CARR HOT SHEET - March 2004 In this Issue
Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camps Move to National Press Club: 2004 Schedule Includes 10 Boot Camps in Erik Friedheim Library Bloomberg is equipped with a state-of-the-art PC-based instruction system that can handle up to 12 students per session. Each Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp is a two-day event designed to equip journalists with the basic skills needed so they can powerfully enhance their reporting using databases, statistical analyses and computer modelling. Enrollment for the Feb. 20-21 and March 26-27 boot camps was filled within hours of the 2004 schedule's positing on The Heritage Foundation's web site. The April 23-24 boot camp was filled by Feb. 23, but many slots remain available for the May, June, July, August, September, October and November events. For the full schedule and enrollment, go to: http://www.heritage.org/press/carr/bootcampenroll.cfm . “We're really excited about working with the NPC folks because our goal is to help every journalist become as competent and confident using databases in their reporting as they are in using a word processor,” said Mark Tapscott, Director of Heritage's Center for Media and Public Policy. “This is the most successful training program we've ever offered,” said Tom Glad, Director of the Friedheim Library. Glad has also invited the CARR program to consider developing additional seminars, including events focusing on where to find data on the Internet. Since their inception in 2000, the Heritage Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camps have graduated more than 100 journalists, including editors, reporters and researchers representing more than 65 major news media organizations. Except for three 2003 boot camps held at NPC, all previous Database 101/201 events were held at The Heritage Foundation's headquarters on Capitol Hill. ............................................................... Among the 2004 revisions to the Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp agenda are the inclusion of more time on using Excel spreadsheets in the newsroom, as well as application exercises on correlations and regressions in reporting. The Access portion of the two-day CARR Boot Camps has been dropped, pending development of a separate program focusing solely on the multiple database software. The Excel Application Exercise uses a Michigan Lottery database first requested by Detroit News Washington Bureau Chief Alison Bethel, an April 02 boot camp graduate. The Excel exercise also includes Census Bureau Michigan population and income databases. A second addition to the Friday schedule is “Where to Find Data on the Internet,” led by Dr. Kirk Johnson of Heritage. The session includes visits to numerous data-rich web sites and exercises in downloading and formatting databases. The Saturday Practical Application Exercise still uses the General Social Survey but the procedure has been revised to focus on using correlations and regression analyses to better understand data. ............................................................... Breaking Up Isn't Hard Enough To Do: Washington Times' Wetzstein Finds Divorce Surprise in General Social Survey A majority of Americans support the liberalization of divorce laws that began in California in the early 1970s, right? Washington Times reporter Cheryl Wetzstein, a 2002 Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp grad, assumed that was the case, so she was surprised when data from the General Social Survey (GSS) pointed in a different direction. Wetzstein looked at GSS data from 19 surveys conducted between 1974 and 2002. The data tabulated responses from the question asked of the representative national sample of adults: “Should dirvorce in this country be easier or more difficult?” The GSS is conducted by the University of Michigan every two years. “Every survey conducted shows that a majority or plurality of Americans think divorce should be made “more difficult,” Wetzstein wrote in a Feb. 1 front page Sunday feature in her newspaper. “Even in the 1970s, when no-fault divorce laws were sweeping the nation, 42 percent of Americans wanted divorce to be ‘more difficult,' compared with 32 percent who wanted it to be ‘easier.'” Clear majorities answered “more difficult” in the GSS conducted in 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1989 and 1998. In every year the 19 GSS surveys were conducted between 1974 and 2002, the “more difficult” answer percentage far exceeded the “easier” answer pecentage. Wetztein reported that the national divorce rate was 3.9 divorces per 1,000 couples in 2003, compared to the 1981 peak of 5.3 divorces per 1,000 couples................................................................ Display Ads Promote CARR Boot Camps: American Journalism Review schedule features quotes from graduates A series of six one-third vertical page display promoting the Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camps at the National Press Club began appearing in AJR with its February-March issue. The ads will continue throughout the year. Headlined “Do They Know Something You Don't,” the ads focus on quotes from graduates describing how the CARR Boot Camp helped them be better reporters. Among the graduates who provided quotes for the ads are Joe Williams, education reporter for The New York Daily News , Linda Seebach, editorial columnist for The Rocky Mountain News and Shane Comeaux, an associate producer at MSNBC. Others providing quotes include Bob Benenson, politics editor at Congressional Quarterly , Bob Rosenblatt, reporter (now retired) for The Los Angeles Times , Bryan Sears, politics reporter for Patuxent Publications and Cheryl Wetzstein, national reporter for The Washington Times . If you would like to submit a quote regarding your experience in the CARR Boot Camp, please feel free to forward it to: Mark.Tapscott@Heritage.org.
