were able to pass the city’s English test, and not a single student passed the math test. The average SAT score for Ballou test-takers was 782 out of a possible 1600. Moreover, teachers told NPR that some administrators actually filled out the college applications for those students who had no interest in attending college!
This disgraceful approach to schooling does widespread damage beyond what is obviously done to kids who receive phony diplomas but no real education. One teacher told NPR, “This is [the] biggest way to keep a community down. To graduate students who aren’t qualified, send them off to college unprepared, so they return to the community to continue the cycle.”
I am not writing this to criticize NPR for missing the story** the first time around. I did that myself more than once in my 41-year career, and I was late in recognizing the flaws in Michelle Rhee’s ‘test scores are everything’ approach in Washington. Her wrong-headed strategy is, arguably, responsible for the mind-set that exists at Ballou today.
Here’s what matters: the Ballou fiasco is the bitter fruit of the ‘School Reform’ movement that continues to dominate educational practice in most school districts today. These (faux) reformers continue to support policies and practices that basically reduce children to a single number, their scores on standardized, machine-scored tests. This approach has led to a diminished curriculum, drill-and-kill schooling, buckets of money leaving the schools and going instead to testing companies and outside consultants, the growth of charter schools (many run by profiteers), and a drumbeat of criticism from ideologues who seem determined to break apart and ruin public education, rather than attempt to reinvent it.
(This approach also once again proves the truth of Campbell’s Law, the more importance given to a single measure, the greater the probability that it will be corrupted. When test scores rule education, some people cheat. And when high school graduation rates rule, people also find ways to cheat.
In case you were not sure, Merrow makes clear that he was hoodwinked by Michelle Rhee, and he calls out the false premises and false promises of the “School Reform” movement, which has done so much to corrupt education by setting targets that can’t be reached without cheating.
“NPR, which is a usually reliable and trustworthy source for news”
When “Too Good to Be True” Is Not True
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Yes, I was surprised go read that, especially in regard to Gates Foundation Radio coverage of education.
In my experience, NPR has been and continues to be little more than a megaphone and stenography service for so-called reform.
But by not reporting on the FBI raids on the Gulen charters, npr is not fully reporting the news. Many stories were broadcast about Fetullah Gulen and the attempts ofErdogan to extradite him, with no mention of the huge number of Gulen charters.
Spare me. The media can not and does not report everything that happens. Someone, usually an editor or a team of editors, decide what to report in the limited time available each day.
With all the attention on Fethullah Gulen in national news, not one national show mentioned that he runs one of the nation’s largest charter chains.
How far back does the corruption in public education begin? — Did it start with Reagan, Bill Bennett, Jeb Bush, W. Bush (“Is our children learning?”), Obama with Arne Duncan, and now we have the “fabulous” Betsy DeVos!! Remember that old slogan — “gag me with a spoon?”: Well, gag me with a spoon, a large one at that!
But all their mistakes and errors get foisted back on the schools and teachers. Through the lens of an Ed Reformer (I like the addition of “faux”), this is an example of a bad public school led by bad educators allowing uneducated students (because of the bad teaching) to get through despite not doing anything to earn it. They consistently construct heads they win, tails you lose situations.
The deformers’ are NOT held accountable for their BAD policies.
And they YELL, “Accountability.” The deformers have NO accountability whatsoever.
And those deformers blame public school teachers for their BAD and utterly reprehensible deforms, lies, and harm to students and teachers in public schools.
We all kow the REAL reason for this … $$$$$$ and power.
What is wrong with this picture? EVERYTHING.
Absolutely. None.
Will,
Thanks for your post. I had a good laugh re: “…gag me with a spoon? Well, gag me with a spoon; a large one at that.
AGREE!!!!
The list of distinguished people hoodwinked by Rhee is long. The list of people hoodwinked by Bush is long. Everyone makes mistakes. Do like Diane and John Merrow and change, Democrats and moderate Republicans.
Another word for change for the better, away from annual testing, is reform. Reform education.
