News

NJEA’s President Guilty of “Deliberate Misuse of the Data”

December 2, 2011

Laura Waters

Over the last several months it’s been a pleasure to witness the easing of ill will between the leadership of NJ’s primary teachers’ union, NJEA, and members of Gov. Christie’s educational team. After several years of bitter recrimination from both sides of the table, everyone seems to have moved on from the trauma of our botched Race To The Top application and former Comm. Bret Schundler’s resignation. Sure, the sting of last Spring’s health and benefits reform bills, championed by Gov. Christie, must be a sore spot for union leadership, but there appears to be a shared recognition that we should recalibrate the balance between the needs of schoolchildren and the needs of teachers. Suddenly NJ’s 100-year old tenure law is on the table – a boon for both student and professionals – and Ed. Comm. Cerf ‘s speech at NJEA’s Annual Convention earlier this month and was courteously received (except for a few nasty tweets).

So we’ll hold onto the progress and roll our eyes at the retro and reactive press release just out from NJEA President Barbara Keshishian, in which she claims, in outraged tones, that NJ’s alleged achievement gap among black, white, Hispanic, and poor kids is a “classic strawman” on the part of Gov. Christie and “based on a deliberate misuse of the data.”

Okay. Let’s check the data.

Pres. Keshishian refers to test scores recently released from NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. These standardized tests are given across the country to state cohorts in 4th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade in reading and math. There are also tests in science and writing.

According to our 2011 NAEP scores, we have narrowed the achievement gap between white and black students and between white and Hispanic students, but only in some subjects . For example, the achievement gap between black and white students in 4th grade math is now only 25 points. Twenty years ago (in 1992) it was 38 points. That’s great. But there’s been no change in the achievement gap for poor students (determined by eligibility for free and reduced lunch) and wealthier students in 4th grade math.

In fact, NJ’s achievement gaps persist among different ethnic groups and economic strata and in all subjects except for 4th grade math.

Let’s look at Grade 8 Reading. In 2011, black students scored on average 28 points lower than white students. According to our NAEP data, “this performance gap was not significantly different from that in 2003 (29 points).” Our 2011 scores for Hispanic students show them averaging 27 points below white students, and the report notes that this is “not significantly different from that in 2003 (28 points).”

How about 8th grade math? “Black students had an average score that was 33 points lower than White students. This performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1990 (38 points).” The performance gap between Hispanic kids and white kids was 30 points and showed insignificant improvement. Poor kids scored 29 points lower than wealthier kids, also not “significantly different.”

Is our successful just with 4th graders then? Not quite. While our achievement gaps lessened among 4th graders in math, the reading scores for poor 4th graders in reading remained far behind wealthier 4th graders.

Pres. Keshishian charges that “the evidence of our success is irrefutable…That’s why the governor is trying to use some of our lower-performing urban districts to make the case for reform…Using the ‘achievement gap’ as a basis for a host of unproven reforms is a classic straw man.” But she is misusing the data, not the Governor.

Certainly, NJ’s students do better than many kids in other parts of the country, in part because, as Pres. Keshishian rightly points out, “there is a clear correlation between wealth and test scores.” But her insistence that everything in the Garden State educational system is just honky-dory belies the gross inequities that exist from district to district. It also ignores the very data that she cites. Maybe she’s experiencing some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder from the wild and woolly days a few years ago. Excuses aside, she does no one any favors — educators or students — by misrepresenting the facts.

Laura Waters

4 Comments

SteveEd, December 2, 2011 @ 9:11 pm Reply

Make up your mind, Laura. In the last paragraph, you indicate that the reason New Jersey outperforms the rest of the nation is because we are wealthier, and agree that there is a clear correlation between wealth and test scores. Yet you slam New Jersey’s poor districts for not improving results more dramatically for poor students. So, the state’s well-documented successes can be written off as a product of our wealth – not the result of inherently good schools. But we should blame schools in our poor districts for lower test scores as if poverty has nothing to do with it. Please pick one side of this argument.

Let’s all be a lot more honest about the effect of poverty on education. That doesn’t mean we can stop trying hard to boost the performance of students in our poorest districts, but pretending that there is some magic wand (fire more teachers! merit pay!) we can wave to eliminate the achievement gap while we ignore the real and growing wealth gap in our state and country is delusional. If Gov. Christie really wants to help poor kids learn more, he’d stop attacking their schools and start attacking poverty and unemployment in their communities.

How can we make progress in attacking the problems we all agree exist if one side is so unwilling to acknowledge the root cause of those problems, and instead insists on demonizing schools and teachers?
SteveEd, December 2, 2011 @ 9:11 pm Reply

Make up your mind, Laura. In the last paragraph, you indicate that the reason New Jersey outperforms the rest of the nation is because we are wealthier, and agree that there is a clear correlation between wealth and test scores. Yet you slam New Jersey’s poor districts for not improving results more dramatically for poor students. So, the state’s well-documented successes can be written off as a product of our wealth – not the result of inherently good schools. But we should blame schools in our poor districts for lower test scores as if poverty has nothing to do with it. Please pick one side of this argument.

Let’s all be a lot more honest about the effect of poverty on education. That doesn’t mean we can stop trying hard to boost the performance of students in our poorest districts, but pretending that there is some magic wand (fire more teachers! merit pay!) we can wave to eliminate the achievement gap while we ignore the real and growing wealth gap in our state and country is delusional. If Gov. Christie really wants to help poor kids learn more, he’d stop attacking their schools and start attacking poverty and unemployment in their communities.

How can we make progress in attacking the problems we all agree exist if one side is so unwilling to acknowledge the root cause of those problems, and instead insists on demonizing schools and teachers?
kallikak, December 3, 2011 @ 7:04 am Reply

So nice, he had to say it twice.

Laura does appear to have a problem distinguishing among cause and effect.
NJ Left Behind, December 3, 2011 @ 3:50 pm Reply

Hi, SteveEd. It's not an either/or issue. Yes, for many kids poverty is a daunting educational disability and an ethical governmental apparatus provides all kinds of aid. But that doesn't mean that our current education system can't benefit from changes: ending LIFO, paying teachers more to work in failing districts than they would get in successful suburbs, linking student growth to teacher evaluations (in one form or another).