We Have a Misinformation Problem, and the U.S. Secretary of Education Isn’t Helping
Americans have a problem with sharing things online. Actually, the problem is not the sharing, it’s the reading. A recent study showed that 6 out of 10 people only look at the headlines before sharing an article on social media. An earlier study stated that only 41% of news consumers reported they read beyond the headlines. We have a widespread problem with reading the content we act upon, whether it’s sharing on social media or merely jumping to conclusions.
This brings me to a recent tweet by the US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. On May 10th, Secretary Cardona tweeted out, “Research shows that nearly 53% of students are suffering from significant learning loss to school closure during the pandemic.” Below the text was a graph showing a circle with 53% darkened signifying “significant loss of learning.”
Under this statement, the Secretary made a judgement based on this one statistic: “It’s time to get them back into the classroom where they learn best.” Obviously, the implication was that a) students are not going to school and b) the “significant learning loss” is because students are not in school.
The tweet was popular with both negative and supportive reactions. But one thing was clear. Most people did not bother to click on the link Secretary Cardona gave. And most people did not bother to read the research he cited. We know this because of the type of reactions to the citation. Responses ranged from, “Our kids were robbed of this school year” to “Where is the grit when 53% are failing?”
In four days, Secretary Cardona’s inaccurate tweet was liked by 400 people and shared over 113 times. Now consider how many readers of these retweets will then re-share it without reading the original article.
The problem is that Secretary Cardona, an influential educational and governmental leader, stated as fact the finding that “53% of students are suffering from significant learning loss due to school closure during the pandemic.” But, if you read the research study, you will realize this is far from accurate.
The research, carried out by a financial institution, was based on a survey of 941 teachers, administrators, and support personnel. In the survey, they were asked if their students were suffering from learning loss. But an opinion is far from objective. And the survey question did not give a definition of “learning loss.” Therefore, we don’t know on what information the educators based their response.
The second concern is, we don’t know anything about the educators who answered, “the pandemic has significantly impacted student learning.” Where do they work? With what type of students? What subjects do the educators teach? What grade levels? The lack of information should raise some flags and caution anyone from making hard and fast statements based on this one question.
In four days, Secretary Cardona’s inaccurate tweet was liked by 400 people and shared over 113 times. Now consider how many readers of these retweets will then re-share it without reading the original article.
“The reluctance to look for information from tried-and-true sources such as well-indexed books or the temptation to assign value to information simply because it came off of the computer will likely provide results with poor quality.” US Department of Education, Understanding Information Literacy 1999
Of course, one could brush this off as “typical politician behavior,” but the politician who tweeted it is the head of the U.S. Department of Education. If any politician should be aware of media literacy and bias, it should be the head of this agency.
So really, it’s up to the public. If we want to promote media literacy in our nation, we can’t wait for politicians to do it for us. The next time you’re ready to react to a “fact” you read on social media, check the research it’s citing. We’re often too ready to believe statements by people who we agree with and who carry a certain level of authority. But it doesn’t matter who’s telling you the information, investigate it. Even the U.S. Secretary of Education get things wrong.
