When the Data’s No Good
Serious education policy decisions are being driven by data. The problem is, it’s not always accurate.
IT'S BEEN A ROUGH YEAR for education data – one that's challenged the accuracy of federal databases, uncovered discrepancies that call into question major policy decisions and now, with another school year underway, one that will ask states, districts and schools to collect, report and use more data than ever before.
Take, for example, the revelation last month from an NPR investigation that only 11 of the roughly 240 schools that reported a school-related shooting actually experienced one. Or the inexplicable doubling of the number of districts reporting they were under a federal mandate to desegregate racially imbalanced schools, which itself, as Education Week uncovered, comes on the heels of an equally inexplicably 86 percent drop in the number of school districts reporting that. Or the graduation scandal in the District of Columbia, where 1 in 3 students who earned a diploma in 2017 shouldn't have, in large part because of administrators fudging attendance data.
"At some point, wouldn't you think someone would say, 'Two hundred and forty [shootings]? That's more than one a day. Obviously we don't have that,'" says Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow and vice president for external affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a D.C.-based education think tank. "If you are casual about releasing data that at a moment's reflection would say to you, 'No that can't be right,' then are you casual about releasing other data? What does it take for data not to pass the smell test?"
The data discrepancies can have serious ramifications for researchers who rely on federal databases to study any number of things, as well as policymakers and practitioners who use such information to make decisions for their communities. Moreover, that data is often used to determine how billions of dollars in education funding is distributed to states and school districts, making it all the more imperative that it's accurate.
Nora Gordon, an associate professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, says she especially worries about the databases that rely on self-reported information, like the Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, which was the source of information for both the erroneous school shooting data and the unexplained increases and decreases in desegregation orders.
"I feel like there is a lot of policy attention to that data source, with good reason, but I don't know Continue reading: Incorrect Data Drives Major Education Decisions | The Report | US News
