Bamboozlers

I thought I would return to educational rhetoric today, as yet another example of faulty reasoning appears to have left the keyboard of CNN Contributor Ruben Navarette (a conservative who rarely lets logic or the facts get in the way of his argument). Navarette has stepped into the fray between Jeb Bush and Matt Damon on the question of high stakes testing: CNN.com. Before moving forward to deconstruct his argument, I would like to offer a public service announcement to the left: “Stop letting actors and other celebrities be the leading voice on issues of national importance, particularly when their only expertise related to that issue is their ‘own public school experience’ or desire to, ‘like, get involved.’” Now back to your regularly scheduled program. The strategy employed here is what I'll henceforth label the “hypocritical oath.” This is when a person is announced as a hypocrite merely because they don’t do the thing they are advocating for, or are shown to have not done it in the past. It is similar to their “dance like an elephant, sting like an elephant” argument, claiming that changing positions on an issue is tantamount to committing a deadly sin.

But back to Navarette’s flawed argumentation skills. He starts with a rather spurious argument based on his impressive credentials as a substitute teacher for four years: “First, take it from someone who taught for four years as a substitute teacher in my old school district in Central California and who has written about education reform for more than two decades: Many educators don't want to advertise to the world how well their students are doing academically because, from there, it's a short walk to grading teacher performance. That is what accountability is all about. You probably have it in your job. I have it in mine. But a lot of public school teachers want nothing to do with it.” This sounds like a sound and logical argument on the surface, but includes a number of logical inconsistencies: 1. His credentials are offered as if being a sub a while ago for a few years and writing about something for two decades makes him an expert. In America, we know people can write and talk about things for 50 years and not be experts (as is the case with most of the right wing punditocracy). 2. How “many educators” are we talking about? Are there any statistics to support the claim that teachers don’t want to be assessed? Sure, at the national level there is resistance, but this gets to the third point, 3. Are high stake tests the best way to measure the effectiveness of teachers? There are several problems here, from the basic skills and proficiency nature of the test to the fact a teacher can’t control what happened during the period of schooling before the student arrived to the home life and general academic ability and motivation of students in a given year. Navarette thus engages in clever though flawed rhetorical strategies that include questionable ethos (or expertise), flawed logos (logical consistency and soundness) and backhanded justification (where a policy is justified as legitimate because of those opposed to it).

Now for the central argument the author makes, as explicated in the following excerpt, after revealing that, gulp, Damon has enrolled his children in private school: “The public schools are not progressive enough? In Los Angeles? Really? So despite his fondness for public schools, the 42-year-old actor doesn't want his children anywhere near them. Oh, oh. This caught the attention of Jeb Bush, who last week took to Twitter to denounce Damon's hypocrisy. Jeb Bush (@JebBush) tweeted: "Matt Damon Refuses to Enroll Kids in Los Angeles Public Schools. Choice ok for Damon, why not everyone else?" Fair? You bet. Damon has long been a cheerleader for the public schools, and so the actor deserved this spanking for his self-serving "good enough for thee, but not for me" defense of a public school system that he and his own family have abandoned. Others have said the same thing.”

Again this argument of “fairness” seems, well, fair on the surface. But let’s dig a little deeper. 1. Matt Damon claims that his public school experience, before the advent of high stakes testing, was rewarding and provided a quality education that led him on to Harvard. 2. He then argues that high stakes testing have undermined that quality education he received and thus argues for overturning these draconian measures. 3. He thus believes public schools are now worse because of new policies including NCLB. 4. Given these critiques, he should obviously send his kids to these flawed schools (the central argument of the piece). Obviously, the rational #4 is "Given his critiques of the public schools, he has chosen to send his kids to private school rather than risk their future." Wow, what a hypocrite! Just after this, he throws in the tiresome “liberal media” tagline just to label whatever comes after as inherently flawed, before the big finale arguing that Damon’s kids won’t even be affected by his push to change the public schools. Of course, the same argument could be made about the Iraq War, asthma rates in poor areas, employee safety laws, healthcare reform, liberating global markets, global warming and most of the policies enacted by our government that affect our representatives either second-hand or not at all.

In any case, Navarette uses flawed logic and reasoning throughout his article, as is so often the case on the right, while providing no tangible evidence to support his claim that NCLB and High Stakes testing in general have improved our schools. As Damon argues, there is strong evidence that they have done the exact opposite, as more focused and intense training (and that’s what it becomes as teachers "teach to the test" out of raw fear) in literacy and math does little to improve the quality of education, or even the test scores of our children. Accountability is important, but high stakes testing has shown little effectiveness in actually “providing a quality education to all students.”