How misleading was Obama's speech on US education? Just read this new WAPO analysis

[Louis-Emmanuel]

Today, the Washington Post does a fine job fact-checking some of Obama's claims during his recent education-related speech.

Among the noteworthy points in this piece, written by Valerie Strauss:

-8th graders have not "fallen to 9th place in the world on math: Strauss: "In the 2007 TIMSS, the most recent, U.S. eighth-graders did place ninth in math out of almost 50 countries. But that was actually an improvement over the previous TIMSS, in 2003, when the United States placed 15th."

-Obama spoke of the need for more hours in the classroom. But how important are they?

Obama said: "Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy."

Strauss says:

"The bottom line: Research on time and length of school day or year reveals that time alone will not increase student achievement or raise standardized test scores -- and that increasing class time is not a necessary change to accomplish those things.

Besides, if public education is so connected to the state of a nation's economy, the long hours South Korean kids spend in school hasn't protected Asia's fourth-largest economy from a recession in this economic global downturn."

-Obama praised Massachussets for its high standards, noting that it ranks 1st in the world in science. But the state may owe its success to another factor:

Strauss: "To be sure, the United States has a higher proportion of students living in poverty than other developed countries. But test data indicate that U.S. students in schools that serve relatively few low-income families often outscore the rest of the world. Massachusetts doesn't have a monopoly on high achievers."

-Obama touted the superiority of charter schools. But here's a big caveat:

Strauss: "Russ Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, notes that some types of charter schools might be succeeding because they are relatively small in number and special. It is not at all clear, he said, that charter schools would be successful if they had a larger share of the educational market, because they might not be able to attract dynamic, entrepreneurial school leaders in sufficient numbers."

There is more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031502068_pf.html

I have little doubt that President Obama either needs a better fact-checker for his education speeches, or was trying to exaggerate the bad state of our schools in order to push his merit pay/charter school plans

[FrenchieCat]

1. the WAPO critical of President Barack Obama?

"Surprise, suprise, surprise!"

[babylonsister]

2. WaPo shills for the r/w, but you're getting adept at finding

the negative articles. :eyes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x433426

[FrenchieCat]

4. Consider the OP's chosen headline

and the newness of membership makes one want to go Mmmmmmmm!
Possibly not enough to do over at that other site, I guess! :shrug:

[Louis-Emmanuel]

10. Would you like to know the headline chosen by the Huffington Post?

"On Education, Obama Blows It"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/on-education-obama-blows_b_169715.html

[Louis-Emmanuel]

9. The Washington Post printed an article today saying the Red Cross found torture in black sites

"WAPO" is too broad of a term. Let's not equate Charles Krauthammer from WAPO with Valerie Strauss from the samew newspaper.

[villager]

3. And I'm sure they were this consistently critical of Bush's "No Child Left Behind"

...test test test! policies...

[rfranklin]

5. Could any of these facts cited in the article be correct?

Or do we have to blindly accept everything that President Obama puts forth without critical evaluation? Wouldn't that be a bit like the blind adulation of the Bush lovers?

[Louis-Emmanuel]

7. Well, more independent and progressive sites have fact-checked the speech

Politi-fact.com rated the 8th grade math allegation false, as our nation has climbed, not fallen to 9th place.

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/13/barack-obama/8th-graders-are-9th-showing-improvement-not-fallin/

Then there is that Huffington Post piece, written by the same guy quoted by WAPO at one point:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/on-education-obama-blows_b_169715.html

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

6. Fact checking the fact checker.

- We were ranked 11th in 8th grade science in 2007 and 9th in 2003, representing a 7 point scoring drop - Obama got it wrong, but so did Strauss. (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/)

- Extended learning time and afterschool programs are immensely helpful in raising student achievement for low-income families. The reason it's not statistically significant for other families is because they typically either spend time themselves with their children or can finance afterschool learning of their own. (For some kind of citation: http://www.newdayforlearning.org/docs/HIllPPReport.pdf)

- The third one is not exactly incorrect - it's just that more information is needed.

Nice try though.

[masuki bance]

8. Politic0 and the Wapo are out for scalps

[Louis-Emmanuel]

11. Not Politico. It's Politifact

Best newspaper website in 2007. The site has defended Obama against numerous smears. Look it up. The site is neutral and fact-check whoever errs.

[masuki bance]

12. Screw politifact, I said politic0 and wapo.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

13. What does Politico have to do with the speech?

I'm confused.

[babylonsister]

15. politico is also a r/w 'cesspool'...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/30/allen/

[Louis-Emmanuel]

20. Yeah but who is defending Politico?

Here is what happened.

