I agree with Dominique J. Baker’s observation about the utility of “key statistics” at Brookings:
As a country, we need to understand who goes to school, where, and what their experiences are. It’s hard to ensure that students have access to quality education without some basic information about our schools.
IMO there is no better argument for why education should remain a state and local responsibility. The finer the granularity of the statistics you’re seeking the even truer that becomes.
The federal government has no way of compelling state and local governments to feed them information. They can provide incentives but the decreasing real discretionary spending
Sources: OMB and CBO
makes it that much harder. Education is not the only area in which that is true. It is particularly true related to national crime statistics. There are multiple major metropolitan areas that are known not to have provided the FBI with crime statistics for years. And then there are the issues of false, misleading, or incompatible reporting by different jurisdictions. How can you make prudent policy decisions about law enforcement based on that? I don’t think you can. That’s why we have legislatures.
Returning to education Chicago has proven definitively that the data reported by state and local governments cannot be taken at face value. Chicago reported data contrived to show improvements for years. The actual data made the mayor look bad.
At least for law enforcement we have multiple sources of information. The exact number may not be correct but the trend should be valid and that is usually what is most important. At present since education is mostly local and state funded they should remain responsible. I do occasionally worry about places that base education around their beliefs. My brother home schooled his kids and the girls were not taught math beyond addition and subtraction, multiplication and division and no science since they were destined to stay home and raise kids. (The girls actually ended up at MacDonalds.) He is now a part-time youth minister at a school that mostly subscribes to those beliefs.
Steve
That’s exactly the opposite of correct. You can’t identify a trend without good numbers or, said another way, by extrapolating from the previous trend.