Correlation = Causation!

I always used to think that correlation does not imply causation, but apparently I was wrong!  At least according to the latest “research”:

Like this Science Daily article that asserts that students, particularly black students, in lower-level middle school math classes learn less than students in higher-level math classes.  Therefore we should get rid of those lower-level classes to close the “racial academic achievement gap.”  (It couldn’t possibly be that more-talented students are placed in the higher classes…)

Or from yesterday’s New York Times article from Thomas Friedman: “If America had closed the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and had raised its performance to the level of such nations as Finland and South Korea, United States G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher.” (Because higher multiple-choice one-size-fits-all test scores are guaranteed to predictably raise GDP, of course.)

Or, as a speaker in favor of inclusion recently told me, “We need to get as many students as possible out of special ed and back into the mainstream classroom, because students in special ed have been proven to learn less and have higher dropout rates than students in regular ed.” (Again, it couldn’t be the clientele found in special ed, could it?)

Sigh.  As you read the latest education headlines, I urge everyone to keep the fact that correlation does not equal causation firmly in mind… because the authors of these articles don’t seem to be doing due diligence in that regard.