Bogusness Questioned

Over at This Week In Education, John Krupa, an education reporter from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, questions my recent criticism of the Wall Street Journal's alleged trend story($) about how more parents are supposedly uprooting their entire lives so their kids can attend private school. Here's John's take, in its entirety:

I agree we need to be mindful of turning isolated anecdotes into trend stories. But it's not obvious to me that the Journal reporter committed this sin after reading her story. I feel like she did her homework. She cites examples of 10 families — attending three separate schools in three separate states — who moved to put a child into a private school. She gets anecdotal confirmation that the phenomenon is happening from admissions officers, principals and school consultants (I'll acknowledge all are biased to answer affirmatively). She gets anecdotal confirmation this is happening from the president of the National Association of Independent Schools (Again, I acknowledge the potential for bias). Ideally, the story should present data to back up the sources' anecdotal claims, but frankly, I don't think anyone is collecting this information. And there should have been a public-school voice saying that the story's premise is bunk. But I think the reporter gathered ample evidence to write what she did: "A small but growing number of parents .... are dramatically altering their families' lives to pursue the perfect private school for their children.

I'm not persuaded.

First, the article says that the 10 families in question simply "moved to the area," in order to attend the private schools in question. That's not necessarily the same thing as "dramatically alterning their families' lives." People move so their children can attend certain schools, public and private, all the time. That can mean significant sacrificies in terms of housing prices, longer commutes, etc. What makes the article interesting is that the anecdote family went waaay beyond this typical behavior, quitting their jobs, selling their house, and moving to the other side of the country without any certain means of employment or financial support once they arrived. The article only provides one other example of anything similar, and even that family was much less radical.

Moreover, the article provides even less evidence for its key assertion, which is that the phenomenon is small but growing. It's one thing to say that a few parents are doing something that seems kind of extreme. It's a big country, after all, people are always doing strange things. It's something else entirely to say that such extreme parenting is becoming more common. That's the difference beween News of the Weird and real news.

John notes that the President of the National Association of Independent Schools says he "hears about it all the time." But issues of potential bias aside, that's not at all the same thing as saying "I'm hearing about this more often." The only person in the entire article who speaks to that issue is the admissions director of a private school in California, who says "It's been a little more frequent in the last two or three years."

If all you've got is one killer anecdote, no data, and someone who thinks such instances are "a little more frequent," you don't have a trend, and shouldn't say you do.