{"id":1682,"date":"2009-07-13T17:08:20","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T21:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2009-07-13T17:08:20","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T21:08:20","slug":"hechinger-institute-hypes-the-obvious-this-is-a-role-model-for-reporters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1682","title":{"rendered":"Hechinger Institute hypes the obvious &#8212; this is a role model for reporters??"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I received an e-mail advertisement for a <a href=\"http:\/\/hechinger.tc.columbia.edu\/default.aspx?pageid=3477\">&#8220;webinar&#8221; on &#8220;The Dropout Crisis&#8221;<\/a> from the Hechinger Institute. This is <a href=\"http:\/\/hechinger.tc.columbia.edu\/default.aspx?pageid=759\">an organization that claims<\/a> it &#8220;exists to equip journalists with the knowledge and skills they need to produce fair, accurate and insightful reporting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Both the e-mail and the webpage for the seminar claim that &#8220;new research shows that  17 states produce some 70 percent of the students who don&#8217;t graduate.&#8221; Is that a mundane claim that is being hyped to produce seminar enrollment, or is it truly interesting? A quick check of <a href=\"http:\/\/nces.ed.gov\/programs\/digest\/d07\/tables\/dt07_033.asp?referrer=list\">the relevant table from the 2007 Digest of Education Statistics<\/a> reveals that &#8211;voila!&#8211; the 17 states with the highest high school enrollment also contain about 70 percent of all 9-12 enrollment in 50 states and DC (70.4%, if you want a third significant digit). In other words, this fact would be entirely expected simply from the pattern of school enrollment across the states.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230; is the Hechinger Institute modeling the type of &#8220;fair, accurate and insightful&#8221; publications that they wish reporters to produce, or are they trying to jack up enrollment with scary and misleading statistics? C&#8217;mon, folks: high school graduation and dropout patterns are of serious concern as it is, without modeling patently bad reporting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I received an e-mail advertisement for a &#8220;webinar&#8221; on &#8220;The Dropout Crisis&#8221; from the Hechinger Institute. This is an organization that claims it &#8220;exists to equip journalists with the knowledge and skills they need to produce fair, accurate and insightful reporting.&#8221; Both the e-mail and the webpage for the seminar claim that &#8220;new research shows [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-r8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}