A new research paper by a team of economists got a lot of pretty favorable press because it appears to deliver results that would seem to confirm what many in the media believe about American schools: If you could just use standardized test scores to weed out underperforming teachers, you would see serious improvement in school achievement.

Media coverage often glosses over the core problem here, which is how you measure teacher performance in the first place. The "value-added" research that is touted by many pundits--using test scores to determine a teacher's effectiveness--is controversial in large part because critics don't think it does what its supporters say it does (not to mention that dramatic swings in such scores from year to year, which can make a teacher "great" one year and below average the next). These are rather important criticisms that value-added boosters should engage.

Or they can be New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. In Kristof's first column on the research (1/12/12), he cheered the study's suggestion that good teachers boost student incomes:

Each of the students will go on as an adult to earn, on average, $25,000 more over a lifetime--or about $700,000 in gains for an average size class--all attributable to that ace teacher back in the fourth grade. That's right: A great teacher is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each year's students, just in the extra income they will earn.

There have been several interesting critiques written of this, which was written by Harvard's Raj Chetty and John Friedman and Columbia's Jonah Rockoff, but has not yet been peer-reviewed or published. At the United Federation of Teachers blog (1/8/12), Leo Casey argues that value-added research

assumes that standardized exams are accurate, reliable and robust measures of actual student learning, a necessary assumption if one is to use them as a measure of teacher performance.  It is tautological to claim that an analysis proves what it assumes, especially when that assumption is precisely what is contested in the public debate over standardized tests and value added measures.

Casey goes on to note that the singling out of future earnings--which featured so prominently in the coverage of the study--is also problematic. He cites another critic, education writer and scholar Sherman Dorn, who wrote:

If you want to generalize this claim beyond the data used for the study--associating the group effect scores with teacher quality more generally, making claims about lifetime income, or extrapolating to policy questions--you are making assumptions beyond what the data support.

These are some of the many criticisms of the study. But Kristof's follow-up column (1/22/12) skipped any serious discussion in favor of this caricature:

After I wrote about the study, skeptics of school reform wrote me to say: Sure, a great teacher can make a difference in the right setting, but not with troubled, surly kids in a high-poverty environment.

Who is arguing that poor, "surly" kids can't be reached by good teachers?

Kristof then goes on to find a living, breathing rebuttal to an argument no one is making. "Olly Neal was a poor black kid with an attitude," Kristof tells readers. His life turned around when his teacher, Mildred Grady, started buying books she thought he might enjoy and placing them in the library. That changed Neal's life--he "caught the book bug," went to college and eventually became a judge. And thus, Kristof argues:

To me, the lesson is that while there are no silver bullets to chip away at poverty or improve national competitiveness, improving the ranks of teachers is part of the answer. That’s especially true for needy kids, who often get the weakest teachers. That should be the civil rights scandal of our time.

Sure. But wait:

The implication is that we need rigorous teacher evaluations, more pay for good teachers and more training and weeding-out of poor teachers.

It's hard to see how anyone could jump to that conclusion. In the world of value-added research, Grady's work would be judged not by whether she created a new reader who grew up to be a judge, but on the incremental progress of a large group of students that could be seen on a standardized test. If anything, the story suggests--contrary to what Kristof and supporters of value-added research like to claim--that figuring out what makes a great teacher isn't necessarily going to be tied to test scores.

As Times education columnist Michael Winerip put it in his January 16 column:

The danger is that education policy gets driven by teaching methods that can be given a number.

I suspect that Mr. Noyes, my 11th grade Advance Placement American history teacher from 40 years ago, had a low value-added rating. As I recall, no one in our class got a top score of 5; I got a 3. There was no prepared curriculum aligned with the test: Mr. Noyes built the lessons. On any given topic, he would assign us several books that viewed history through different lenses--economics, politics, personality.

I have long ago forgotten the content of those lessons, but Mr. Noyes instilled in us something far more important: the understanding that history does not come from one book. While that idea has served me for a lifetime, I do not believe it is quantifiable.

In theory, presidential campaigns are a valuable opportunity for journalists to evaluate candidates' positions on important issues so citizens can make an informed choice. Actual media coverage is different, of course. And it's striking how some media voices diminish the importance of what the candidates are saying, treating it as meaningless theater that need not bear any relation to what they really think.

It's remarkably cynical--and arguably dangerous as well. But that seems to be the approach when it comes to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. As Jim Naureckas already pointed out, there's a tendency in the corporate media to argue that Romney's flipflops are a strength, not a liability.

