RealClearEd Today 03/28/2014: The Business of College
Good morning. It's Friday March 28th. At RealClearEducation this morning we have news, commentary, analysis, and reports from around the country. The Vergara case in California, a lawsuit that will have national implications, is now in a judge's hands. More reaction to the NRLB ruling allowing student athletes to form a union. In New York Mayor de Blasio's allies are suing him over charters saying he's doing too little to stop colocations. We have articles and reports on college debt and pre-K education as well. All that and plenty more on our site and as always, we'll update throughout the day with new content. If you are forwarding this morning email, your friends and colleagues can sign up to get it directly here.
Thirty-five years ago today, the Three Mile Island accident was unfolding in Pennsylvania. The episode stemmed from a failure of a coolant system and resulted in some radioactive gas escaping. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "Without the proper water flow, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the zirconium cladding (the long metal tubes that hold the nuclear fuel pellets) ruptured and the fuel pellets began to melt. It was later found that about half of the core melted during the early stages of the accident." Because of fear, however, the real coolant effect was on the expansion of nuclear power in the United States.
The Three Mile Island episode was badly handled from the start. Evacuation plans were flawed, the utility company wasn't forthcoming, and public officials in Pennsylvania had trouble getting a handle on the situation. People were understandably scared, pregnant women were advised to leave the area, and residents sheltered in their homes. One area priest issued a general absolution in anticipation of a catastrophic explosion, and on television Walter Cronkite ominously described a "horror" that "could get much worse."
In the midst of the crisis, President Jimmy Carter decided to visit Three Mile Island with his wife Rosslyn. In the same way Lincoln's visit to Fort Stevens during Jubal Early's 1864 attack on Washington helped calm an anxious city, Carter's visit curbed the panic in Dauphin County and the surrounding area. A former nuclear engineer, Carter had assisted in the cleanup of an accident at a research reactor in Ontario, Canada and worked with reactors in the Navy. The President understood the facts of the situation.
Three Mile Island was scary for everyone who lived through it - and that's a key point, everyone did live through it. Yet a 2007 survey of 1,000 Americans by Zogby and the Manhattan Institute found that only 17 percent knew there were no fatalities in the Three Mile Island accident (long term health effects on people who were downwind are still debated, although most evidence points to a negligible effect). The plant's unaffected reactor continues to operate today on its island in the Susquehanna River.
In education, misinformation is something we live with daily. You can't go to a conference without hearing about flat NAEP scores (not true) and exploding education spending since the 1970s (partially true). In surveys of teachers, many inaccurately describe charter schools and other education policies. Graduation rates are frequently described as falling (they're rising). Surveys show most people, including those working within education, have little grasp on how much we spend on schools. There are enormous gaps between the research literature and educational practice or rhetoric on a host of issues. You get the idea. And the advent of social media and click-driven media seems to have a compounding effect as all manner of claims get tossed around and uncritically repeated on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.
In the end, misinformation about what was happening at Three Mile Island made things worse and caused area residents considerable stress, some of which has been linked to physical ailments following the accident. In the education sector, misinformation hampers progress. It's not a meltdown, but no small thing either.
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