WBEZ responds to Education Post guest column

Editor's note: This column is a response to Tracy Dell'Angela's guest column. Click here to read Dell'Angela's column.

Tracy Dell'Angela's guest column published July 3, 2015, in the Daily Herald contains numerous factual errors and misrepresentations of the WBEZ/Daily Herald series. Dell'Angela, a director at the Education Post (a national communications firm that advocates for Common Core standards, school choice and charter schools, and accountability), misquotes and misinterprets our reporting.

The WBEZ stories Dell'Angela's column refers are “Poverty's enduring hold on school success” and “A new way to think about school success: The Poverty-Achievement Index.”

Our stories were based on 11 years of state school data, jointly analyzed by WBEZ and the Daily Herald. Our purpose was to describe shifts in poverty in Illinois schools and analyze poverty's influence on schools' test scores.

Our Key Findings Showed

• Poverty is a frustratingly accurate predictor of how well Illinois schools perform. Broadly, the more low-income kids, the lower the scores — and over the last decade, our analysis shows that Illinois has made no progress in changing that reality. (Put in terms of our statistical analysis, the strength of the correlation between poverty and performance on state tests in Illinois schools is virtually unchanged between 2004 and 2014, at R2 =. 6618 in elementary schools in 2004 and R2=. 6691 in 2014).

• More poverty and more concentrated poverty. In the last decade, 65 percent of Illinois schools (2,244 schools) saw double-digit increases in the proportion of their students considered low-income. Seventeen percent of public schoolchildren in Illinois now attend a school where at least 90 percent of kids are considered low-income.

Education Post Misquotes WBEZ

Dell'Angela says her problem with the WBEZ story is its opening. Yet she inaccurately quotes our intro, and her partial quote seems to change the meaning of our language. Here is our original, which is essentially a reiteration of the American dream and current emphases in school reform:

“In the rhetoric of the American dream, an individual's success is earned through hard work and determination. In the rhetoric of recent school reforms, a school's success depends on quality teaching and high standards. Poverty shouldn't matter when it comes to either.”

Education Post Misquotes WBEZ Again

Dell'Angela incorrectly interprets our findings to be a commentary on current school reforms. She says that “in an on-air interview on WBEZ promoting the series, both reporters conclude school reform ‘isn't working' ...”

This is false. Neither reporter says this. Here is the unedited audio: https://soundcloud.com/morningshiftwbez/series-dives-into-connections

Here are WBEZ reporter Linda Lutton's exact words from that segment: “We look over the course of the last decade, from 2004 to 2014. And we find that poverty's hold on Illinois schools is as tight as ever. It's as deterministic as it has been. It's as predictive as it has been. And that's despite some very dramatic reforms. No Child Left Behind was in full implementation during that period of time in the state, we've had school closings, fully restaffed schools, new schools. And so, the fact that that relationship is just as strong — that's disconcerting.”

Chicago Data: Education Post Misinterprets

Our analysis finds that Chicago (where schools were once infamously dubbed the “worst in the nation”) actually looks better than its woeful reputation when its schools' poverty rates are taken into account, which we do through our Poverty-Achievement Index. In fact, as Dell'Angela notes, we report that in 2014, two-thirds of city schools do better than average for their given poverty levels. That's up from 50 percent in 2004.

Dell'Angela uses that fact to conclude that “evidence clearly shows that the Chicago school system is making steady progress…..” But that is not a conclusion that can be drawn from the information we present.

Our Poverty-Achievement Index, which is explained here http://www.wbez.org/new-way-think-about-school-success-poverty-achievement-index-112216 and here http://reportcards.dailyherald.com/lowincome/#notes, is comparative in nature. For any given income level, roughly half of all schools will score above the mean and half below. Chicago's scores *might* look better against all other scores in the state because of inherent improvement in Chicago, but that's not necessarily the case. The performance of all other schools at a given income level will affect how Chicago schools look on the measure as well. Our analysis did not measure whether the Chicago school system is making inherent progress over time.

We have been careful with the language in our reporting. Dell'Angela has misquoted and misinterpreted that language, then attacked us based on those misinterpretations.

Our sole interest was in describing the relationship between poverty and achievement in Illinois, and charting shifts that have taken place over the last decade. We presented our findings to researchers, advocates, and education officials from a variety of political persuasions — and their reactions to our analysis are represented in our stories. We believe our findings allow for many possible interpretations for action, including reforms Dell'Angela's group advocates for. We note that Dell'Angela offers no substantive criticism of our actual analysis.

We stand by our reporting and continue to believe that the issue of deepening poverty in Illinois schools is important, and that the public should be aware of the lack of overall movement on decoupling poverty from achievement.