Convoluted, nay contradictory, IT article on schools

Snickers Man

An article on fee-paying versus public schools in today's Irish Times is so disingenuous at best and contradictory at worst that its content would rival Fox News for misleading its readership or audience.

Leaving aside the issue at its core and just taking the journalism into consideration (and do note I am concentrating on the online version as it appears this morning):

The headline says "Free schools outperform fee-paying schools"

Then the intro paragraph says something utterly different, (I will leave the term "flat contradiction" until later!) which brings the clear statement in the headline into question.

"PRIVATE FEE-PAYING schools in Ireland are performing no better than their counterparts in the “free” State sector, according to an international study."

So maybe the headline should have read "Free schools just as good as fee-paying schools"?

In the third paragraph the metric is narrowed quite significantly to show that we are not talking about the schools per se, rather we are talking about a single subject, namely mathematics.

The report....compared the performance of.. [15-year old].. students from State-run and fee-paying schools ...in maths. (My emphasis)

Next sentence introduces a caveat, albeit an arcane and unexplained one. It found public schools actually delivered better results when all factors, including the selective enrolment policies of some fee-paying schools, were taken into account. (Again, my emphasis)

Hmm, that's a bit of a qualification. I wonder what they mean there. Maybe the next paragraph will explain.

Actually, no. The next paragraph introduces the flat contradiction promised earlier.

The research paper concludes: “Our analysis shows that although the average score of pupils in the sample from private schools is significantly higher than the average score of pupils from public schools, the picture is reversed once the effect of the school selection is accounted for properly”.

Whoa! Wait a minute! Your headline says clearly that "Free schools outperform fee-paying schools" yet a few paragraphs later you are saying that the report finds just the opposite! We need seem some clarification and fast. Do we get it?

No. Instead we get one of the authors of the report reiterating, without explaining, the "spin" implied by the article's headline, and an Irish academic appearing to draw conclusions based on that spin.

"Last night, Prof Danny Pfeffermann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Irish Times his research showed clearly public schools were performing better than private schools in Ireland.

Dr Kevin Denny of UCD’s Geary Institute said the results were “important for the many parents who are now struggling to pay fees for schools and wondering: ‘is it worth it?’ It is also a significant finding for teachers who work in public schools,” he said."

Then we get a self congratulatory, if largely impertinent "we told you so" from The Irish Times itself.

"The new findings echo the results of the 2010 Irish Times feeder school list, which tracked progression to third level.

The top feeder schools for high-point courses include several leading fee-paying schools including Gonzaga, Mount Anville and CUS in Dublin; Glenstal Abbey in Limerick and Clongowes Wood in Kildare.

However the list also indicated how “free” State schools will match or even eclipse the progression rate of some fee-paying schools if they are located in affluent areas. Community and comprehensive schools in affluent areas of the main cities all feature strongly in The Irish Times list."


Then we have a sniffy "What the hell, nothing is going to change" statement of resignation.

The latest findings are unlikely to dent the huge popularity of fee-paying schools, which has proved very resilient through the recession.

Some 26,000 students are enrolled in the 56 private schools in the State.

I wonder why that is. :rolleyes:

Nowhere does it explain what "factors" have to be taken into account to reverse the conclusion implied from the raw data that fee-paying schools perform "significantly better" to that deduced by the authors which is that public schools are just as good, or better, depending on whether you read the article's headline or intro par.

We get an insinuation, based on the Irish Times separate and unrelated survey, that as long as your "free" school is in a "rich area" it will be just as good as the expensive fee-paying schools. But it's no more than an insinuation and it says nothing about the methodology of the report's authors which led them to their findings.

Oh and one more curious thing. The co-author of the report was Victoria Landsman of the National Cancer Institute, Maryland, in the US.

Cancer!! What's that got to do with the teaching of maths or the crunching of statistics?

I think the "spin" surrounding this survey is shocking.

goose2005

Snickers Man wrote: »

Next sentence introduces a caveat, albeit an arcane and unexplained one. It found public schools actually delivered better results when all factors, including the selective enrolment policies of some fee-paying schools, were taken into account. (Again, my emphasis)

Hmm, that's a bit of a qualification. I wonder what they mean there. Maybe the next paragraph will explain.

