“The Times in Plain English” Serves as a Reminder of the Importance of Evaluating Online Resources

/ The Old Crank / 2 Comments

(Updated Below)

For weeks now I’ve been receiving regular, unsolicited e-mails about a new online publication, The Times in Plain English, which is said to contain “content from The New York Times and other newspapers for literacy students, English language learners, immigrants and basic readers.” Yesterday I saw that The Times in Plain English was recommended by a colleague at an adult literacy library resource center, so last night I thought I better take a look.

The Times in Plain English claims that they are “presenting articles from The New York Times and other newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal in an easier to read format.” To me, this implies that they are essentially publishing the same content contained in the original articles they are picking up from those sources. But at least some of The Times in Plain English articles bear little resemblance to the articles they claim to just be simplifying, even to the point of contradicting points made in the original piece.

For example, take a look at this recent Times in Plain English story—particularly the headline and lede:

Screen Shot from "The Times in Plain English"

The Times in Plain English article concludes with this sentence: “Researchers say married parents are the best way to prevent poverty.”

Now go take a look at the original New York Times “Economix” column (titled “Economic Inequality and the Changing Family“) from Jason DeParle. Remember, The Times in Plain English editors claim they are just making his story “easier to read.”

Notice that at no point in his piece does DeParle make the claim that marriage “protects you from poverty.” In fact, he writes that “no one has suggested that single parenthood is the sole or even main force driving the increases in inequality, just an important one that is sometimes overlooked.” While the data shows a larger number of children of single parents are more likely to drop out of high school, less likely to attend college, etc., DeParle writes that this alone “does not prove that single parenthood caused those outcomes.” (my emphasis)

And later in the column, DeParle cites a researcher who, after noting the differences between economic outcomes of children of single parents vs. married parents, “warned that [his] analysis could mask other factors that are more important than family structure per se — like underlying differences in race or education. (again, my emphasis)

In other words, nowhere does DeParle suggest that it is it is an agreed-upon fact that “married parents are the best way to prevent poverty.” You might believe that this is the case—and the editors of The Times in Plain English may also believe that is the case—but that is not what DeParle wrote. Their story is not a simplified version of DeParle’s piece but a completely different article that arrives at conclusions that neither DeParle nor the researchers he cited actually made. (In addition, although it’s not a substantive change, the photo of the happy wedding accompanying the Times in Plain English story appears nowhere in DeParle’s original column.)

There is very little information provided about the publisher of The Times in Plain English and none about the people who write the articles (there are no bylines), although in the FAQ they acknowledge that the writers have no special expertise in plain language writing. The Times in Plain English has no official relationship to The New York Times, although it has appropriated the New York Times’ masthead font for part of their own masthead, which may suggest to some that there is one.

Times in Plain English Masthead

New York Times Masthead

While the people behind The Times in Plain English may have the best of intentions, the issues discussed above (including the unsolicited spam) are red flags. It reminds me that teachers and others have to evaluate online resources carefully, and we can’t just give something a pass just because it’s free or delivered by a well-meaning individual. There are many guides to evaluating Web sites that have been published by schools and libraries over the years which may be helpful in this regard. Here is one, for example, published by the University of Maryland library system.

UPDATE 8/16/12: Make sure to read Arthur Schiff’s response in the comment section below.

UPDATE 8/17/12: I just wanted to make a few points about Mr. Schiff’s comments. I appreciate his willingness to respond here.

He writes that their intent with The Times in Plain English is to write stories “from a fresh perspective.” More importantly, he clarifies that he considers the original news sites “the source of our information, but not as the final word on the content.” (my emphasis)

There is nothing wrong with writing original content based on work reported by others. That’s pretty much all I ever do here, for example, and many blogs and many news sources do the same. However, I don’t think The Times in Plan English makes it sufficiently clear that they are writing wholly original content. As I argued above, I think the site and their marketing material strongly suggest that they are adapting articles published by those newspapers, not using their reporting as sources for their own take on the news. Every e-mail I receive advertising The Times in Plan English starts off by describing their publication as follows:

Content from The New York Times and other newspapers for literacy students, English language learners, immigrants and basic readers. (my emphasis)

And from the “About Us” page on their Web site:

Among the publications our stories come from:

The Los Angeles Times          The Miami Herald
The New York Times             The Arizona Republic
The Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post

(my emphasis)

In my opinion, the use of  “from” and “come from” strongly suggest that the material in The Times in Plain English is directly adapted from those sources, not wholly original content based on multiple sources.

Mr. Schiff says that his writers typically “read two or three articles about a topic using one as the source and hyperlinking to another in the text,” and that “[t]he story you use as an example came from two articles in The NY Times and one from the LA Times.” But there was no indication in the piece that the writer was relying on multiple sources—just a link to DeParle’s column. There was no link, or mention, of the earlier New York Times story that Mr. Schiff cites to bolster the accuracy of The Times in Plain English story. No one looking at The Times in Plain English story would have any reason to think that other sources had been referenced.

Mr. Schiff acknowledges that “[n]o one doubts there are other factors in inequality,” but you would not know that from reading The Times in Plain English story, which stated a conclusion in the lede that was actually contradicted by the one source that they did cite. In fact, the Plain English story seems to miss the point of DeParle’s column—the one that is cited—which was to dig deeper into the research on the relationship between family structure than in that earlier story had done. As I wrote in the original piece, it is perfectly fine to come to a different conclusion than DeParle or the researchers he quotes, but in that case it’s even more important to be clear that the Plain English story is not a direct adaptation of DeParle’s column.

