I Was Right

Okay, I promise I'll only use that post title like, once a year (or less, if I turn out not to be right about things). But in this case, I am forced to succumb to the temptations of self-aggrandizement. On Tuesday, I wrote this post about a middle-income California couple who quit their jobs and moved from Los Angeles to Boston just to put their teenage daughters in a super-expensive private school they couldn't afford. Rather than simply note the utter craziness of this (see Matt Yglesias here), the Wall Street Journal spun it as evidence of some kind of alleged larger trend, so they could characterize the story as "news." The problem with doing that, I wrote, is that:

people believe what they read in the newspaper. If the Wall Street Journal says it's a trend, it's a trend, and soon enough this meme will be become part of the larger narrative about education, influencing what people believe and thus what decisions they make. And it will be wrong, but nobody will know that.

Sure enough, there was a press conference this morning announcing the latest 12th grade NAEP scores. They're not good, prompting former Michigan governor and current National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler to note that just the other day, he read about how more and more parents are moving across the country to put their kids in private school, and how this is just further evidence that our public schools are basically going to hell in a handbasket. That's not a direct quote, but you get the gist.

As a public service, the Quick and the Ed will henceforth be tracking the spread and use of this little nugget of conventional non-wisdom. Feel free to email examples to kcarey at educationsector.org.