Volume 5 - December 18, 1997
Dear Readers:
In this issue we look at a case study of how statistics can be manipulated to serve a political purpose. As a college instructor in policy analysis, this is something I try to teach students to be on the look for. As an advocate it is something I encourage people to avoid. As an author on the initiative process I know it is something that bothers voters a great deal. I hope you find this example worth reading.
One other note: due to soem problems with our e-mail server we may have not received some of your responses to previous editions of this newsletter. If so we apologize. Please feel free to contact me at "JShultz@igc.org".
Best Wishes,
Jim Shultz The Democracy Center
A CASE STUDY OF PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE FACTS
Heres a public question for Ron Unz and the supporters of the anti-bilingual initiative headed for the June ballot - do you want to make your case with the truth or do you just want to make your case? Consider the example of the Unz campaign's often-repeated claim that bilingual education has a 95% failure rate:
"Of the 1.3 million California schoolchildren--a quarter of our state's total public school enrollment--who begin each year classified as not knowing English, only about 5% learn English by year's end, implying an annual failure rate of 95% for existing programs."
Mr. Unz writing in the Los Angeles Times on October 19, 1997
"More than one-fifth of California's school children are being denied equal educational opportunity in racially segregated classrooms with a 95 percent failure rate. It cripples Hispanic children."
GOP Assemblyman Assemblyman Tom McClintock, in September in the Orange County Register:
It sounds like a pretty devastating indictment - 95% of California's youngsters in bilingual classes failing every year. It is an irresistible sound byte. It is also wrong. Here are the facts behind the Unz/McClintock claim:
1) Here is what the statistics refer to. Each year in California about 5% of the students classified as "Limited English Proficient" are re-classified as fluent in English. This group includes all "LEP" students, only a third of whom are in bilingual programs and most of whom are in exactly the type of English-only programs that Mr. Unz would like to force all students into.
2) Saying that 95% of the students fail each year is like saying that 75% of high school students fail to graduate each year because they happen to be freshman, sophomores and juniors. If a kindergartner doesn't become fluent in English in one year, is she a failure?
3) Lots of kids may be fluent in English and still classified as "LEP". Both my children are fluent in English but still classified as LEP just because the school has never gotten around to reclassifying them on paper.
The misleading claim launched by Mr. Unz and Mr. McClintock now has a life of its own. In October Law Professor and Democratic politico Susan Estrich wrote in a syndicated column, "Who can defend a system in which most kids who start in non-English classes stay there and only 5 percent move on each year from limited English to fluency?" GOP Senate candidate Darrell Issa jumped on as well with ads warning that students are, "trapped in a language system, based on the use of bilingual education, that has a failure rate of 95 percent."
For the Unz campaign the question comes down to whether or not truth matters. I have met with Mr. Unz. We may not agree on how best to reform bilingual education but I took him at his word that he intends to wage a campaign that is honest and takes the high road. I will share this edition of "The Democracy Center On-Line" with him. Regardless of how any of us view the initiative, we all ought to agree that voters and California's kids deserve a campaign based on fact not sound bytes woven out of misleadingly spun statistics.
THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 700 nonprofit organizations, policy makers, journalists and others.
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