Mr. Schiff did not address some of the other points I made in my original post so I won’t repeat them. But I do want to emphasize again that the primary purpose of the post was not to criticize Mr. Schiff’s efforts, but to model some of the things everyone needs to do when critically evaluating a resource. I did make a point to say that I wasn’t questioning  the intentions of the publisher in my post, and now that I know a little more about the way in which articles are put together, I appreciate the effort that goes into it, especially considering that it’s all done for free. My point is not to get everyone to agree with all of my critiques, but to demonstrate the importance of evaluating resources carefully.

Handy Flyer from USCIS on New Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Immigration Policy

/ The Old Crank

This new one-page flyer on the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Immigration Policy, published by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), does a pretty good job explaining, in a visual way, how the new policy works, although it’s a little odd to me that they did not include the acronym for “general education development”—the GED—in this flyer, since it’s a much more well-known term.

Remember, as I noted yesterday, it appears that a person who is without a diploma or GED and not in school now—but who otherwise meets the eligibility requirements—may qualify by returning to school or by enrolling in a GED program before applying.

More information available at the USCIS site. (h/t Save Adult Ed!)

Will New Administration Immigration Policy Increase Demand for GED Classes?

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

(Updated Below)

The Migration Policy Institute has increased their estimate of the number of unauthorized immigrants who may be eligible for temporary relief from the threat of deportation under the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. After taking a look at the more detailed eligibility guidelines released by the Department of Homeland Security on August 3rd, they now think that as many as 1.76 million unauthorized immigrants may be eligible (up from 1.39 million).

The DACA initiative will offer, on a case-by-case basis, a two-year grant of reprieve from deportation as well as work authorization for unauthorized immigrants who were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, who entered the U.S. as children, and who can demonstrate that they meet certain other criteria, which you can read about here.

What changed? Among the list of eligibility requirements first released in June, when the policy was announced, was the requirement that applicants had to have a high school degree or have earned a GED—or be enrolled in school now. Last week, DHS clarified that those under 31 years of age lacking a high school diploma or a GED not currently enrolled in school will also be eligible, as long as they have re-enrolled by the date of their application. MPI estimates that this adds as many as 350,000 unauthorized young adult immigrants (ages 16 and older) without a high school degree or GED to the list of potential beneficiaries of this program, provided they meet the rest of the eligibility requirements.

It will be interesting to see if this results in an uptick in demand for GED and adult ESL services in the coming months.

UPDATE 8/28/12: While researching a post for D.C. LEARNs today, I read through the DACA guidelines a little more carefully. As noted above, to meet the DACA education requirements, an applicant must have graduated from high school or obtained a GED certificate, or must be “currently in school” on the date of application. The USCIS guidelines published here make it clear that their definition of “school” is fairly broad and includes most kinds of adult education programs. I’m planning to write a separate post about this in the near future.

UPDATE 8/29/12: This article from New America Media (NAM) notes that in Arizona, Proposition 300 bars state-funded schools from offering free GED classes to undocumented immigrants, so meeting the educational requirements of DACA by enrolling in a free GED program will not be an option for those living in that state.

What Would Sequestration Mean for the District of Columbia’s Most Vulnerable Residents?

/ The Old Crank / 3 Comments

Yesterday one of our local public radio stations here in the District (WAMU) broadcast a story on the potential local impact of sequestration, the across-the-board federal spending cuts that are set to go into effect in January—unless Congress passes some kind of legislation to avoid it. Right now these cuts are required by a law that this same Congress passed last summer, the Budget Control Act (BCA).

Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, told WAMU that federal spending accounts for roughly 40% of the D.C. metro area’s economy. Federal employees and contractors spend their paychecks here, and so businesses that rely on those dollars (and the housing market) are likely to suffer if that spending is cut back significantly:

“Federal payroll supports a lot of jobs at Giant and Safeway and CVS and other retail establishments,” he says, citing some examples. “There will be fewer high-income households that can afford big houses.  So we could see a rollback on housing values.”

In D.C. itself, the District’s chief financial officer, Natwar Gandhi, told WAMU that federal spending accounts for 60% (!) of the city’s annual economic output. He said that cuts to federal spending would likely result in reduced local tax revenue, which could lead to reductions in services for the city’s most vulnerable residents.

(Fun fact: the legislation that created sequestration was enacted by a Congress in which we do not have a vote, yet it sound like the pain associated with these cuts will likely be more painful here in this city than it will be in other parts of the country.)

Alternatives to sequestration may still include federal workforce reductions and pay freezes, so even if sequestration is scrapped, it’s replacement might not be so great for the local economy either. I recently attended a meeting with some Republican staffers who were still enthusiastically pitching S. 2065, a Senate bill that was introduced in February that would delay the first installment of the sequestration cuts by extending the current federal employee pay freeze though June 2014, and restricting federal hiring to only two employees for every three who leave. While I don’t think this specific bill is going anywhere at the moment, elements of this proposal could make their way into a sequestration-scrapping plan somewhere down the road.

Fuller told WAMU that federal contracting “has been a welfare program for the Washington metropolitan area. Taxpayers around the country send us their money, and we’ve been living well off of this, and now we have to face the music.” Sequestration alternatives that protect this long-standing corporate welfare program via reductions in federal hiring and pay freezes will likely have the same kind of depressive effects on the local economy as the across-the-board cuts required by sequestration.