No comments from Goldwater about Civics survey

by David Safier

This is just me being curious. I rarely write about the Goldwater Institute, and especially about Matthew Ladner's work, without getting a fairly prompt response in the Comments. Recently I've been tag-teaming with others all over the country to question the accuracy of Ladner's Civics study, as well as 2 other studies he put together comparing public and private schools. They were all based on the same survey by the same company, Strategic Vision LLC, and evidence points to the conclusion that the results were faked.

G.I. may have been the victim here, but the results went out as emails and press releases sent all over the country, so if they're a sham, the rest of us are victims of bad information as well.

No pressure here. I'd just like to know if Ladner is pursuing the question about the authenticity of the survey with due diligence. So much internal evidence in the survey looks bad, he should be holding the company's feet to the fire. In a court of law, you're innocent until proven guilty, but when you're under contract to do a job, you're guilty unless you can prove you've done the job correctly.

Can Stragegic Vision give G.I. a list of phone numbers called to find out if anyone there took the survey? There must be a way for G.I., who paid good money for the survey, to find out if it was taken.