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Obama’s Dalliance with Truthiness
by Kevin G. Welner
Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness" to describe the prior administration's triumph of gut-level ideology over facts. Sadly, it appears that we can’t yet retire the term.
During his campaign, Barack Obama was adept at identifying the Bush administration's failures to use research responsibly. He assured us that he would not misspend taxpayer dollars on projects that were ideologically appealing but unsupported by facts. No more would policy be based on imaginary or invented evidence at odds with the best knowledge available.
But those who believed in this promise are now confronted with policy edicts from the Department of Education that are as ill-grounded, dogmatic, and heavy-handed as any that emerged from the prior administration. These edicts are tied to the Department's "Race to the Top," a $4.35 billion program that is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus spending.
Education Secretary Duncan correctly described this fund as "by far the largest pot of discretionary funding for K-12 education reform in the history of the United States." And he has made it very clear to states that, to be eligible for a share of this pot, they must adopt policies that promote teacher merit pay and charter schools. In particular, state policies must allow the use of student test scores as part of teacher evaluation and compensation, and states must remove caps on charter school growth and increase funding for those schools.
These are politically popular reforms, but what does the research say? President Obama apparently believes that the research is solidly supportive. "This [Race to the Top] competition will not be based on politics, ideology, or the preferences of a particular interest group," he said. "Instead, it will be based on a simple principle – whether a state is ready to do what works."
That sounds good. It would be nice, though, if the president and the secretary offered the basis for this "what works" claim. In fact, little or no research actually supports policies linking teacher compensation to student test scores. What the research does show is that the technical hurdles to developing a fair, workable system have yet to be cleared. And research is also clear that tests developed and validated for one purpose (student evaluation) are not necessarily applicable to another (teacher evaluation).
The administration might have been praised if it had decided to promote a well-evaluated demonstration project, in order to advance the technical knowledge. But instead the president and secretary are broadly goading states to engage in a reform that research does not currently support. Yes, they are also pushing for research, but shouldn't the research precede the widespread adoption, rather than the other way around?
The charter school push is even more egregious. While the research is simply absent regarding the favored teacher compensation policy, the research on charter schools is well-developed and contradicts the president’s claims. On average, students in charters learn at the same pace as students in other public schools. Study after study has shown this. In fact, the most recent high-quality research suggests that charter performance is a bit lower than that of other public schools. It is true that there are excellent charter schools, but there are also awful ones, showing the sort of wide range that has long been the case with schools in general.
When talking about charters, President Obama and Secretary Duncan almost always do acknowledge this last point, describing the wide variation among the quality of charter schools. They contend that good charters should be expanded and poor ones should be closed. For instance, President Obama said recently, "we can't hold charter schools to lower standards than traditional public schools. If a charter school is falling short year after year, it should be shut down." What’s lacking are signs that the administration is putting teeth behind this part of its charter rhetoric, as it has done with the push to lift charter caps. The states, of course, have noticed and are scrambling to lift charter caps. Accountability? Not so much.
President Obama has told the states that they must be "ready to do what works," and he is exerting his muscle to make sure they comply. He wants policies that use student test scores in teacher evaluation and compensation, and he wants states to remove caps on charter school growth and to increase funding for those schools. But where is the evidence that charters and merit pay are "what works"? Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness" to describe the prior administration’s triumph of gut-level ideology over facts. Sadly, it appears that we can't yet retire the term.
KEVIN WELNER is associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder School of Education, specializing in educational policy, law, and program evaluation. He is director of the CU-Boulder Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC). A former attorney, Dr. Welner's research examines the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship. His current research includes studies focusing on small-school reform, detracking, school choice, and tuition tax credits. His recent work includes two books, Under the Voucher Radar: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming), and Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman’s Story of Survival (with Sylvia Welner, Hamilton Books, 2005).
— Kevin Welner
Teachers College Record
2009-07-30
http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15731
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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