[CALIBK12] 4th grade reading and prison facilities

[RichardGuy at aol.com]

As usual, Bracey has the authoritative word:

from: The 16th Bracey Report on The Condition of Public Education, By Gerald 
W. Bracey:

     Finally, there is the curious case of the mutant second-grade test-score 
statistics. My website (at www.americatomorrow.com/bracey) received a query 
from someone in Buffalo about how states use the number of kids who read below 
grade level in second grade to project future prison construction needs. It 
seemed a well-established belief in the African American community.

     The first reaction among members of my Education Disinformation 
Detection and Reporting Agency (EDDRA) was that this was an “urban legend,” 
especially because Google searches turned up a variety of statements and grades. But 
the searches also turned up three legitimate, albeit secondary, sources. A 2004 
Washington Post story by Andrew Block of the Just Children Program in 
Charlottesville, Virginia, and Virginia Weisz of the Children's Rights Project in Los 
Angeles contained this: “In California, correctional officials reportedly look 
to the percentage of children who never make it past fourth-grade reading 
level to help them gauge the number of future prison beds to fund.” (57)

     That immediately struck me as improbable. Knowing how many kids “never 
make it past fourth-grade reading level” would be a logistical and 
record-keeping nightmare. I decided the operative word was “reportedly,” and when I 
contacted Block, he agreed, saying the Corrections Department in California had 
vehemently denied the practice. (58)

     Consultant Mike Schmoker had written in a 1999 Education Week article 
that the state of Indiana found it useful to base projections for future prison 
construction on the number of second-graders who weren't reading on grade 
level. (59) 

     Similarly, Linda Katz of the Children's Literacy Initiative had written, 
“Indiana's former governor has stated that determining the number of new 
prisons to build is based, in part, on the number of second-graders not reading at 
second-grade level.” (60)

     The “number of second-graders” is an example of “mutant statistics” - 
statistics that begin as legitimate numbers but then get transformed into 
something false. 

     The source of the test scores/prison building statistic that mutated 
proved to be Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), formerly governor of Indiana. In a book and 
in articles and speeches, Sen. Bayh expressed his belief in the need for 
early intervention to keep kids out of jail later: “I remember meeting with Jim 
[Corrections Chief Jim Aiken] one afternoon in my office. I asked him to explain 
to me how he could predict the number of criminals we'd be incarcerating in 
the future. 'We've got this equation,' he said. 'And it's got a lot of 
variables in it. But the single most reliable predictor is the number of at-risk 
children in second grade today.'” (61)

     One presumes that by “reliable” Aiken probably meant “powerful.”

     Bayh's interest was in destroying the power of that statistic: “In other 
words, we look at the circumstances currently facing eight-year-olds in order 
to gauge how full our jails will be six or seven years down the road. If ever 
there was a powerful argument for early intervention, for ensuring that kids 
grow up in the best possible circumstances, this is it.” He went on to talk 
about those circumstances, especially the importance of having a father around. 

57. Andrew Block and Virginia Weisz, “Choosing Prisoners over Pupils,” 
Washington Post, 6 July 2004, p. A-19.

58. Andrew Block, personal communication, e-mail, 17 July 2006.

59. Mike Schmoker, “The Quiet Revolution in Achievement,” Education Week, 3 
November 1999, p. 32.

60. Linda Katz, “The Importance of Investing in Literacy,” 2000, www. 
cliontheweb.org/investing1.html.

61. Evan Bayh, Father to Son: A Private Life in the Public Eye (Carmel, Ind.: 
Guild Press of Indiana, 2003).

Gerald W. Bracey, The 16th Bracey Report on the Condition of the Public 
Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 88, No. 02, October 2006, pp. 151-166.

http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/k0610bra.pdf

Richard K. Moore, InfoSherpa
Huntington Beach, CA
**********************************************************
To be educated in any true sense of the word, one must use the library, and 
master the experiences of mankind. -- William T. Harris, 1893
**********************************************************
JOIN CSLA: http://csla.net/pdf/memberform.pdf
**********************************************************



**************
It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & 
Finance.
      (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/pipermail/calibk12/attachments/20080313/d9b3a0df/attachment.html