Test Patterns
The New York Times leads with the
FBI's announcement last night that its director, Louis Freeh, supports an
outside investigation into the FBI's failure to disclose the use of incendiary
devices at Waco, a development nobody else fronts. The Los Angeles
Times leads with what it claims is alarm among "education advocates"
(as opposed to the rest of us?) about continuing SAT disparities between whites
and nonwhites in the latest board score data, released Tuesday. The Washington Post leads local (the Virginia governor's
highway and rail expansion plans) and off-leads semi-local, comparing local
SATs to national trends. USA Today puts the SAT info, including a discussion of the
new "striver" scoring system written up in yesterday's Wall Street Journal , in its top-of-the-page "talker"
position, and leads with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers' announcement that
in light of the Russian banking scandal, the United States would not support
further IMF credits for Russia until there has been an adequate accounting of
the money already lent there. This, notes the paper, puts the United States at
odds with the IMF, whose chief has advocated uninterrupted Russia loans.
The headline over the LAT's SAT
lead cites an "ethnic gap" and refers to the worry that schools are failing
to prepare "nonwhites." But the story itself never mentions the SAT performance
of Asians, an omission that is stunning given Southern California's
demographics and that lends false credibility to the stark picture the paper
paints. False, because as a graphic accompanying the story indicates, Asians
have the highest math SATs and the second-highest verbal. The WP story
makes the same elision, mentioning Asians only once in passing, and never
mentioning their scores. The WSJ also mentions Asians only once in
passing but does mention their scores.
Also, the stories fail to establish any sense of context that would justify
concerns over the differences in scores they report. For instance, the
LAT notes that nationally, scores for whites "rose" one point from the
year before, while blacks and Mexican Americans were each down four points in
math, but there is no discussion of what a standard deviation would be on
samples of SAT scores. Since test scores are known by college counselors and
admissions officials to often vary dozens and dozens of points from one
test-taking to the next by the same student, surely a few points can't be the
stuff of crisis. Or if it is, at least the papers need to argue the point.
Similarly, the LAT says the national verbal score "remained mired at
505." But wasn't the idea behind the recentering of a few years ago precisely
to put the median score as close as possible to 500? The NYT's SAT piece
hardly mentions the ethnic angle at all, dwelling much more on differences
between boys' and girls' scores, and (in the online version at least), sits
under a refreshingly calm headline: "College Board Scores Vary Little From
Previous Year's."
The NYT's Waco lead also mentions that a House committee that's starting its
own investigation is said to be interested in what role the Army's Delta Force
may have played in the operation. It would have been nice if the story had said
something about what the law is on military involvement in domestic law
enforcement. It's not an absolute firewall anymore, is it?
Once again the papers' ban-Africanism is in evidence. In Johannesburg
yesterday, rebel leaders who tried to topple the Congolese government of
Laurent Kabila, drawing five countries into a war in the process, signed a
cease-fire. Only the WP fronts the story, although it runs it below a
piece about a pro-Israel group's offer of support for Hillary Clinton's Senate
bid if she'll lobby her husband to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
USAT off-leads yesterday's introduction by Apple of its newest family
of computers, called the G4. The WSJ , in its coverage of the uncoverage,
says the computer is designed to bolster the company's offerings in high-end
publishing and design. USAT breathes harder, noting that company
chairman Steve Jobs says the machine's new chip will "toast" that of his main
competitor, Intel. On the development, Apple stock rose to a six-year high.
The LAT front reports that while Hollywood is concerned about a
downturn in production and the flight of movie business to foreign locations,
one part of the California entertainment business is flourishing: porn.
Although feature production in Los Angeles County is down 13 percent this year,
says the paper, "adult" (used by the LAT without the scare-quotes) movie
production is up 25 percent. In July, one out of five local shoots was a porn
film, which is how the biz will manage to churn out 10,000 new titles this
year. The story quotes an economist's estimate that skinflicks create 10,000 to
20,000 jobs. And the audience keeps, er, growing: A third of porn profits come
from overseas distribution. And the Internet now accounts for $1 billion in
annual sales.
Given the front-page headlines garnered when the United States bombed the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade back in May, where would you figure to read about
yesterday's word from the United States that it was paying $4.5 million to
victims of the raid? Did you guess the WP's Page 18?