In the meantime, one should apparently be comforted by the fact that, soon enough, the "real" Romney will prevail. Here's Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen today (1/10/12):

Conservatives fear Romney is not telling the truth about his ideological conviction. Others, such as myself, are counting on it. We will forgive him these trespasses since to want to eliminate much of the Cabinet, reject all science regarding climate change, white-out the Federal Reserve or the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, round up all undocumented immigrants, mindlessly turn education over to local authorities, end the government's role in just about everything, and prohibit abortion, contraception and the errant midday sexual thought (pretty much the entire conservative platform right there) would severely hurt the American economy, not to mention ruining any chance of fun.

And Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times ("Waiting for Mitt the Moderate," 1/5/12):

If we do see, as I expect we will, a reversion in the direction of the Massachusetts Romney, that's a flip we should celebrate. Until the Republican primaries sucked him into its vortex, he was a pragmatist and policy wonk rather similar to Bill Clinton and President Obama but more conservative. (Clinton described Romney to me as having done "a very good job" in Massachusetts.) Romney was much closer to George H.W. Bush than to George W. Bush....

So, in the coming months, the most interesting political battle may be between Romney and Romney. Now, do we really want a chameleon as a nominee for president? That’s a legitimate question. But I'd much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn't require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says things that Republican candidates have all been saying and, God forbid, actually means it.

These are remarkable endorsements of a fraudulent and insincere brand of politics.

Squint or you'll miss it--the Sunday front page of the Washington Post:

In case you're having trouble finding it, it's in the lower right-hand corner: a blurb approximately one column inch long, directing people to page A20 to find news about protests in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street in "more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa and Asia."

It wasn't just the Post that was having trouble finding the news in hundreds of protests around the world. NBC's Meet the Press featured Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, former Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote yesterday (10/16/11), "I do hope that the protesters have lofted the issue of inequality onto our national agenda to stay." Not if the people who set the national agenda have anything to say about it.

In his New York Times column today (3/24/11)--headlined "Hugs From Libyans"--Nicholas Kristof boils down the argument in favor of the war in Libya:

Then, on Wednesday in Benghazi, the major city in eastern Libya whose streets would almost certainly be running with blood now if it weren’t for the American-led military intervention, residents held a "thank you rally." They wanted to express gratitude to coalition forces for helping save their lives.

Kristof goes on to write that "a humanitarian catastrophe has been averted for now," and that the air strikes could not wait: "A couple of days of dutiful consultation would have resulted in a bloodbath and, perhaps, the collapse of the rebel government."

At the same time, Kristof acknowledges that "the uncertainties are huge" and that "there are enormous uncertainties," concluding:

But weighed against those uncertainties are a few certainties: If not for this intervention, Libyan civilians would be dying on a huge scale.

It is somewhat jarring to read someone argue that there are many uncertainties about the Libya war, but simultaneously declare that a bloodbath was certain.  However you feel about this war, one could argue that a slaughter in Benghazi was a possibility, or that it was more likely than unlikely. But a certainty?

What is certain is that fighting on the ground is continuing in some Libyan cities. A Times news article today describes the situation:

A pounding from allied warplanes in the rebel-held city of Misurata forced Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's troops to pull back for much of the day, residents said, but by nightfall his forces had renewed their attacks. Government tanks terrorized the city, in one instance firing a shell that landed 20 yards from a hospital door.

It is somewhat unusual for the Times to describe shelling near a hospital as terrorism. Is that label applied consistently? When Israeli forces shelled a UN school in Gaza and killed 40 people in 2009, was it considered to terrorize the local population? Read one of the Times accounts of that attack, and others like it that killed civilians. Or read this one. No doubt in both cases civilians were terrorized. But the label seems to apply in one case more than another.

Start with USA Today's headline (2/3/11):

Mubarak Supporters Weigh In: Anti-Government Rallies Shaken by Rival Protesters

The forces attacking the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square were not "rival protesters"; they were government agents, complete in many cases with police ID cards that were confiscated when violent provocateurs were apprehended by activists (Al Jazeera English, 2/2/11). As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (2/3/11)  put it in his firsthand report from the square:

The events were sometimes presented by the news media as "clashes" between rival factions, but that’s a bit misleading. This was an organized government crackdown, but it relied on armed hoodlums, not on police or army troops.

The USA Today piece, by Jim Michaels and Theodore May, was a prime example of the kind of deceptive coverage Kristof was talking about. In USA Today's version, the thugs bringing violence to heretofore peaceful demonstrations were civic-minded individuals "worried that groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood would take over if free elections are held" and "saving Egypt from the Islamic extremism that has infected the Middle East." The piece even quoted Egyptian state TV as explaining that the camel-riding goons running down protesters were actually "pyramid workers who were protesting the negative economic impact of the crisis."