In some states, you do not need a HS diploma or GED to attend a CC. My home state of California allowed HS students to attend CC before they graduated HS and, basically anyone else who was 18 years old could attend. It is about opportunity, not readiness. I was and continue to be critical of how such students are treated. Too often they are just thrown into the mix to “sink or swim.” The CCs which really care offer supports and ongoing encouragement to these students who effectively are starting with one hand tied behind their backs.
On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” John Merrow reviews the miraculous but not true > story of the high school in Washington, D.C., that increased its graduation > rate from 57% to 100% in one year. And every one of these graduates were > accepted into college! A touching story. But a false s” >
Glad you posted about this, Diane.
For more on what went wrong with NPR’s coverage — and the station’s unfortunate resistance to correcting the original story, read the NPR public editor’s review from yesterday:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2017/12/08/569195348/school-investigation-teaches-lesson-in-skepticism
And if you or any of your readers are interested in tracking the ins and outs of media coverage of education issues, my weekly newsletter might help eepurl.com/cFwNOb
Thanks!
those “hoodwinked” by Rhee owe many teachers, parents and kids not only an apology but REPARATIONS
The mainstream media has been having a rough time of it lately. Friday was particularly embarrassing for CNN, MSNBC and CBS: https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/?comments=1#comments (Since I know many of you have an irrational hatred of Greenwald, here is a shortened version of the same thing from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/business/media/cnn-correction-donald-trump-jr.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 – but I really recommend Greenwald’s version because he clearly lays out the implications much better). The mainstream media is all owned by a handful of very large corporate giants. It is in their interest to lead us in certain directions, which they do with startling regularity and a startling lack of transparency and accountability. Usually that’s called propaganda.
dienne77, anyone who dares to use the word propaganda about news media like CNN and the NY Times is simply repeating the right wing talking points and frankly, lying. If you got that word from Greenwald, then I will never trust a word he says again.
Propaganda does NOT make corrections. Propaganda is NOT when someone makes an error in fact and later corrects the error.
Propaganda is the constant lies when the person telling it is absolutely aware that they are lying.
If you are holding the media to a standard in which any mistakes they make and later correct — within the same day! — is “propaganda” no different than what we see on real propaganda channels, then you are a fine example of how the fascists will win.
Good point, NYC PSP. Propagandists never admit their lies. Genuine news outlets say, we made a mistake.
Like you ever did trust Greenwald.
Anyway, read the linked article (with an open mind if that’s possible). When the same errors are made repeatedly in the same direction over and over and over, and when they refuse to admit how such a blatant error could have been made by two different sources (and refuse to out said sources), and when far less is made of the correction than of the original hyping of the erroneous article, I fail to see how that’s not propaganda.
The linked article was in the propaganda organ NY Times so according to you I shouldn’t trust anything in it.
You still haven’t noted the difference between propaganda and making mistakes and correcting them.
I know I will wait forever for you to acknowledge that there is a difference. After all, you have yet to acknowledge you were wrong when you said Hillary Clinton was no difference than Trump.
I really see no point in arguing with hypocrites who point to articles in the very media that they claim are propaganda not to be trusted to prove their point.
I would never smear the entire Guardian newspaper as a propaganda tool even though Glenn Greenwald has made the same kind of errors reporters at the NY Times have made. Nor would I even call Greenwald a tool of propaganda. Like many reporters, Greenwald gets too close to sources and loses perspective. Assange is not a nice guy. He is not to be trusted. That doesn’t mean that some things he says are not accurate, but it does mean that one doesn’t attack those who are skeptical of his agenda.
And, by the way, until you can come up with a good reason why the hacks ONLY benefitted the Republicans, I will continue to believe that Russia wanted Trump to win. Maybe you should ask yourself why. Although if you are still spouting your nonsense about how he isn’t so bad and no different than the majority of people in the Democratic Party, then don’t bother.
“NPR, which is a usually reliable and trustworthy source for news”
But a few slips, or even one, by NPR will bring out the maggots and termites in droves to attack that media outlet as unreliable and not to be trusted. This is a continuing, repeated tactic in the far, Alt-Rights PSYOPs war to destroy the traditional media.
