Fun with numbers
Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Tribune editorial board…
Here’s a haunting statistic that we cannot repeat too often: Of all the school districts in the U.S., Chicago Public Schools has one of the longest waiting lists for admission to a charter school. There are 19,000 students on the list this year.
* Actual facts…
There’s just one problem with that number: it’s not accurate. It significantly overstates demand.
A WBEZ analysis found the 19,000 figure counts applications, not students, meaning if a student applies to four schools, he or she is counted four times. It includes kids who have turned down charter seats and are now enrolled in other schools.
Perhaps the most startling finding is that a significant chunk–about 3,000–are high school dropouts applying for alternative schools. What’s more, saying that 19,000 students are on waiting lists to get into charter schools ignores another figure: there are between 3,000 and 5,000 available seats in charter schools right now, according to charter advocates.
The waiting list number comes from a biennial report compiled by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2012. The figure is roughly calculated from a chart in that ISBE report that compares numbers for how many applications a charter school received with to the number of available seats. The numbers are from 2010-11, the most recent available.
But 19,000 applications is not the same as 19,000 students. [Emphasis added.]
* Tribune editorial board…
Last year, state lawmakers were forced to slash those services to save money. They limited prescription drugs coverage. They curbed or eliminated some surgeries, dental and podiatric treatments and mental health services. There was real pain for people who belonged on Medicaid in part because of … those who didn’t. Every dollar Illinois spends on an ineligible recipient is a dollar not available to care for low-income people who rely on this program to keep them healthy.
The pain is not over. Those Medicaid budget cuts are still a work in progress. Hamos says the state will fall $464 million short of the promised $1.6 billion.
I, too, cited Hamos’ $464 million last month and then received this e-mail from state Sen. Heather Steans, an approp committee chairperson…
I just wanted to let you know that while savings are behind in SMART Act, the FY12 Medicaid liability came in $395 million under estimates, which makes up much of the difference.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:25 pm:
Geez, make an effort, Tribbies. Some of you were reporters once, right? check it out before you publish.
- siriusly - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:29 pm:
Tribune’s modern day fact checking system has an acronym, it’s FOIA. They only print numbers, they don’t double check, research or put things in context anymore.
- Been There - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:32 pm:
I’m down to just the Sunday paper for the Trib. I might give that up also. But I bet the Trib counts me as a subscriber for their ad numbers. Maybe they count somebody who gets the paper everyday as 7 subscribers.
- Evil or stupid - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 2:47 pm:
I just don’t get the Tribune edit board anymore. Are they aware of the facts and recklessly dismissing them, or lazily printing whatever information they receive without a fact check? Reminds me of that Daily Show “evil or stupid” sketch… Not sure which is worse, but the result is a readership - however small theirs might be - who doesn’t catch WBEZ or Rich’s breakdown, and assumes the Trib has it right.
- Ann - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 3:10 pm:
I agree with Evil or Stupid. It’s as though they’ve decided to just go ahead and print whatever garbage their buddies send them with no further obligation.
- Frank - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 3:32 pm:
We’ve seen an increasingly opinionated Trib editorial board in recent years — at least on certain issues. Pensions and education reform are two of the most prominent. Obviously, expressing an opinion is what editorial boards do. But most modern newspapers are careful to take a sober and evenhanded approach so they maintain at least the venear of being above the fray, like a neutral third party. Most papers in the state follow this model, but not the Trib. They’re all in — and because of that they frequently establish themselves as advocates on certain issues instead of referees. And guess what advocates do from time to time? They shade the truth, to put it mildly, or only report half the story. That’s what the Trib got caught doing with this charter school editorial.
It’s never a good thing for a newspaper to report half the story, even while expressing an opinion on the editorial page. It really cuts their crediblity to pieces. And that lack of credibility bleeds from the editorial page to the front page over time.
I suggest that the Tribsters take deep breath before tackling their pet causes in the future and maybe allow for the possiblity that every once in a while they might not be 100 percent correct about a given issue. Certitude can lead to errors, while a little self-doubt usually leads one to the truth.
- 47th Ward - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 3:36 pm:
75% of readers don’t understand statistics. The other half doesn’t care.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 4:01 pm:
While it is all well and good to applaud kicking people out of Medicaid who are not eligible, remember, this money isn’t going to them, it is going to the providers who provide them medically necessary health care. Kicking them out doesn’t make those people healthy nor insulate them from getting sick. They simply become uninsured. The uninsured have a higher mortality rate than the insured. So, literally, kicking people off of Medicaid is going to kill some people. Something to applaud?
