This Day in Numbnuts Journalism

This day in fucking irritating journalism. The NY Times reports on Lebron James' school:

"Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent."

OH MY FUCKING GOD! This is a STELLAR example of how to lie with statistics. Let's convert both numbers into the same measure.

You could say that Nataylia missed 50 days of school last year and is on track to miss 36 days this year. Or you could say her attendance rate has gone from 72 percent last year to 80 percent so far this year. The problem is that both of those constructions make it pretty obvious that (a) Nataylia is still missing a lot of school, and (b) her attendance rate is only a little better than last year. So her attendance was fudged to make it hard to figure that out. This is journalistic malpractice.

If you read carefully between the lines of the Times article, this is what you get:

If:
You refuse to take students in the bottom ten percent . . .

And you choose students whose parents have affirmatively shown an interest in getting their kids into a better school . . .

And you increase the school’s budget by 50 percent to hire lots of tutors and extra aides . . .

And you extend both the school day and the school year . .

Then:

You can expect a modest improvement in performance during the students’ first year.

I don't know any teachers who wouldn't cut off a thumb if they could get a 50% budget increase and at the same time get rid of their 3 or 4 worst students.

I hate to sound cynical, but there is really nothing noteworthy here aside from the egregiously unethical reporting.

About this website

NYTIMES.COM

LeBron James Opened a School That Was Considered an Experiment. It’s Showing Promise.

The inaugural class of third and fourth graders at the school has posted extraordinary results on its first set of test scores.

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