First, I endorse Eduwonk's take on NAEP scores and their meaning in relation to recent state-specific assessment results. The recent dramatic test score gains in New York and now Maryland have produced a spate of circular reasoning on the part of the "NCLB is a conspiracy to destroy public education and pave the way for Wal-Mart to take over the schools" crowd. That argument holds that the pace of improvement and narrowing of class-based achievement disparities envisioned under the law are absurd and unrealistic--thus, the conspiracy. As evidence, they note that such improvement has never happened before. Now that it's actually happening, the argument is, apparently, that it can't actually be happening, because it's never happened before. Or something.
Second, it's clarifying to read Eduwonkette's back-and-forth with Jay Greene. The basic problem is that she's jumbling up a discussion of peer review with a discussion of motive and and anonymity. Here she puts blog posts, think tank publications, and academic research on a single continuum of "credibility," asserting that peer-reviewed research is most credible, think stuff less so, and blogs least of all. But this misses the obvious point that credibility and the processes used to ensure it are highly dependent on purpose.
The purpose of academic research is to inform, to add to a collective body of knowledge. As a result, credibility assurance processes have been developed that make sense given that purpose, primarily peer review and transparency of sources and methods. Motive and authorship aren't as important--when I read an article in an academic journal, I'm less concerned with who did the work than how they did it, where the data came from and what methods were used for analysis. It wouldn't really bother me if authorship were attributed to "An assistant professor at Columbia University" as opposed to an actual named person; the format of academic research is such that the things I need to know to judge credibility are right there in black and white, or embedded in the journal's publicly stated peer review process.
The purpose of blogs, by contrast, as with all opinion writing, is to persuade. And the motive to persuade always comes from somewhere--agendas, convictions, ideologies, etc. Unlike academic research, opinions and arguments can't be evaluated purely on their own terms. And this is reflected in the credibility-assurance practices of organizations that are in the business of publishing opinions. Op-eds in the Washington Post, for example, always have a little blurb at the end telling the reader who the author is. There's a reason: Imagine if you read a column arguing that climate change isn't such a big problem after all, written by Jane Smith. If you saw that Jane was a p.r. flack for ExxonMobil, you'd take it one way. If you saw that she was the president of the Sierra Club, you'd take it another, and for good reason. Same words, different meaning.
Motives and affiliations matter, particularly in the realm of opinion. That's why respectable publications like Education Week don't publish anonymous op-eds. Heck, they don't even publish anonymous letters to the editor. Why they've abandoned this logical, time-honored standard when it comes to their officially-endorsed blogs, I really don't understand.
5 comments:
Since when is the sole purpose of all blogs to persuade?
Kevin,
Please reconsider your staement that,
"I'm less concerned with who did the work than how they did it, where the data came from and what methods were used for analysis."
You seem to believe that you alone are capable of that without the detective work that the rest of us do as a team. Like it or not, you are studying issues that are far beyond your sphere of experience. You, like all of us, need guides to help in the detective work. You need to listen more, on blogs and apparently elsewhere, to veterans who can show you where the methodological bodies are buried.
Were I to study higher education, I would listen to you and defer to your superior knowledge for a long time before formulating my own opinions.
If this was not a blog, you would have never written something as extreme as,
The recent dramatic test score gains in New York and now Maryland have produced a spate of circular reasoning on the part of the "NCLB is a conspiracy to destroy public education and pave the way for Wal-Mart to take over the schools" crowd"
You combine two carictures in one aggressive statement. Even if this is a blog, why get into those habits?
Corey: If believed that the sole purpose of all blogs is to persuade, then I would have included the words "sole" and "all" in my post. I didn't, because of course there are millions of blogs pursuing various purposes. That said, in general it's a medium focused on dialogue, ideas, opinion, persuasion, etc. And that's certainly true for the edu-blogs involved in this conversation.
John: I read your comments through several times and I'm genuinely unsure of what you mean by "You seem to believe that you alone are capable of that..." or how you get there from what I said. What are you talking about?
As for the rest, it's not caricature; see Jim Horn, Susan O'Hanian, etc.
You need to learn how to read research like a detective. Asking about motive, perspective, etc. gives you a heads up regarding methodolical flaws and gaps in evidence. You can't just take it all inductively, like your individual brain is some supercomputer doing a meta-analysis on everything.
The US is a big country, and education is a pretty big topic. You advocate a single set of tests to transform our diverse systems. Currently, we are debating whether it worked during the last six years, and whether a similar NCLB II can work. Maryland is very different from less affluent states, for instance, and we all know about the allegations regarding NYC. If you really want to consider whether Maryland is representative, and representative of what, then you need to listen to tipsters with concrete info. Just like a detective, you can discount their exeperience, but you still need to listen. Similarly, if the distortions are as bad in NYC as alleged, then accountability advocates need to listen with special care.
You don't want to commit yourself to a principle, and then discover it is based on a fraud.
I don't claim to be perfect. But reading between the lines, I believe I was socialized to show more respect to other traditions of enquiry. Obviously, you've got a strong background in "the canon." Personally, you may be a very modest person. Your educational policy, however, is extremely immodest.
And it is more than being a detective. Reading research should also be a conversation with the authors, and a conversation with the generations that precede it.
I don't know what happens when I respond to your posts. I know I sound like a nagging schoolmarm. But I, for one, have never argued that NCLB is a "conspiracy." I don't believe I have ever advocated the straw men who you refute. Even if this is a blog, why not address Bruce Fuller's comments on Maryland? Why not address the teachers who are reporting their experiences in NYC and other districts who have seen the specifics of how data are fabricated? And again, why blame the messenger/teachers and not the policies. And no, I don't want to start another round of blaming the central offices for the policies we both decry. I want out of the blame and shame cycle.
Why not use blogs as a vehicle for conversations? Wit is great. But you must also listen to the detectives that have gone before.
There I go again. Rather than delete the previous line, I'll just try to be less pedantic.
That's kind of an odd response. I could retort that "if you didn't mean all blogs then you would have written 'many' or 'most' blogs or that the purpose is 'generally' or 'usually' to persuade."
I simply think that "The purpose of blogs is . . . to persuade" is a tad too strong. Blogs serve purposes other than persuasion. I think you agree. Since blogs are informal, wording isn't always precise -- I write things I didn't quite mean all the time as well.
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