Ravitch’s Lather-Without-Rinsing Rhetorical Style on School Choice

Anti-school-choice provocateur, Houston native, and New York resident Diane Ravitch has taken quite an interest in Rhode Island, to the point that she’s using her blog for a same-day attack on an op-ed in the Saturday edition of the Providence Journal. One can’t help but wonder how much of her attention on the state is at the behest of the local teachers’ unions.

With the audacity of somebody writing for a credulous audience, Ravitch puts her biggest sleight of hand at the front.  The essay to which she’s responding is by Michael Chartier, of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, and it concerns the results of a poll that his organization just released in cooperation with the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity.  (Here’s our analysis of the results.)  Writes Ravitch:

[Chartier’s] article is a jumble of mis-statements. For example, it claims that the people of Rhode Island want vouchers, but never admits that vouchers have never (NEVER) won the support of any public referendum in any state. The latest Gallup/Phi Delta Kappan poll showed that 70% of the public is opposed to vouchers. This is the highest level of opposition ever recorded in the history of the survey.

Simply put, it is not a “mis-statement” to accurately convey the results of a poll, and blowing smoke about national poll results to obscure local poll results seems to be more of a “jumble.”  A reliable analyst (with trust in her readers’ intelligence) wouldn’t pretend that a survey of 1,001 people across the entire United States (population 314 million) self-evidently disproves the findings of a survey of 602 people in Rhode Island (population 1 million). The Friedman poll has 180 times greater representation of the population being studied than does the Gallup/Phi Delta Kappan poll.

And that’s before we get to the questions that were asked.  Here’s how the Gallup/PDK poll tests for support of vouchers:

Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?

Note that the question about vouchers doesn’t use the word “vouchers.”  By contrast, when Friedman asked specifically about support for “school vouchers,” 40% favored them, 23% opposed them, and 37% said they’d never heard of them.  So Friedman offered the following explanation and then asked the question again:

A school voucher system allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools. If this policy were adopted, tax dollars currently allocated to a school district would be allocated to parents in the form of a “school voucher” to pay partial or full tuition for their child’s school.

56% of Rhode Islanders thought this sounded like a good idea.

Ravitch continues along her track, saying Chartier’s claims about Rhode Islanders are further disproved by the fact that, when “voters in Florida were asked to pass a referendum one year ago to permit vouchers for use in religious schools, they resoundingly said no.”  In this case, not only does Ravitch pretend there is no difference among Americans coast-to-coast, but she’s also misleading about what Floridians were voting on.

The referendum was to repeal an amendment in the state constitution that increases the separation of church and state beyond what’s in the U.S. Constitution.  School choice policies do have a stake in that outcome, but it’s not even close to a pure test.  Even the language of the New York Times article at the link illustrates the point: It says that under current law, religious groups “are barred from using [public] money to proselytize.”  That raises possibilities far beyond parents’ choice of school.

Sadly, Ravitch goes on, picking and choosing research results that she can twist to her preferred conclusion, sloughing off ambiguities and academically debatable points to hone her union-friendly saleswoman’s pitch.  She raises research resulting from just three school choice programs, when the full body of research is much broader… and much more encouraging for school choice.

Even looking at her first test case, Milwaukee, she acts as if the results are more decisive than an honest analyst would pretend.  Hers is not an uncommon trick; there are dozens of studies of the Milwaukee school choice program, and not only do they all address the very specific policy in that city, but they also have areas of legitimate academic disagreement.

For an example, dig down into just one study that Ravitch cites for her cause.  About the most that can be claimed is that school choice had mixed results when, for the first time ever, private schools had to give only their voucher students the same standardized test to which the public schools had been teaching for a decade.

Whatever one believes about standardized testing, this is a dubious comparison.  The reality is, however, that Ravitch doesn’t seem to harbor much belief in standardized testing… except where she sees an opportunity to serve her own arguments. This contradiction is especially problematic in the context of Saturday’s post, because she’s specifically arguing against the notion that Rhode Islanders want more school choice.

Somehow, Ravitch never gets around to addressing the reality that the poll finds that Rhode Islanders really do want school choice.  They have arguably the worst opinion in the country of the public schools in their state, and they would choose private schools more often, as well.  It is entirely within Rhode Islanders’ rights as a self-governing people to determine that the money they invest for the education of the children in their community should be allocated in the way that they want.

And yet, in her lather-well-without-rinsing technique, Ravitch keeps going, trying to pile on a bit of culture war divisiveness, linking to a story about (she says) “voucher schools” that “specifically bar gay students from enrolling” in Georgia.  But the article isn’t about a voucher program; it’s about a tax credit program, which Rhode Island already has. The article is also about Georgia, not Rhode Island.

As the school choice debate moves forward in the Ocean State — which is not the Peach State, the Sunshine State, the Badger State, the Empire State, or the Lone Star State — supporters of the reforms should be so lucky as to face only opposition that is as easily dismissed as Ravitch’s.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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