- Evil or stupid - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 4:23 pm:
Nicely put, 47th Ward. Frank, as a friend of mine likes to say, they’re entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
- Wensicia - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 5:19 pm:
The Tribune editorial board has turned to partisan political rhetoric and theater over objective analysis and opinion in matters of public education.
It’s hard to take their editorials seriously.
- Willie Stark - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 5:23 pm:
The editorial page is an embarrassment. In a March 28 editorial, commenting on state election laws they find unfair, they offered these two gems:
1. “Following an Illinois tradition that resembles a Stalin-esque concentration of power, the incumbent political party of North Riverside kicked the Transparency & Accountability in Politics Party off the ballot — because the ampersand allegedly made its name too long to be there legally.”
2. “While laws limiting ballot access are necessary to weed out genuinely ineligible candidates, election panels and court precedent have transformed those laws into a labyrinth so favorable to insiders, so undemocratic, that Josef Stalin himself would blush with pride.”
Academic experts are debating how many of his own people Stalin murdered. Is it 20 million, 40 million, or somewhere in between? He is every bit as deserving of being grouped in with the other genocidal dictators of the 20th century. But, the Trib has such little self awareness or smarts, they breezily refer to Stalin in a way that if they had returned to his German contemporary, they would have brought condemnation on themselves and cries of outrage.
Maybe it is the case that those election laws should be changed, but likening the laws and procedures established in an American democracy and changeable by its citizens/voters to something that Josef Stalin would do, betrays a kind of unhingement and lack of perspective that further discredits an editorial voice that has demonstrated repeatedly it does not deserve the benefit of the doubt in its opinion on any matters.
The Trib, simply, cannot be trusted to provide an accurate view of reality. And, if a newspaper doesn’t have that, what is its value? As a middle-aged white male, I think the Trib has become a middle-aged white male in black socks and shorts, standing on the porch and yelling at the kids to get off its lawn, wishing for those grand old days of the 1950s when everything was just perfect!
- oz - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 6:35 pm:
We must first create the crisis so that we can later use the crisis, don’t waste it, and look like a genius.
There’s over 100,000 gang members in the city of Chicago and only 400 rooms left at the Cook County Jail too!
Better get started on the jail privitization plan.
We’ll leave the light on..
- Meaningless - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 7:01 pm:
I’m happy to see that many others are starting to see the Tribune’s editorials as the joke they really are. I dropped my subscription a long time ago and don’t miss their extremely biased propaganda and shabby journalism one bit.
- RNUG Fan - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 7:58 pm:
Who would notice a Koch brothers takeover?
- truthteller - Tuesday, Apr 2, 13 @ 8:09 pm:
Reporters who get the facts wrong are promoted to editor at the Trib. Editorials are opinion-based
- HGW XX/7 - Wednesday, Apr 3, 13 @ 12:15 am:
This should be no surprise since many of the mainstream media outlets (such as the Tribune) are sycophants to the incessant pro-business public privatization mentality that exists out there. To present the actual facts would get in their way and run counter to their self-serving interests that this type of sensationalist journalism bolsters. This news blurb the Tribune ran, besides being a flawed statistical distortion, is also meaningless if not placed in the proper context.
A little research exposes charter schools as being overrated thus not even really newsworthy of any grand concern or hype on their supposed lack of availability. An extensive study on charter schools by Stanford University reveals a very mixed bag on charter school’s effectiveness. Of particular note the study found that only 17 percent outperformed traditional public schools, 46 percent performed the same, and 37 percent actually performed worse.
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/National_Release.pdf
An important point to consider here is that traditional public schools have to accept all students who live in their district. However since charter schools have the advantage of being able to ‘cherry pick’ the students they accept then those charters that perform only the same as traditional public schools should be view as a failure since they could not capitalize on this significant advantage. Thus 83 percent of charter schools should be viewed as failures.
Rather than running sensationalist blurbs the Tribune would do much better to run better nuanced, researched, and placed in the proper context editorials such as this one the New York Times recently ran.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/opinion/more-lessons-about-charter-schools.html?_r=0
While it may be politically expedient for the politicians and media to look at the schools and teachers to focus inquiry on, I believe in the final analysis it is the parents that hold the primary key as to whether their children succeed in life.