Contrary to other eyewitness accounts, in USA Today's world both sides are equally responsible for violence, as "protesters took chunks of concrete from the street to use as ammunition and occasionally tossed Molotov cocktails at each other."

Michaels has a history of deceptive, credulous reporting from the Middle East and Afghanistan (FAIR Blog, 7/1/10, 8/6/10, 8/27/10; Extra!, 9-10/08). But this report is a poor effort even for him.

In his May 23 column--"Moonshine or the Kids?"--New York Times columnist Nick Kristof has hit upon the "simplest option" for keeping poor African kids in school (and ending malaria): getting their fathers to stop drinking, smoking and whoring.

There's an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It's a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous:

It's that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children's prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.

Kristof gleans this from visiting some families in the Congo Republic in which, Kristof says, the fathers spend far more on alcohol than it would cost to send their kids to school or buy bed nets to protect them from malaria. He backs this evidence up with an MIT study that he links to, which he says shows

that the world's poor typically spend about 2 percent of their income educating their children, and often larger percentages on alcohol and tobacco: 4 percent in rural Papua New Guinea, 6 percent in Indonesia, 8 percent in Mexico. The indigent also spend significant sums on soft drinks, prostitution and extravagant festivals.

That's right, the poorest of the world's children lack education and decent health to no small degree because their extravagant parents have their priorities in the wrong place. "That probably sounds sanctimonious, haughty and callous," Kristof writes. But "if we’re going to make more progress, and get kids like the Obamza children in school and under bed nets, we need to look unflinchingly at uncomfortable truths--and then try to redirect the family money now spent on wine and prostitution."

Actually, it does sound sanctimonious, haughty and callous--but more importantly, it's a seriously flawed argument. The study Kristof points to paints a different picture--one that doesn't back up the sweeping generalizations and conclusions he makes based on his anecdotal evidence.

First, it's bizarre that he mentions prostitution multiple times in his column, since the study doesn't actually mention it. (It doesn't seem to mention soft drinks, either.) As for the "extravagant" festivals, that plus other entertainment averages just a little over 2 percent--less than education spending.* I'd like to see what Kristof's entertainment budget looks like in comparison.

In fact, the study shows that in the 13 countries surveyed, the most "significant sums" the very poor spend are the 56 percent to 78 percent of their money that goes just toward food.

And how about education? Here Kristof cherry-picks and completely misrepresents the study data. Comparing overall average spending on education to particular countries' alcohol and tobacco spending is comparing apples to oranges. If you compare the overall averages, it's 2.7 percent on education (which most would call "about 3 percent," not "about 2 percent") versus 3.0 percent on alcohol and tobacco. Looking at particulars, those heavy-drinking and -smoking Indonesians Kristof highlights still spend more on education than their vices (6.3 percent vs. 6.0 percent), and the Mexicans in the study who spend 8.1 percent on alcohol and tobacco, come across looking much better when that's compared to how much they spend on education--6.9 percent--rather than the study-wide average, which is pretty much irrelevant.

Here's what the study says about spending on education: "The reason spending is low is that children in poor households typically attend public schools or other schools that do not charge a fee. In countries where poor households spend more on education, it is typically because government schools have fees (as in Indonesia and Cote d'Ivoire)."

As for alcohol and cigarettes, a high percentage (44 percent) say they want to be spending less on those. Those substances do happen to be addictive, and I have a feeling there aren't so many addiction programs available for them.

In other words, Kristof's "ugly secret" about the drinking, smoking, whoring poor is hardly ubiquitous, and getting parents to shift the tiny amount of income they spend on such things to education is highly unlikely to transform their children's prospects. Asking the poorest of the poor to put more of their minuscule disposable income towards their children's education might be the "simplest" option--if your goal is to let governments, and the global financial system that keeps those governments indebted and structurally adjusted, off the hook for making quality public education available, free of charge.

*Kristof seems to be using the study's numbers for the rural very poor--living on less than a dollar a day--so I'm using those numbers as well.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof issued a call in his column today for pundit accountability.

After making a problematic argument about knowledge and experience being overrated, Kristof correctly pointed out that in the media, “the marketplace of ideas for now doesn’t clear out bad pundits and bad ideas partly because there’s no accountability," and he concluded his article with a call for action: “Hold us accountable!”

Does this mean Kristof will now acknowledge the error of his prediction last month that the president of Sudan would not kick out aid groups in Darfur if the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest?

