What’s happpening with G.I.’s Surveygate?

by David Safier

I just saw an op ed by friend of the blog Matthew Ladner in White Mountain Central Online. You know the drill by now. Arizona students have terrible test scores. Florida students have wonderful test scores. So here's how we can be more like Florida. And so on.

Which reminded me. I wonder how Ladner's investigation is coming along, the one about the possibly bogus survey he used to show how little Arizona students know about Civics.

To recap: Goldwater Institute contracted with Strategic Vision LLC to conduct a survey of public and private high school students in Arizona. Uber-statistician Nate Silver believes he has credible evidence that Strategic Vision makes up its results instead of going through the costly and time consuming process of actually calling people — and he includes the survey the company did for G.I. Many other statisticians chimed in to agree. The NY Times was so impressed, it chimed in too, listing Silver's analysis in its Sunday magazine's 9th Annual Year in Ideas.

G.I. should be all over this if it cares about its credibility. Back in November, Ladner promised he'd find out whether the survey was legit or bogus. Since he said that, all I've heard is the sound of crickets.

If I were an enterprising journalist at an Arizona newspaper, especially at a paper that gave space to the Civics report, I might consider writing an article with the head, "Goldwater Institute's Civics study possibly based on fraudulent data." It's a hell of a story. I covered it pretty thoroughly in this post, complete with links to a number of relevant articles and blog posts. The story practically writes itself.

So, Matthew, tell us, have you make any progress?