by David Safier
If you read the Star's whole print-only article on Ethnic Studies achievement and graduation rates,beginning to end, you come away with the idea that a new TUSD study agrees that students in the program benefit academically when compared with similar students who aren't in Ethnic Studies. The only question is the size of the benefit.
But if you start from the headline and read through the first part of the story — which is all most readers do — you would think the TUSD analysis totally debunked the earlier conclusions about the value of Ethnic Studies to its students.
The headline is,
"Ethnic studies claim in question."
The first few paragraphs say students in Ethnic Studies do no better on AIMS and graduate at the same rate as other students, leaving the impression that the program has no academic value. Left out of that statement is one of the most elementary parts of any decent statistical comparison: comparing similar groups. If Ethnic Studies students perform as well as the "average" TUSD student, and yet most of them are a part of a minority group and at an economic level that generally underperforms compared to others, that is cause for celebration, not criticism. "We erased the racial and economic gap!" That is spectacular news, which, so far as I know, no other program in Arizona can claim.
Later in the article, Supe John Pedicone said statistician David Scott's analysis showed the value of the program. And Scott said, when he used the same methodology used on the earlier study, he arrived at similar results.
I'm putting the blame for this misrepresentation of information squarely on the shoulders of Alexis Huicochea, who wrote the story. If she rearranged the article to put the substantive agreements first and the differences second, it would have been an accurate story. Adding drama at the expense of accuracy is simply bad reporting.
NOTE: I haven't looked over the entire study put together by the Ethnic Studies supporters, but when I first heard the results, my gut reaction was, the stats were too glowing for me to accept on face value. The numbers aren't just good. They border on the miraculous. So I wouldn't be surprised to learn the data was massaged to arrive at the best possible results. But I have no problem accepting the idea, which David Scott's analysis seems to confirm, that Ethnic Studies helps students both academically and personally. My sense is, this program should be protected and possibly expanded. TUSD should fight against the extremists who want to gut it.