The fellow member misread "Politifact" and thought that I had said "Politico," because the words are somewhat similar. He then quickly jumped to talk about Politico, but upon being caught of the confusion of the words, he refused to back down because he wouldn't admit his mistake.

[Jakes Progress]

39. What difference does it make what you said

You are the target of the Purity Police. Your words. Their words. Made up words. All fodder for the inquisition.

"Nobody expects the inquisition."

[msongs]

16. Louis-Emmanuel, you must not criticize the "new democrat" leader or the true believers will get you

[ClarkUSA]

22. Quoting unnamed Politico "sources" & still refighting the primary wars, msongs? Tsk, tsk.

I notice that your bitterness hasn't stopped you from trying to make a buck off those "true believers" you disdain so much, though.
If they only knew...

[Louis-Emmanuel]

33. who quoted Politico sources?

More confusion.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

35. Thanks for the tip nt

[bertman]

14. Nothing our beloved leader says could ever possibly be incorrect. Come on guys,

he's the President, a political leader, not the Son of God.

[masuki bance]

19. Oh, the Messiah argument. Original.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

23. I don't like the "Valerie Strauss is wrong because she works for WAPO...argument

Not based on sound logic.

[Teaser]

27. who cares whether you like an argument or not?

.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

30. do you agree with me though? is that kind of logic valid?

The one about concluding that a writer is wrong because his employer is Washington Post?

[Solomon]

17. Is 9th place acceptable because they were 15th the year before?

You guys kill me with some of this stuff. Were they 9th place this year or not?

[Louis-Emmanuel]

18. Nobody is arguing it's acceptable

But that in our current system, a positive trend has occured, yet the President said we are in a downwards trend. In decline. Deteriorating. Everything that is implied by the word "fallen."

It's easier to pass new measures when the house is seen as falling down.

[jobycom]

21. The WP article you link does not claim Obama's facts are wrong, with one exception.

The overall tone of the article is to expand on and explain what Obama said, without much commentary on Obama's accuracy. It's a good article, and it doesn't indicate that Obama needs a fact-checker or that he's trying to mislead people on our schools.

IF Obama based his claim about us falling to 9th solely on the TIMSS report, he was wrong. TIMSS started in 95, and tests students on math every four years. Since it began, the scores have gotten better with every test--no surprise, since the only purpose of schools these days is to train students to take these tests.

The rest is not a refutation of anything Obama says, just an expansion on his points, and some counterpoint. Decent article, really--more of a discussion, less of a hatchet job. Some schools do better with expanded hours, others don't. Some think Charter Schools could help, others don't--though note that nothing the author says refutes anything Obama said on either case.

Anyway, doesn't prove Obama needs a fact-checker or that he is exagerating, only proves that we live in a nation where discussion and analyzes thrives, once we get the lying Republicans out of office.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

24. That's why I said "misleading"

And his claim that grades have fallen is flat-out wrong, by the way.

[ClarkUSA]

25. Splitting hairs with yet another anti-Obama education speech OP? Gee, welcome to DU. Really.

:eyes:

[jobycom]

31. Which is in itself misleading, since she doesn't claim that.

Nor demonstrate it. Obama had a point to make, and chose facts to back up his point. His facts were accurate, but there are other facts to support counter arguments (there always are), which is what the writer pointed out, even though she verified much of what he said, too. Doesn't make anything Obama said "misleading," it only means Obama was making the case for his proposal.

And Obama's claim about math scores was at most half-wrong, if that. We are ranked 9th according to the TIMSS test--a test Obama doesn't mention, so I'll assume the writer is correct that he was referring to it. Our test scores have fallen over the last few decades, from when we were one of the top three or four nations. (Here's one stdy talking about falling scores in 06: http://international-education.suite101.com/article.cfm/us_students_left_behind ).

Obama didn't say "We have fallen to 9th in the TIMSS test," which would have been wrong. BTW, TIMSS has only been taken four times--95, 99, 03, 07. It has shown improvement, but it has existed for such a short time, and the nations included have changed so much, that it's hard to use it as an absolute yardstick.

So, the article doesn't claim Obama's speech was misleading, and he wasn't "flat-out wrong" on his claim of falling grades--one has to stretch his comments and make a few assumptions to make it wrong.

And for the record, I don't agree with everything Obama said in that speech, so I'm not advocating anything but accuracy here.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

42. Obama is using the TIMSS and nothing but the TIMSS

Because neither you nor I have seen other measures placing the US 9th among world countries.

