Picture your favorite college professor. Here are some adjectives that might come to mind: Wise. Funny. Caring. Prompt. Passionate. Organized. Tough but fair.
A new study argues that student evaluations are systematically biased against women — so much so, in fact, that they're better mirrors of gender bias than of what they are supposed to be measuring: teaching quality.
Anne Boring, an economist and the lead author of the paper, was hired by her university in Paris, Sciences Po, to conduct quantitative analysis of gender bias. Through her conversations with instructors and students, she became suspicious of what she calls "double standards" applying to male and female instructors.
Philip Stark, associate dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, is a co-author of the paper along with Kellie Ottoboni. Stark has a longstanding research interest in — some might say a vendetta against — course evaluations. We've reported on his work previously.
In this paper, the team ran a series of statistical tests on two different data sets, of French and U.S. university students.
The French students were, in effect, randomly assigned to either male or female section leaders in a wide range of required courses. In this case, the study authors found, male French students rated male instructors more highly across the board.
Is it bias? Or were the male instructors, maybe, actually, on average, better teachers? (It's science; we have to ask the uncomfortable questions.)
Well, turns out that, at this university, all students across all sections of a course take the same, anonymously graded final exam, regardless of which instructor they have.
This offers the chance to look at one dimension of actual instructor quality: Presumably better section leaders would help students get better grades on the same exam. In fact, they found, the students of male instructors on average did slightly worse on the final.
Overall, there was no correlation between students rating their instructors more highly and those students actually learning more.
The American case was a little bit different. Here, the authors performed a new analysis of a clever experiment published in 2014. Students were taking a single online class with either a male or female instructor. In half the cases, the instructors agreed to dress in virtual drag: The men used the women's names and vice versa.
Here, it was the female students, not the males, who rated the instructors they believed to be male more highly across the board. That's right: The same instructor, with all the same comments, all the same interactions with the class, received higher ratings if he was called Paul than if she was called Paula.
And that higher rating even applied to a seemingly objective question: Did this teacher return assignments on time? (The online system made it possible to ensure that promptness was identical in every case.)
What to make of the fact that the bias was wielded primarily by men in France and by women in the U.S.?
"That the situation is Really Complicated," Philip Stark writes in an email to NPR Ed, and, he adds, it won't be easy to correct for it. In fact, the authors titled their paper "Student Evaluations of Teaching (Mostly) Do Not Measure Teaching Effectiveness."
These results seem pretty damning, but not everyone is convinced.
Michael Grant is the vice provost and associate vice chancellor for undergraduate education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He says there's a lot of research supporting the effectiveness and usefulness of student evaluations.
"There are multiple, well-designed, thoughtfully conducted studies that clearly contradict this very weakly designed study," he says, citing this study from 2000 andthis study conducted at his own university. His personal review of student ratings from one department at CU Boulder over nine years did find a bias in favor of men, he says, but it was very small — averaging 0.13 on a 6-point scale.
At Sciences Po, educators are taking steps to try to reduce gender bias in end-of-course evaluations, beginning with informing students about that bias. However, both Boring and Stark seem ready to write off Student Evaluations of Teaching, or SET, as pretty much useless.
"Trying to adjust for the bias to make SET 'fair' is hopeless," says Stark, "(even if they measured effectiveness, and there's lots of evidence that they don't)."
Boring acknowledges that "SETs can contain some information that can be valuable." But, she adds, they are too biased to be used in a high-stakes way as a measure of teacher effectiveness.
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Genes make us who we are, for good or bad. Made of a substance called DNA, each is responsible for a particular trait. Passed down from parent to child, they are responsible for everything from hair color to a tendency toward a particular disease. Our genetic makeup has been beyond our control. Yet scientists have long wondered: Could harmful genes be altered before they are passed down to the next generation, or while a baby is still in its mother's womb?
There should no longer be any doubt on that score. One day, perhaps very soon, humans will be genetically modified. A new tool -- called CRISPR -- is already being used to edit the genomes of insects and animals. A genome is simply the complete set of genes found in any particular living thing.