As Julie Hollar recently noted on the FAIR Blog, Kristof had encouraged the ICC warrant, writing (2/26/09) that fears of such retaliation were "overblown."

But Sudanese president Bashir has indeed followed through on his threat, lashing out in exactly the way many other experts--including Julie Flint and Alex de Waal (Guardian, 7/13/08)-- had predicted. Yet as Hollar noted on the FAIR Blog, Kristof didn’t “acknowledge his error and continue[d] to dispense advice” in his subsequent (3/4/09) column on Darfur.

Nor did he acknowledge the error in his latest (3/8/09) Darfur column.

Perhaps it's time to heed Kristof's call to action.

(Kristof's email address is, by the way, nkristof@nytimes.com, and the email for letters to the Times editor is letters@nytimes.com. Kristof also has a blog where concerned readers can post comments.)

Just last week (2/26/09), Nicholas Kristof, who has written often about the situation in Darfur, was rooting for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, as a step towards "help[ing] end the long slaughter and instability in Sudan":

Next Wednesday, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

That would be historic--the first time the court has called for the arrest of a sitting head of state. It would be the clearest assertion that in the 21st century, mass murder is no longer a ruler’s prerogative.

There has been concern that Mr. Bashir will lash out by expelling aid workers or that Sudan’s fragile north/south peace agreement will become unglued if Mr. Bashir is ousted. Those fears are overblown. Time and again, Mr. Bashir has responded to pressure and scrutiny by improving his behavior and increasing his cooperation with the United Nations and Western countries.

Got it: Bashir would never expel aid workers in retaliation for the international community trying to arrest him, even though he keeps saying he will, and a lot of experts think he'll follow through.

Let's check in with Kristof again this week, now that the ICC did what he wanted:

One of Mr. Bashir’s first actions after the arrest warrant was to undertake yet another crime against humanity: He expelled major international aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee and the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders. In effect, he is now preparing to massacre the Darfuri people in still another way, for Darfuris are living in camps and depend on aid workers for food, water and healthcare--even as deadly meningitis has broken out in one of the camps.

"The consequences are going to be dire," notes George Rupp, the president of the International Rescue Committee, on which 1.75 million Sudanese depend for water, sanitation, education and healthcare. “If Sudan persists in this decision, it’s difficult to see how the outcome will be anything other than serious suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of people.”

So the political move Kristof pushed for is now most likely going to result in serious suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of people the columnist is trying to "save." Yet Kristof doesn't acknowledge his error and continues to dispense advice: Obama should "insist" that Bashir reverse his decision. And what sort of leverage does Obama have for that, now that the ICC card has been played? It would appear to come in Kristof's step two: "Destroy one of Mr. Bashir’s military planes with a warning that if he takes his genocide to a new level by depriving Darfuris of food and medical care, he will lose the rest of his air force."

Alex de Waal, who has much more expertise on the Darfur situation than Kristof, thinks the ICC warrant was a pretty bad political decision:

The ICC is a terribly bad instrument of pressure, because (a) the pressure can never be removed and (b) pressure only works if the end point to which the pressure is applied can be accepted by the party being pressured. The ICC indictment meets neither of these criteria.

Independent journalist Julie Flint agrees:

The immediate future for Darfurians is a sharp decline in the remarkable humanitarian work that has reduced mortality rates to near-normal levels in the aftermath of the massacre years of 2003-04. Where’s the justice in that?

Unfortunately, astute observers like de Waal and Flint don't have the same media platform as interventionists like Kristof.

Consortium News' Robert Parry (3/5/09) uses New York Times do-gooder Nicholas Kristof as an example of blatant corporate media hypocrisy:

Kristof--like many of his American colleagues--is applauding the International Criminal Court's arrest order against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for his role in the Darfur conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives....

By all accounts, Kristof is a well-meaning journalist who travels to dangerous parts of the world, like Darfur, to report on human rights crimes. However, he also could be a case study of what's wrong with American journalism.

While Kristof writes movingly about atrocities that can be blamed on Third World despots like Bashir, he won't hold U.S. officials to the same standards.

Most notably, Kristof doesn't call for prosecuting former President George W. Bush for war crimes, despite hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s illegal invasion of their country. Many Iraqi children also don't have hands--or legs or homes or parents.

Kristof is far from alone though--as Parry notes: "No one in a position of power in American journalism is demanding that former President Bush join President Bashir in the dock at The Hague." In fact, even the most modest attempts at accountability invariably are met by big media jeers; see the FAIR Action Alert: "CNN Scoffs at White House Critics: Anchor With Bush Ties Dismisses Abuse-of-Power Hearings as 'Stagecraft'" (7/31/08)