............................................................... NEW FEATURE! CARR Reporters Tell How They Do It. Do New Jersey Students Get What Their Parents Pay For? We journalists love to zero in on examples of government waste and political back scratching – the mayor's uncle's company got a tax break, or an unqualified crony was hired in a job that came with an over-qualified paycheck. Those are good stories. But how often do we step back, take extra time, and analyze an entire government program or tax system? The idea seems daunting, but databases and spreadsheets, along with good reporting, help journalists get an expert's understanding on important public policy issues. Take, for example, local schools. The total amount spent educating youngsters can easily be the biggest government expenditure in most states. In addition, the taxes used to fund education, such as property taxes, can constitute the largest portion of many residents' tax bills and raise questions about fairness. Let's look at New Jersey, where the state spends half of its aid budget for local schools - $3.5 billion - to help 30 of the poorest school districts in the state. That's enough to send every high school senior to Princeton University for a year. I decided last year to ask a simple question: Do we get what we pay for? I used New Jersey's report card for schools, and other related data, to help answer that question. Most states now have report cards and even more data can be obtained from the National Center for Educational Statistics (nces.ed.gov) and from the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, found at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/. The New Jersey school report card database contains identifying numbers for counties, districts and schools, so the data can be analyzed down to the elementary school around the block. Average SAT scores, state tests, per pupil expenditures, teacher salaries and dozens of other variables can all be compared using the database. Other state report cards offer similar data. Pennsylvania and Michigan, for instance, provide perhaps the most detailed report card in the nation through their consulting contract with Standard & Poor, the public finance analysis and stock ratings firm. School report cards are not easy databases to work with. They can come with numerous tables and lots of coded variables. In New Jersey's report card, for instance, “Drop_Y8” stands for the Drop-out rate in the 2001-02 school year, and “%s_l3_all_y4” means the percentage of all students advanced in science in the 2001-02 school year. But the data looks much more manageable after you've read through the field map, learned to understand the data, and selected the items you're interested in. A simple select query in Access can set up the tables you need. For example, a newspaper might want to examine test scores for schools and districts in its circulation area, or it might want to compare per pupil spending costs among K-12 school districts. A make-table query would allow you to cull out the needed data and create a new table for further analysis. The table could also be copied into Excel for further numbers crunching. I compared average scores on the state's tests with the percentage of children with free lunches, the only available indicator of poverty. I noticed that some of the schools in the state's 30 poorest districts were doing quite well on the 4 th -grade test, but many others were at or below where they would be expected to be. Meanwhile, those districts, which were receiving the massive state aid under a series of state Supreme Court decisions, showed no improvement on 8 th or 11 th grade test. The finding became the basis for the series “Costly Lessons” in the Asbury Park Press. (www.app.com/app2001/costlylessons) Property taxes are another area that lends well to computer-assisted reporting. Towns, counties or state governments have spreadsheets with data on tax rates, amounts raised by taxes, and residential property values. The assessed value of an average house in a town (or county if assessments are done county-wide) can simply be calculated by dividing the total value of all residential property by the number of houses. Therefore, if the tax rate is $1.50 per $100 of assessed value, and a house assessed at the township average is $185,000, you multiply $1.50 times $1,850 (1,850 x 100 = $185,000), to get $2775. Figure out last year's taxes, or taxes from five years ago, to make comparisons over time. Beware, it is not valid to compare average tax bills from town to town. Some towns may be dominated by split-levels, and others by McMansions, or some towns have a larger business base. Instead, compare an equivalent market value. For example, a house worth $175,000 in Town A paid $3,500 in property taxes, but a house worth that much in Town B paid $4,500. You can also compare property taxes to support schools, local governments, county governments, fire departments and others. I used an analysis on Excel to find that statewide, on average, school property taxes rose 7 percent, well over inflation. I also showed how some school districts had more than doubled their property tax bills over the past decade. It's a good idea to work with a state university professor who has studied these issues. I regularly check my results with state experts as a fact check. When your analysis is done, you're set for a flurry of interviews with teachers, parents, educational experts or property tax payers. Now the real fun starts. These stories give readers the overview of what the trends are throughout a state or a county. Such issues affect their children's education and their individual tax bills. They will care about what you've found in your analysis, and they will read your stories. ............................................................... Computer Model Assisted Research and Reporting (CMARR): Computer models can be powerful tools for enhancing reporting on public policy issues, but until recently relatively few journalists seemed aware of this fact. Things are changing, however, as information is incorporated into the Database 101/201 CARR Boot Camp curriculum and more journalists become aware of the possibilities. Previously, journalists at Investor's Business Daily used the Heritage tax model to compare the likely impacts of the Bush and Gore tax proposals during the 2000 election campaign. Also that year Elliot Jaspin, technology editor for Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau, used a Heritage-designed computer model to measure the impact of U.S. Census undercounts on state Medicare spending. More recently, journalists at ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Houston Chronicle, The Washington Times and U.S. News & World Report used the CARR program's CATS computer model to project the impact of various terrorist attack scenarios for homeland security reporting projects. Three computer model-based CARR projects are currently being run here for The Los Angeles Times and another is planned for the Houston Chronicle. Look for details on these projects following publication of the resulting news stories by the Times and Chronicle. For more information on the Heritage computer models, contact: Bill Beach, Director, Center for Data Analysis, at 202-608-6206 or at Bill.Beach@Heritage.org . Got An Idea or a Suggestion? Need Help with a CARR Project? We want to hear from you! Please call, write or email the Chicago Voting way - Early and often! Mark Tapscott |
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