Actually, no. The next paragraph introduces the flat contradiction promised earlier.

The research paper concludes: “Our analysis shows that although the average score of pupils in the sample from private schools is significantly higher than the average score of pupils from public schools, the picture is reversed once the effect of the school selection is accounted for properly”.

Whoa! Wait a minute! Your headline says clearly that "Free schools outperform fee-paying schools" yet a few paragraphs later you are saying that the report finds just the opposite! We need seem some clarification and fast. Do we get it?

Children in private schools are, in general, from wealthy, stable households and have educated parents who support them in their education - this has to be taken into account when comparing the results - if Clongowes had to take a random sample of students from the general population, do you think they'd do much better than average?

Then we have a sniffy "What the hell, nothing is going to change" statement of resignation.

The latest findings are unlikely to dent the huge popularity of fee-paying schools, which has proved very resilient through the recession.

Some 26,000 students are enrolled in the 56 private schools in the State.

I wonder why that is. :rolleyes:

Because it allows the children of the wealthiest to go to a school where everyone's parents are educated and invested in their children's education. This is obviously a good thing for those children; however, it is questionable whether it is a good thing for children in general to remove the wealthiest and best-connected members of society from the general school system. If there was a luxury underground railway in Dublin that only the richest 5% of society could use, how good would the roads be? Would the Luas exist at all?

Nowhere does it explain what "factors" have to be taken into account to reverse the conclusion implied from the raw data that fee-paying schools perform "significantly better" to that deduced by the authors which is that public schools are just as good, or better, depending on whether you read the article's headline or intro par.

Maybe because the "factors" would only be comprehensible to someone with knowledge of statistics?

Oh and one more curious thing. The co-author of the report was Victoria Landsman of the National Cancer Institute, Maryland, in the US.

Cancer!! What's that got to do with the teaching of maths or the crunching of statistics?

Three seconds' research finds: Dr. Landsman received her Ph.D. in statistics from the Department of Statistics at the Hebrew University in Israel, where she developed a new approach for estimating treatment effects from observational data. Dr. Landsman’s interests include causal inference from observational data, selection bias, efficient analysis of case-control studies with complex sampling designs, statistical analysis of health care disparities. http://dceg.cancer.gov/bb/bbresearchtraining/meetbbfellows

Snickers Man

Thank you for making clear to me the mistake I made in interpreting this article. I understood that a "better performing" school would be one in which the pupils/students would perform better than elsewhere.

You have helped me to understand that what the statisticians were praising was some other measure of "performance" by which some free schools are turning out kids with lower maths grades on average than the fee-paying ones. Silly me!

In trying to find an analogy for this exercise I suppose it would be like somebody claiming, based on a manipulation of figures which, in your words, would "only be comprehensible to someone with knowledge of statistics" that Ireland "performs" better than Brazil at soccer.

After all when you take into account the disparity between our populations, the number of competing ball sports with which budding Irish soccer teams have to contend, the comparitive affluence of our population which provides Irish kids with greater access to X-box and Playstation than the residents of favelhas, then no doubt you could crunch some numbers to verify that a country whose team is regularly ranked in the top 40 or 50 national sides in the world is actually "performing better" than one whose team is perennially ranked in the top 10 and usually in first place.

"Yeah OK they won. But we've got the better looking kit!"

That's fine as far as it goes. A big pat on the back to all who participate in the Irish game. But let's not kid ourselves that we are as good as Brazil where it really matters.

If somebody were to write an article implying as such, they would rightly be seen as fantasists at best, or more likley, as transparent frauds.

Now, coming back to the original IT article. Does it imply that the facts say you would be better off sending your kid to a free school than a fee-paying one? (if only for maths) Even though, as you make clear, the facts say something completely different.

I think it does. See how it carries the comment from a third-level academic who says the study is “important for the many parents who are now struggling to pay fees for schools and wondering: ‘is it worth it?’ "

Yes it is! That's exactly what the study finds.