And ithe article demonstrates it is misleading (I never said that anyone had claimed it was misleading). The falsehood about having fallen to 9th place makes it misleading. The claim about Massachussets without taking income into consideration is misleading.

[jobycom]

45. You are deliberately avoiding my point

which is not that Obama used a different survey, but that several surveys over a long period of time have shown a decline in our world rankings, and that Obama did not say that we had fallen in the TIMSS rankings.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

43. And the study you used as an alternative has only been conducted 3 times

You contradict yourself by attacking the TIMMS for having been conducted only 4 times, then giving us a link to a study which has only been conducted three times.

It's also important to note that the PISA study you cited is for 15 year olds, whereas most 8th grade students in the US are 13 or 14.

Also, if you read carefully you will see that the study concludes that poverty is linked to poor scores, bolstering the case that Obama was misleading in citing "standards" only when mentioning Massachussets success.

[jobycom]

47. Again, not close to my point.

I wasn't arguing stats, I was pointing out that studies have long shown us falling in math scores, which is all Obama said.

And the point about poverty is interesting in itself, but doesn't prove Obama was trying to or being misleading. He was pointing out problems and proposed solutions, not arguing a thesis. If I say we have a shortage of corn in Nebraska this year to make a case for more corn planting in Nebraska, it does not prove me wrong to show that there was a surplus of corn in Texas. It might be a good counter to my argument--we don't need more corn in Nebraska to make up for the shortfall because there is enough (if it's enough) in Texas to make up for the shortfall--but it doesn't mean I said anything wrong.

Obama's comments on Massachusets were to show one place where he saw success. Claiming that there might have been more than one explanation for the success hardly means he lied or was misleading. At best, it's a counter-argument. At worst, it's just a differing opinion.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

48. Interesting that the White House did not use your interesting defense

"We asked the White House to defend Obama's claim, and received no response."

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/13/barack-obama/8th-graders-are-9th-showing-improvement-not-fallin/

Hopefully, they read DU.

[thevoiceofreason]

26. This is why I don't let WAPO do my factchecking

In 2003, the United States placed 13th in 8th grade math scores on the TIMSS on a pure raw basis. Hwever, most educators (and the report itself, if you read it) state that the few points that separated the 13th place country (the US) and the 8th place country (the Russin Federation) were so small as to be statistically irrelevant, so the US was viewed BY THE PEOPLE WHO DID THE REPORT as in a tie for 8th place in 2003. Here's the chart:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/timss03/tables/table_07.asp?popup=1

In 2007, we indeed were ninth, but in fairness we were statistically tied for eighth again.

Net net - slightly askew, but close enough the set the point.

[ProSense]

28. That's because the OP article

isn't a factcheck. It's a piece citing some statistics and opinions. It doesn't provide specific links and citations to relevant studies refuting any point. By this standard (referring to the OP article as factchecking), every article in WaPo would be considered a factcheck.

[thevoiceofreason]

29. Good point

[Louis-Emmanuel]

32. Here are some useful links

Perhaps she should have included them

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/13/barack-obama/8th-graders-are-9th-showing-improvement-not-fallin/

She was right, though, links or not. Look at those scores and see that they have not fallen.

Google is cool too.

[ProSense]

37. The OP isn't factchecking. Period. n/t

[depakid]

34. This is a paper whose own editorial board contradicts facts presented by their own reporters!

Whose ombudsman has to shut down comments because even the ombudsman had gotten caught lying!

Yes, there were inacuracies in the education speech- but under the circumstances, I'll look to a credible source to illustrate them for me.

[Danger Mouse]

36. It's not at all surprising that you twist the article to make it as anti-Obama as possible.

[Louis-Emmanuel]

38. In which way do you think the article supported Obama's claims?

What you see counters his points rather than bolstering them.

Plus it's the Washington Post, remember? All its workers are evil.

[Danger Mouse]

46. Your agenda has been crystal clear from day one.

[TexasObserver]

40. Some hack writes a hit piece about Obama and nit picks his comments.

That's the title of this thread.

Curious that your approach is to find this both newsworthy and a reasonable line of attack on Obama's education moves.

[firedupdem]

41. You don't stop trying do you? n/t

[Imagevision]

44. Wapo, owned by General Electric who own CNN and 26 more

[mopinko]

49. charter schools are small and successful

because they often take kids who do not fit in the traditional school setting. they will not get big, because their niche will not get big.
i find it odd that sometimes the same people who knock charter schools will also pronounce on the tragedy of one size fits all schooling. some kids don't fit. some charter schools are not only teaching well, they are really saving lives. at least they are here where arne duncan handed out the charters.