Dear Editor:

In 1983, against legal advice, President Reagan released the report “Nation at Risk” outlining a catastrophic state of our public schools. This report had no proof from educational data. It was disturbing and rang a loud “false” bell in my head. Why would someone create a fraudulent report that makes our country look weak?

Ten years later I completed my master's in education so I could advocate for my children. I was still hearing political quotes on how poor we were in public education, and why we needed “for profit” charter schools to make education “more successful.” In 1990 Nation at Risk was debunked by Sandia Laboratories — commissioned by Secretary of Energy James Watkins to analyze data in the report. The results were censored from being published, while the debunked report continues to spew “standardized test” requirements causing good teachers to resign since the tests provide no new knowledge, waste teaching time, and frustrates students while basic study tests showed successful learning.

Politicians — who have not studied early childhood development and educational paths needed for brain development phases — continue to pontificate a solution for a debunked problem. When Sandia examined data using an accurate statistical method, the results were the opposite — namely learning was either steady or slightly improving, but there were no catastrophic failures. The rule in statistics is never compare oranges to apples, or average different data, such as wealthy kids versus poor kids, or top students versus low-ranked students. Instead, data should always break on like groups to determine a performance trend. If you average all subgroups you have the reverse result -learning performance is declining, versus the reality that learning is improving. Statisticians call it “Simpson’s paradox” when results can be opposite if statistical rules are not followed. My father taught me that.

In 2017 politicians continue using a debunked report to justify higher tax dollars awarded to “for-profit educators” on a flawed presumption that it is better education when it is not. U.S. public education is a success in spite of a debunked report but could be better when educators are in charge and statistical methods are accurate.

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb