The False Modesty of the Globe's Editors

With the number of questions begged in their average education editorial, the Boston Globe's Editors could be arrested for panhandling. I wouldn't mind if their squeegees actually washed away some from the accumulated grime on the state of American educational discourse, but I've given up waiting for it to happen. Having no idea what they don't know, showing no inkling of desire to learn, they have nothing to do but fall back on their own pre-conceptions.

Last week, some Globe Editors and writers apparently met with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings who is making the rounds promoting new regulations for No Child Left Behind. After The New York Times, The Globe's parent company, broke a story about the Pentagon using ex-military as analyst/shills as propogandists, the Editors might think twice before swallowing whole the talking points of any representative of The Worst Presidency Ever. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Here's a quote from today's editorial:

The goal of No Child Left Behind is modest: to get children achieving at grade level by 2014. Spellings is nudging, but real progress will have to come from Congress and the current or next president.

Only a fool or shill, however, would characterize NCLB's goal as modest. The opposite of modest in the sense used here is ambitious. The Editors are certainly entitled to their opinion, but many would disagree with their simple declaration. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, though it doesn't necessarily carry more authority on the matter, characterizes NCLB's goal "that ALL children will be proficient in reading and math by 2014" as "ambitious." Clearly, the law's critics, which include most of the 50 states, would disagree with the Editors' modest claim.

Never ones to not let a question go begging, the Editors assume that proficient truly means grade level. It's doesn't. Proficiency is arbitrary, a level of achievement established by each of the 50 states, which deviate quite a bit. Research--actual research, not think tank stuff-- compared the deviation between proficiency at the state level and proficiency on the NAEP. In their study, they found extreme deviations between the national standard and individual standards for proficiency. Nebraska and Arkansas, for example, designates a significantly higher number of their students proficient than the NAEP does. Massachusetts students, on the contrary, comes much closer to this national standard. If proficiency is grade level, as the Editors would have it, why are there deviations in proficiency when state test scores are held to a national standard? Because they read it on some NCLB literature?

It's certainly okay for the Globe Editors to publish their opinion on education, even in spite of their general ignorance on education. It's also okay for the Editors to embrace a market fundamentalist approach to education, though a nice statement in support of the ideology would certainly clarify their thinking. It is, however, journalistically unethical to operate as a conduit for government propaganda.

Most journalists try to adhere to an ethic of fairness and objectivity, yet when it comes to opinion rather than news, these two ideals frequently go out the window. Calling NCLB modest is neither fair nor objective. Nor is assuming that proficient means grade level. The law itself may equate the two, but one would hope for a more penetrating, or at least more modest, analysis from the Editors of one of the nation's more esteemed newspapers.

Mark