by David Safier
Goldwater's Matthew Ladner is up in Phoenix today shepherding around Jeb Bush, who is in town (brought here by G.I.) to sing the praises of the "Florida educational [not really such a] miracle" to members of the House and Senate education committees. So I doubt if I can rain on his parade.
But I want to point out that Ladner had to agree with the substance of my argument that the statistical models he used on two recent "studies" were so woefully inadequate, the results were essentially worthless. OK, he didn't go that far. But pretty close.
Background: I wrote a long-winded post, Fool's Gold: Private schools better, if you use shaky data to arrive at questionable conclusions, in which I explained why Ladner's phone survey — whose purpose was to prove private school students are better, more tolerant citizens and like their schools more than public school students — was comparing two unequal populations and so his conclusions weren't based on anything close to an acceptable sample. Ladner agreed to answer my criticism.
If I recall your point about the surveys correctly, you essentially argued that uncontrolled differences in the population will have influenced the results. This is of course true.
"This is of course true." Lovely words. Then he continues by saying why it's true.
This was a survey of high school students. I know that I didn't have a clue about my family income when I was in high school, so I wouldn't trust the results of such an item if it were asked (and it would result in a large number of 'I don't knows' that would minimize the effectiveness of the item as a control in any case).
So, if I understand Ladner correctly, it's OK to create a study with all kinds of charts and graphs containing specific percentages of polling responses even if the two groups you're comparing aren't comparable because, Hey, what do you expect? There's no way I can get the relevant information!
See, when you realize you can't create two equivalent groups, you say, "Well, so much for any pretense of a scientific study. I guess I should present this as approximate, anecdotal information." At least that's what you say if your purpose is to be honest with your audience. If, on the other hand, your purpose is to disseminate propaganda and create graphical and statistical eye candy journalists won't be able to resist — attempting to reproduce the success of his earlier Civics Test, based on equally questionable data — then you put out whatever you can get away with.
PERSONAL NOTE: What really upsets me is, I'm reasonably sure Ladner knows everything I'm saying is true to a good extent. I'm also reasonably sure (though I've never met him) he's an intelligent and personable guy who would never knowingly cheat someone and might loan a casual acquaintance 10 bucks without worrying about getting it back. Yet, in the service of G.I., he becomes totally ends-justify-the-means, attempting to con people into believing his points are stronger than they are. And if you're aware you're doing that, the term I would use for what you're doing is "lying."
Conservatives have good, defensible points. They're based on a philosophy I disagree with, but that doesn't mean I discount the honest reasoning behind them. Bill Buckley was an intellectual who argued from that perspective, honestly and persuasively. Buckley's style of honest conservative argument may have died with him. What we have left are the comic stylings of people like Bill Kristol, who will say anything, no matter how ridiculous, to defend their talking points. I'm afraid Kristol and G.I. are what's left of the intelligent, educated conservative community — the dregs, if you will.
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Matthew.
At first I thought the Francis comment was comparing me to Francis the Talking Mule. Really dates me, doesn’t it? Then I found you were comparing me to a sociopath in Stripes. Phew, that’s a relief!
As for what your survey was trying to prove, you’re being disingenuous, to say the least. Here’s an analogy that’s a bit overstated, but the point is apt. Someone is holding a poster showing Obama with a Hitler mustache. When called on it, he says, “I was only saying Obama is in favor of big government.” No you weren’t guy. You wanted to say Obama is like Hitler.
If you had a small potatoes intent, you would have soft pedaled your results, which, as you admit by your hedging, is what they deserve. A host of candy-striped graphs with exact percentage figures attached is going for a bigger conclusion and a bigger audience than your comment implies. You wanted to say, private schools are better than public schools in the area of tolerance, and your audience was reporters who would read your intro, skip down the studies to the graphs and report the results.
And where in the world did you find this straw man? I honestly have never heard anyone say that private schools are breeding grounds for intolerance. The worst I’ve heard is that a private school with a homogeneous population doesn’t give its students contact with a wide range of the population, which means those students have a limited understanding about much of the world. But you can say the same thing about Foothills High.
I have a question. You’ve released three studies recently about high school students — the one about civics knowledge and the two you released together. Are these based on three different surveys conducted with different random groups of students? Do any of them depend on results from a single survey? I noticed the two most recent used the identical number of students, which made me wonder if the questions that formed the basis of the studies were asked on the same survey of the same students.
Lighten up Francis, the stalking comment was just a joke.
On the survey, if what I was trying to do is to prove that private school attendance causes higher levels of tolerance, I would be obligated to control for this that and the other. It would be better still to perform a random assignment study with a control and an experimental group. Even if I had such results, they would have to be placed in the context of a meta-analysis and weighed against the results of other such studies.
Fortunately, that was not what I was trying to do. I was simply testing whether private schools serve as intolerance boot camps. They don’t here in Arizona. Just in case you are curious, someone has already performed the meta-analysis of control group studies:
http://educationnext.org/civics-exam/
Predictably, opponents of private choice have routinely been making claims which are exactly contrary to the best available evidence.
Matthew.
I would reply, but yours is the most substance free comment on record.
Except for your statement about my tracking your movements in Phoenix. You were part of a planned event with a major political figure who has one of the most well known names in American politics: Jeb Bush. And he was brought here by Goldwater. And you and he are connected through Florida education. All of those are facts of interest in relation to Arizona education and politics. No stalking involved.
David-
It is good to see that you still have such an active fantasy life. If you will read the entirety of my comments, you will see that what you selected as your best supported case was nothing more than a misapplied standard of evidence.
If you want to unlock the secrets of quantum physics, you will need an atom smasher. If you want to know whether it is raining outside, walking out into the front yard will suffice. Testing the absurd and evidence free assertions of your fellow travellers fell into the latter category in this case. You picked this as your best supported argument, and it falls flat. I do however agree that it was the strongest of your weak arguments, so we’ll always have that in common.
As for tracking my movements around Phoenix, it seems a little creepy. Ever thought about taking up a hobby?
I’d say that if you want Buckley style honest conservatism, you should look to either of Robert Robb or Joe Cobb up in Phoenix (rhyming purely unintentional), but–and one would guess differently from his resume–I don’t think Cobb has ever been a conservative in his life, and I’m not convinced Robb is a conservative, either.
The late Milton Friedman also comes to mind, but again, never really a conservative.