Trump’s often repeated “Fake News” is part of repeating those endless lies to build a wall of fake, manufactured facts between the people and the traditional media that for all its faults is more accurate than the misleading, conspiracy theory generating, Alt-Right media machine and its alternative facts [LIES!].
These paid minions (or easy to fool mockingbirds) that worship at the altar of avarice are everywhere [we even see them leaving comments here], and they almost always use invisible anonymous names to attack identifiable targets. They are stealth drones, these far-right GOP Trumpists and/or Putin thugs.
absolutely correct.
Look at how dienne77 has just repeated Trump’s own talking points above.
It’s all just “propaganda” at NPR and the NY Times. No different than Fox News and no different than Breitbart. There’s no different between getting something wrong and correcting it and knowingly printing lies in order to push a specific agenda.
We saw this in the run-up to the election, with so-called progressives and also fake bots posing as those same so-called progressives who were repeating word for word exactly the “meme” that Trump himself was pushing about Hillary.
Remember, it’s the very same people who said Trump was no worse than Hillary Clinton who are now saying that the NY Times and NPR are no different than right wing propaganda organs.
During Watergate, the Washington Post actually got some things wrong. There were points in the Nixon-McGovern campaign where they seemed to be more pro-Nixon than McGovern.
If we had the left wingers helping the fascists of 1973, they’d be working tirelessly to convince the American public not to trust anything they read in the Washington Post because it was fake news and propaganda.
And that is how fascism begins. With some of the left wing as the willing fools of the far right.
When MSM outlets make such blatant errors over and over again and still protect their sources, that itself plays into Trump’s talking points. That you fail to see that says what a stooge you are for the Democrats and their corporate controlled media.
Incidentally, while CNN did (under great pressure) quietly correct their story, many of the other pundits and media outlets who ran with CNN’s story have still not corrected their reporting. That’s exactly the point Greenwald is raising. The erroneous information gets widely and eagerly disseminated, but yet a mere fraction of the attention is paid when the story ends up being a giant nothingburger, as happened on Friday. I’d bet the vast majority of the country still thinks that Wikileaks sent Trump and Trump Jr and advance email regarding the leaks on September 4 rather than September 14.
dienne77,
The right wing has a concerted effort to try to get the media to fall for stories they plant in order to then prove that it is false.
That is what happened when the right wing hired a woman to say she was raped by Judge Moore. The plan was to get the media to write the story so they could then “reveal” that they INTENTIONALLY print lies. When it is exactly the opposite.
Do you approve of people who want to protect a rapist hiring women to claim to be raped in the hopes that they can find at least one gullible news source to believe them? And then “reveal” that because this proves that those news sources are all “propaganda”, it means all the women telling their stories about being raped are lying just like their plant was?
If that is your point of view, what you are really saying that unless the media is perfect (which is impossible), then we should be able to dismiss everything they print as propaganda.
That’s what fascists teach. And simple-minded people agree.
For what it is worth, you and I both know that Glenn Greenwald has made mistakes in his reporting, too. He has acknowledged them. I don’t call him a purveyor of propaganda although I do think he is often wrong and will point out when he is. If I were you, I wouldn’t just point out that Greenwald was wrong. I would say that he should never be trusted because he is owned by Russian oligarchs who underwrite him and steer money to him. True? Who cares! I’m playing your game and I’m saying that Greenwald’s mistaken reporting one time proves how evil he is.
Of course that is nasty but that is what making character attacks is — nasty. Saying someone who makes an error is a corrupt tool intentionally purveying propaganda for money is a nasty thing to say about Greenwald just because he made a mistake.
And self-righteously defending those attacks on Greenwald as necessary and true because he is evil and his “lie” (mistake) proved it is nasty too.
I won’t do that as much I’d love to hoist you by your own petard. Glenn Greenwald makes mistakes like ALL people make mistakes. The measure of a person is not whether they make mistakes but whether they acknowledge them. Greenwald does. So does most of the mainstream media. Propaganda does not.