Hope and Fail

Lying about the education secretary’s success in Chicago

A new report says Barack Obama misled the nation by using fudged numbers to trump up Education Secretary Arne Duncan's performance as head of Chicago schools.

When President-elect Barack Obama appointed Arne Duncan to be secretary of education on Dec. 16, 2008, he listed off a number of stats to “show” that Duncan’s performance as the head of Chicago’s schools was outstanding. According to Obama, Duncan had lowered drop-out rates, improved test scores and improved teacher performance.

Well, according to a new report out today, all of those numbers were fudged.

From USA Today:

New research from a Chicago civic group takes direct aim at the city’s “abysmal” public high school performance — and puts a new spin on the academic gains made during the seven years that Arne Duncan led the Chicago schools before he was named U.S. Education secretary.

The Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago, a supporter of Duncan and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s push for more control of city schools, issued the report June 30. It says city schools have made little progress since 2003.

Its key findings stand in stark contrast to assertions President Obama made in December when he nominated Duncan as Education secretary. …

In December, Obama said that during a seven-year tenure, Duncan had boosted elementary school test scores “from 38% of students meeting the standards to 67%” — a gain of 29 percentage points. But the new report found that, adjusting for changes in tests and procedures, students’ pass rates grew only about 8 percentage points.

Obama also said Chicago’s dropout rate “has gone downevery year he’s been in charge.” Though that’s technically true, the committee says it’s still unacceptably high: About half of Chicago students drop out of the city’s non-selective-enrollment high schools. And more than 70% of 11th-graders fail to meet state standards, a trend that “has remained essentially flat” over the past several years.

Even among those who graduate, it says, skills are poor: An analysis of students entering the Chicago City Colleges in fall 2006 showed that 69% were not prepared for college-level reading, 79% were not prepared for writing, and 95% were not prepared for math.

“Performance is very bad, very weak,” says Civic Committee president Eden Martin.

Obama also said Chicago students’ ACT test score gains “have been twice as big as those for students in the rest of the state.” Again, technically true — ACT data show that Chicago students’ composite score rose 0.9 points from 2002 to 2006, while Illinois’ score rose 0.4 points. But Chicago students’ composite score of 17.4 was lower than the statewide average of 20.5.

The jist is, the passing point was lowered to make the numbers jump in Chicago.

From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

Instead of focusing on actual improvement in education, it appears that Duncan and Daley instead focused on ways in which to give the false impression of progress.  The results are sadly predictable.  Despite the almost-doubling of elementary test scores, the end result is the same — a high dropout rate, and an outrageously high failure rate on state standards.  The obvious conclusion is that Duncan and Daley were a lot more interested in political and statistical machinations than in making the kind of dramatic changes necessary to ensure quality education for Chicago’s children.

Now, thanks to Obama and the Chicago Way, we have that mindset applied to the national educational effort.

Indeed. It’s completely dishonest. As the end of the USA Today story notes:

Blogger Alexander Russo, who writes about Chicago schools, says the findings show that nearly 15 years into mayoral control, the city school system “isn’t nearly as improved as many have been led to believe.”

“What I find particularly appalling is that Duncan and Obama — supposed champions of transparency and using research rather than ideology — have cited Chicago’s inflated test scores, even though they knew the increases were exaggerated.”

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