He is closer to the mark when he adds "It is also a significant finding for teachers who work in public schools,” . Fair enough. They're doing a grand job in the circumstances. But your kids would still be better off in a fee-paying school.

This is the News and Media section. Not the education section. There is a debate to be had about the best way to organise education. My annoyance with this article is the dishonest way the Irish Times has presented these figures. It clearly wants to leave the impression that free schools are just as good as fee-paying ones.

And whichever side of the debate you are on, this study finds that's just not true.

Focalbhach

Snickers Man wrote:

This is the News and Media section. Not the education section. There is a debate to be had about the best way to organise education. My annoyance with this article is the dishonest way the Irish Times has presented these figures.

I'm no fan of Seán Flynn's, but the main claim he makes (relating to the paper in question) that I'd be wary of is the suggestion that public schools 'outperform' private schools, rather than there being no difference between them. I'll have to wait to see the full thing to get the details, but the line quoted from the paper makes it clear enough that private schools did not come out ahead. However, I'd like to clarify whether the study deals with OECD aggregate data, or whether the findings as reported in the IT relate directly to Ireland.

Snickers Man wrote:

It clearly wants to leave the impression that free schools are just as good as fee-paying ones.

And whichever side of the debate you are on, this study finds that's just not true.

Surely whichever side of the debate you're on should be determined, insofar as it can be, by the facts?

Here, you're completely misrepresenting - actually inverting - the conclusions of the authors. They report that free schools, with the same student intake as fee-paying schools, are "just as good". In other words, whether a school requires extra fees makes damn-all difference to students' maths performance.

You may be interested to know that the OECD reported broadly similar findings from the 2009 data within the last week or two.

Snickers Man

Leto wrote: »

the line quoted from the paper makes it clear enough that private schools did not come out ahead. However, I'd like to clarify whether the study deals with OECD aggregate data, or whether the findings as reported in the IT relate directly to Ireland.

I'd like to clarify by what metric the public schools finished ahead of the private ones. We are not told in the IT story. We can assume that it is not the simple matter of the kids doing better in maths exams, because the report says starkly that "the average score of pupils in the sample from private schools is significantly higher than the average score of pupils from public schools".

Leto wrote: »

you're completely misrepresenting - actually inverting - the conclusions of the authors. They report that free schools, with the same student intake as fee-paying schools, are "just as good". In other words, whether a school requires extra fees makes damn-all difference to students' maths performance.

No. I'm saying that the authors of the survey in their conclusions are "inverting" the message of their own findings. And the Irish Times is not telling us what metrics they used to reverse those findings.

The thrust of the story is that "you are wasting your money sending your kids to fee-paying schools because they will do just as well (in maths anyway) at a free school."

That is bull****.

It might be true to say that there are a few free schools, generally located in wealthy areas, where kids will perform just as well as those in fee-paying ones.

It might be true to say that if you can get your kid into one of those, then you can save yourself the expense of school fees without diminishing the quality of education your child receives.

The story doesn't say that, although it hints at it.

In which case, instead of scoffing at the profligacy of parents who choose to shell out for fees it might ask why don't they send their children to one of the very few free schools who can match up academically.

And of course the answer, which takes us way outside the remit of the story, is that it is nigh on impossible to get into one of these schools unless you have prior association, have the child's name down on the waiting list from the moment they were born, or, whisper it, some clout with those who control admissions.

They are vastly oversubscribed.

To get into a good fee-paying school, at the end of the day, all you have to do is hand over the cash.

Those of us who choose to do so are not idiots, however much the Irish Times might like to try and make us think we are.

monument

Here's the report: http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/6/43/48482894.pdf

Focalbhach

monument wrote: »

Here's the report: http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/6/43/48482894.pdf

That's not the paper that the IT article is based on - it's the recent short report from the OECD with the latest data.

monument

Leto wrote: »

That's not the paper that the IT article is based on - it's the recent short report from the OECD with the latest data.

Sorry -- you're right.

(When I posted it I had not read it all, but (when thinking it was the correct report) wanted to add the link to add to the discussion and get back to the thread later)

Focalbhach

For anyone interested, the Pfeffermann/Landsman paper is downloadable here.