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School research, impartiality and Jack Jennings

Back when this writer was slogging through journalism school, the debate over objectivity (particularly in connection with the blogosphere) was just getting heated up.  Now that the fistfight has bled into other endeavors, an examination of that debate may be instructive. 

Before I go any further, a story is in order.

While taking a newswriting class as part of my studies, a reporter from the Arizona Republic was invited for a guest lecture.  In the course of his remarks, he said an amazing thing (especially for a mainstream media reporter): the search for objectivity is an exercise in futility.  He summed up his attitude like this: "If three different people in three different locations see the same car crash, they’re all going to say something different or unique about the event.  Objectivity is impossible.  You’ll never reach it.  So why shoot for it?" 

At this point, my hand shot into the air.  "If journalists can’t be counted on to simply tell what happened with a given event or issue, then what’s the point of news?" 

His answer was actually rather instructive.  "Instead of aiming for objectivity, how about fairness?  If you try to be fair and equal with reporting a story," he said, "a modicum of objectivity will come through." 

That exchange took place back in the summer of 2003.  While some may seize upon these remarks as proof of media bias, his statements on fairness actually resonated with me, particularly as the debate really began to heat up over objectivity with respect to the blogosphere. 

Anybody with even passing familiarity with the blogosphere knows something of this debate.  Detractors say that blogs—with their built-in, loud-and-proud bias—may be fine for opinion and commentary, but can’t be relied upon for reporting of facts.  The basic defense to that criticism:

• Mainstream media claims of objectivity are a sham.  TV networks have been biased in their news coverage for decades (and newspapers for centuries).  So why demand a higher standard for blogs? 
• Expecting objectivity out of reporters is a bit unreasonable.  Every human has certain strongly-held opinions and beliefs.  Is it necessarily healthy for reporters—much less their readers or viewers—if we demand they start acting as automatons? 
• Knowing which way a writer tilts in his or her opinions can be beneficial for the reader.  If the writer is known to be center-left, the reader can compensate accordingly and draw their own conclusions from the writer’s remarks. 

Of course, that’s a summary of a rather complicated debate, so arguments on both sides are omitted.  But that’s largely where the discussion has found itself—a debate that still rages and will probably never be settled.  And much like a grassfire jumps into new territory, suddenly the eduresearch community finds itself in need of a bucket brigade.  Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation goes after Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy:

In an article headlined "Donkey in Disguise," posted on the Web site of the quarterly policy journal Education Next, http://www.educationnext.org/ , Forster accuses Jennings of labeling the center’s studies on state education policy as nonpartisan and independent while choosing research methods that always point to a Democratic Party solution: more federal money and fewer rules by the Bush administration.

"There’s no hope for improving education policy if we don’t keep the facts and evidence distinct from the public-school system’s party (and often partisan) line," Forster concluded.

And Jennings fires back:

Let me lay out my record as well as that of the center’s. I am a Democrat and have made no pretense that I am not. I worked for the Democrats on Capitol Hill for many years. But I always have thought that education is too important an issue to be partisan. Therefore, when I crafted legislation in the three decades I was on the Hill, I always tried to be bipartisan. Almost every meeting that I convened was for both Democrats and Republicans, and the results were that nearly every law I helped to write was passed by large bipartisan majorities.

When I established the Center on Education Policy, I carried that same policy of nonpartisanship into this work. The first chair of our board of directors, Chris Cross, had been a former Republican staff director on Capitol Hill and was also a political appointee in [George H.W. Bush’s] administration. In the last several years, as we have tracked [No Child Left Behind], we have been contacted by Republican and Democratic members of Congress who have wanted our advice on whether they understood correctly the effects of NCLB, and we have happily helped all of them. A week and a half ago, three days after we released our fourth annual NCLB report, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House education committees asked us to brief the aides of all members of Congress on our report. Members of Congress do not sponsor such events if they believe you have a partisan agenda.

What I find notable in Jennings’s response is what is missing: an answer to Forster’s charge of cloaking opinion and public school system statements as empirical research.  From page 2 of Forster’s article:

The trouble with the (CEP) studies is that they do not gather data about the issues they purport to examine. The authors have read large volumes of legal, regulatory, and administrative documents related to NCLB. This puts them in a good position to know, in detail, exactly what policies are being set. However, the CEP claims to be studying not what the policies are, but how they are implemented and how they are affecting education. To examine implementation the CEP relies exclusively on surveys of state education officials and interviews with public school staff. In other words, CEP researchers report as facts what the public school system says about how things are going in the public school system.

The CEP does not hide its methods.  The studies quite openly attribute their findings to surveys and interviews.  Phrases like “officials told us that…” and “according to the teachers we interviewed…” appear here and there.  Nonetheless, both the studies themselves and Jennings’s public comments about them present the findings as scientifically confirmed facts, not merely as the claims made by public school officials and staff.  They rely on the accuracy of these claims as a basis for policy recommendations.

Survey and interview data need not be dismissed across the board as unscientific.  A survey using scientific methods—such as random sample generation and, where appropriate, credible assurances of anonymity for interviewees—can produce legitimate empirical data on many subjects. But the CEP is investigating the merits of an accountability system by asking the opinion of the institution that is being held accountable.

To my mind, the linchpin of this entire argument is summed up in the WaPo article:

Chester E. Finn Jr., a former Reagan administration education official who runs the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and is on the Education Next editorial board, said Forster is right to say Jennings’s "politics and opinions color all that he does, says and publishes." But, Finn added: "This is no crime. Indeed, it’s the norm in Washington.

"What’s criminal is for the media to clothe him in a mantle of objectivity or neutrality," he said. Finn cited an Education Week report that called the Center on Education Policy "a Washington-based research organization" but said the Friedman Foundation was a "group that supports greater choice in education." If the newspaper were even-handed, he said, it would have described CEP as a "group that favors increased federal education spending." Education Week reporter Michelle Davis said she used words from the groups’ Web sites to describe them and mentioned Jennings’s Democratic Party background in the article.

Gerald W. Bracey, a Fairfax County-based educational psychologist and research columnist who opposes what he calls the Friedman Foundation’s campaign for "the elimination of publicly run schools," said Jennings "has indeed managed to get media to see him as impartial, in contrast, say, to me or Greg [Forster]."

But Jennings’s statements "usually sound reasonable to me," Bracey said, while Forster and Education Next seem partisans for vouchers and other Republican Party positions. (emphasis added)

In a way, this illustrates where the blogosphere debate over objectivity has wandered.  Blogs will be opinionated.  There’s no getting around it.  But are their statements valid, their reasoning sound, their conclusions acceptable?  That is how blogs are measured: on the merits of their reasoning, not some facile claim of objectivity. 

Comparing this line of thought to education research, it is absurd to expect Jack Jennings, who spent three decades as a Democratic education policy wonk on Capitol Hill, to suddenly morph into a nonpartisan specimen.  Of course he has strongly-held opinions and has specific ideas about how to improve education, and like Chester Finn, I wouldn’t begrudge him or anybody else the right to advance an agenda.  But it is equally as absurd to say that Jack Jennings should be able to seize some moral high ground of objectivity and thereby claim his research is somehow more authentic or legitimate.  His findings should be examined on their merits, not Jennings’s questionable posture as an independent third party.