Stop, Drop and Roll

04 February 2008 | AUSD, Alameda Community | John Knox White

So the numbers are out….Edison Kindergarten enrollment is…..65. Keep in mind that that’s 65 kids who have applied fro enrollment, not the number of kids who will actually attend. Parents hedge their bets, will their child get into Park Day School? If not, then it’s Edison. Historically, these numbers mean that Edison’s kindergarten is under enrolled this year. Last year 92 filled out applications, but only 80 attended.

Given the vitriol (by a few, certainly not all) of the lottery discussion, some of which rose to the level of “the stupid school board who refuses to listen to reason (reason defined as the given speakers point of view)” and accusations of bias and predetermined outcomes. This would appear to be a resounding vote for calmer, more respectful discussions around issues that we are all deeply interested, invested or involved in.

Blogging Bayport covered the Barbers Point Tree issue. I’ll just mention that I thought that the original post, written by Roger, was an example of caring about something deeply, feeling upset about it, and yet urging “Please be polite but firm, these are not bad folks, they are just folks who made a fixable mistake.” Whether you agree or not with the conclusion, it was a refreshing call to action without assigning stupidity to any parties.

During the school-enrollment-lottery discussion, much was made of the Edison School Neighborhood Network’s ESSN Area Survey. Which both clearly stated it was not statistically random (and therefore meaningless less meaningful as a predictor than more exhaustive enrollment studies of what will happen). Unfortunately, the data was then used to claim that the school district’s enrollment projections were incorrect.

While the ESNN survey covered approximately 33% of the residences within the Edison School Area, the sample data does not represent a statistically random selection across all residences, and therefore cannot be reasonably used to project numbers for the entire district. But the ESNN survey results do show that the 2007 Lapkoff and Gobalet Demographic Report projections for Kindergarten enrollment in the East End are underestimating demand for Edison School. That report used a traditional Kindergarten to Birth rate (K/B) assumption to predict K enrollment, rather than looking at an adjusted “student yield” that would reflect the higher numbers of families with young children that have moved into the area.

The study, which in and of itself was commendable, appears to have fallen prey to being designed to prove that over-enrollment at Edison was only going to get worse based on the lifestyle of those who had that concern. I’m not saying that it was intentionally juiced, I firmly believe that it was a sincere attempt to measure exactly how many students would be heading to Edison this year (and future ones). It’s just that the motivation for the survey drove the methodology which was developedby a subset of parents with young children (and free-time). This self-reportedly, not-statistically-meaningful info was then used to try and make the original point,
you are underestimating the number of future kindergarteners).

As an example, the methodology, visiting peoples homes, assumes that all households are home during the times that the volunteer surveyors are home. However it’s possible (even likely) that households with small children are much more likely to be home when these surveyors went a-knocking. Therefore, the 30% of households visited may represent a much higher proportion of households with young children and did not (as the report itself says) represent a statistically random sample.

In the end, the schools numbers appear to have been a little too high (not low) for this year, and the ESNN predictions even more so.

I really bring it up, because of the growing use of “surveys” to prove a specific point. Whether it’s Kitchen Democracy’s attempt to present a meaningful metric based on highly selective users, or the city’s reliance on online-surveys to collect meaningful data for bus usage. Survey’s are funny things, done incorrectly, they provide a lot of data that doesn’t add up to a conclusion beyond anything outside of the group that is surveyed.

Which all comes back to the idea that we all, myself included, need to be mindful in our use of data and information and data.

{Post changed to correct language}

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