Education Week Credulously Touts Industry-Sponsored Pro-Industry Report Without Having Read Said Report

One of the most important things journalists do is make complex things understandable for a general audience. Academic research, for example, is famously impenetrable and choked with jargon. Even less-obtuse policy analysis can be lengthy and based on data sources and methods that lay readers don’t have time to read or understand in minute detail. This, I assume, is the reason that Education Week has an entire blog devoted to school research, written by “Veteran reporter Debra Viadero,” who has “written more than 1,400 stories for Education Week and most of them have been about research.”

But this recent post from Viadero suggests that standards for reporting about research at Education Week leave much to be desired. It begins as follows:

In his State of the Union address last night President Obama reiterated his longstanding support for community colleges, calling them “a career pathway to the children of so many working families.” He may be right about that. But, as I  reported in this story back in September, the research on community colleges suggests they can also be a dead-end for students who get bogged down in noncredit remedial courses and never earn a certificate or a degree. A new study out this month, however, suggests that community colleges could take a cue from for-profit, or career, colleges.

The Educational Policy Institute, a research group in Virginia Beach, Va., based its study on a federal data on nearly 7,000 higher education institutions, 41 percent of which were career colleges, as well as its own surveys.It focused on students who were at risk of not graduating for a variety of reasons, including lack of a high school diploma, delayed enrollment, enrolling part-time, being a parent, or holding down a full-time job, and found that they stood a better chance of completing a degree or a certificate in a career college than they did in a community college. The career colleges had an average graduation rate of 59 percent for this group, compared to 23 percent for public two-year colleges and 55 percent at private, not-for-profit institutions. (A grain of salt here: the study was sponsored by a group that supports career colleges.)

First, a grain of salt? The “group” in question is the Imagine America Foundation. It’s true that it “supports” career colleges, in the sense that it is career colleges. According to its 2007 Form 990, Imagine America is located at 1101 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 900, in Washington, DC. This is also the address of the Career College Association, the primary lobbying organization representing for-profit colleges in the nation’s capital. On page 8 of the form, where it asks “Is the organization related (other than by association with a statewide or nationwide organization) through common membership, governing bodies, trustees, officers, etc., to any other exempt or nonexempt organization?”, IAF replied “Yes,” and listed “Career College Association.”  On page 18, it lists cash transfers of several hundred thousands of dollars involving the CCA and associates itself with both CCA the trade organization and CCA the (legally distinct) political action committee. On page 27, it lists liabilities owed to the CCA of nearly half a million dollars. Imagine America appears to have only a single employee, with a board comprised entirely of career college and loan industry representatives, including Harris Miller, whose salary and benefits are “received as president of the Career College Association.” And so on.

In other words, I would advise readers to employ a whole shaker-full of salt when reading this study. Or, to be more accurate, I would have advised them to do this if readers could actually read the study. Unfortunately, they can’t. It’s not available online. The only thing people can read is the press release,  which provides an email address to use to request a copy. I sent such a request last week, and have received no response. Perhaps it is in the mail.

Not wanting to wait, I emailed Debra Viadero to ask for a copy of the study. She sent me the press release. I emailed back saying “thanks,” but I was interested in the study itself. She replied by saying, in reference to the press release, “I’m afraid that’s all I have.”

In other words, Education Week’s ace veteran education research reporter is questioning the wisdom of a major multi-billion dollar Obama administration initiative supporting community colleges on the grounds that community colleges may be a “dead end” that could “take a cue” from for-profit colleges, based on a press release describing the findings of a study that was bought and paid for by for-profit colleges, a study that she hasn’t even read.

Meanwhile, Sara Goldrick-Rab thoroughly explains why the unpublished study’s findings don’t support that conclusion even if it says what the press release says it says.