Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 1: Stedman The Achievement Crisis is Real:
A Review of The Manufactured Crisis
8 Apr 1996
Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 1: Stedman The Achievement Crisis is Real: A Review of The Manufactured Crisis
8 Apr 1996Andrew Coulson
andrewco@IX.NETCOM.COMLike Berliner's 1993 EPAA paper, The Manufactured Crisis is a fanciful and selective romp through the data on public schooling. Anyone who is currently relying on or quoting this material will do themselves a great favor by reading Larry Stedman's recent detailed critique of their treatment of the academic achievement data (also published in the Education Policy Analysis Archives). For those wondering if only the academic achievement data is mistreated by Berliner and Bracey, the answer appears to be no. My bedtime reading over the past week has been a combination of the Manufactured Crisis and two telephone-book sized tomes: The Handbook of Human Intelligence (Edited by Sternberg), and the 1993 issue of the Digest of Education Statistics (Dept. of Ed.). Based on the research compiled in the Handbook, B. & B.'s coverage of the IQ data is very poor. They draw causal conclusions from correlational data on numerous occations, and are prone to offer unsupported conjecture as fact. They infer from the positive correlation between years of schooling and higher IQs that schooling increases IQ, but specialists in the field have argued the converse--that students who have an affinity for academics and schooling and a high tested intelligence tend to choose to stay in school for longer than students who perform poorly. Their figures for per-pupil education spending are outdated (1985) and misleading. They appear to combine private and public school spending, without mentioning that private schools spend less per-pupil, thus bringing down the average. The research on cost-effectiveness of public schools is given short shrift, and one of the key meta-analyses, conducted by Childs and Shakeshaft, is not mentioned at all. Furthermore, their belief that American students are more broadly educated than their foreign counterparts is entirely unsupported, not to mention far-fetched based on my personal travels in Europe and North America. In Europe it is common to encounter high-school and college students who speak two, three, or even four languages fluently, and are well versed in current events in the international arena. This (again in my own experience) is much less common in the United States. The Manufactured Crisis, however, is not a total loss. As Larry points out in the introduction to his critique, people have a tendency to research their opinions only until they find support. Berliner and Biddle act as devils' advocates for those, like myself, who are critical of public schooling, pushing us to support every aspect of our arguments with hard evidence. Because B. & B.'s beliefs are so poorly defended, however, this ends up reinforcing the case for radical reform. Probably not the outcome they had in mind.