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Educational Statistics & Ethics: The Case of Nations
Posted on 2006/04/26
Last week's TIME magazine (April 17, 2006), had, as its cover story, a special report entitled "Dropout Nation." The teaser line on the cover states: "30% of America's high school students will leave without graduating. Here is what one town tells us about the crisis." The major difference in this story is that TIME is not reporting on the state of African American, Hispanic, Native American, Southeast Asian or other so-called underrepresented minority group, but of white students as well. The state of Georgia, for example, graduates 60% of its white male students--leaving 40% who do not graduate. Thus, the American Dream in terms of public, free access to a quality education for all students, over at least the past 50 years (1954, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education) is more of a myth than a reality--and not a realistic function attributable mainly to immigration, or so-called minority groups. The problem has been, it appears, in the documentation--which leads, of course, to the counting. Census collectors have been allowed to ask whether the high school age student is planning to graduate, and if answered in the affirmative, was not listed as a drop out. School districts, likewise, were allowed to enter similar student-reported plans to complete their General Equivalency Diploma (GED)as valid data,thus inflating the graduation rate of U.S. high schools. The new figures--the new, public crisis--is not really new at all. The United States public school system has not been able to educate the poor in general, regardless of their race. Now, as globalization threatens low-wage employment in the U.S., formal education, particularly beyond high school, is critical. Ethics and economics appear intimately tied. Of course, in many other nations, educational statistics are also suspect--overinflating achievement and underreporting failure. As we engage in our educational research, and prepare our publications and conference presentations, to what degree can we trust our national statistics--whose do we choose to use, and to what end?
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