CRISPR is essentially a very sharp molecular knife that allows scientists to remove and insert genes precisely and inexpensively. It is only a matter of time before it will be used to engineer our descendants -- eliminating many dangerous hereditary diseases in the process.
To be sure, this eventuality is being hotly debated. The main arguments against genetic modification of human embryos are that it would be unsafe and unfair and that modification would quickly go beyond efforts to reduce the occurrence of inherited illnesses. However, ultimately, none of these reasons is likely to be persuasive enough to stop the technology from being widely used.
Arguments Against Gene Editing Won't Stop Use
Safety is clearly an important factor, but it is unlikely to be a decisive one. The new gene-editing techniques appear to be very accurate. Animal tests and experiments with human embryos that will not leave lab dishes seem to prove there is little risk involved in their application.
Likewise, as important a concern as fairness may be, it has never held back the adoption of technology. Yes, the benefits of CRISPR are likely to be made available primarily through private, profit-seeking companies, giving the rich far better access to the technology than the poor. However, that fact is not likely to lead to a postponement -- much less a ban -- of gene editing.
The world is full of unjust differences between people. The rich send their kids to elite schools, while the poor hope their child's school buildings do not collapse while class is in session. And yet, as unfair as this may be, the rich are not waiting for a level playing field. Instead, they are making wide use of elite private education. The same process will play out with genetic engineering.
A Slippery Slope Toward Eugenics
The critics’ most worrisome argument is that opening the door to repairing genetic disorders will also leave the way open for eugenics. Rather than focusing on eliminating diseases, eugenics seeks to introduce desirable traits into the human population. The problem, of course, is who gets to decide which traits are desirable. Furthermore, it is not clear whether doctors should be in the business of performing medical procedures aimed simply at enhancement, rather than eliminating disease.
Nonetheless, the same technology that can be deployed to eliminate hereditary diseases can undoubtedly be used to try to build genetically enhanced children. Inevitably, some will seek to do just that.
However, that is not enough of a reason to give up on the promise of geneticengineering. The world is plagued with hereditary diseases that cause very real misery: sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, type 1 diabetes, cystic fibrosis, mitochondrial diseases, polycystic kidney disease, Tay-Sachs disease, Canavan disease, mucopolysaccharidoses, some forms of breast, prostate, and colon cancer, and the list goes on. It is absurd to think that genetic engineering will not be used to eliminatethem.
Pressure from parents seeking to prevent their children and grandchildren from suffering will undoubtedly overwhelm concerns about the possibility that others will use the same technology to attempt to build superkids -- and rightly so. The sick should not be held hostage to worries about possible dangers or abuses.
Instead, Let's Set Up Protections
There is no reason to waste time arguing about whether humans should be geneticallyengineered. As justifiable as some of the concerns may be, there are simply too many benefits to be gained from preventing hereditary diseases. Those seeking to limit genetic engineering to such efforts would be better off devoting their energies to explaining why eugenics is wrong. They should not attempt to stop the march ofprogress toward healing the sick and eliminating awful disorders.
Rather than arguing about whether CRISPR should be used in humans, weshould refocus the public debate on appropriate safeguards. We shouldbegin determining who decides when CRISPR is safe enough to be deployed, andwhat counseling should be provided for parents considering its use. We should beginfiguring out how to broaden access for the poor.
The more time we spend debating whether to adopt a technology that undoubtedly willbe adopted, the less time we will have to consider more important issues. We need toknow, for example, how to respond to the for-profit medical community's promise togive us taller, smarter, healthier, cuter, stronger, and more loving children. Marketingcampaigns offering us just such wonders will begin rolling out soon enough, like it ornot.
Annette Williams is careful to hold her granddaughter Sharell’s head at bath time, to keep the two-year-old from taking a gulp of toxic water. Though most people no longer drink what flows through Flint’s corroded pipes, many families have little choice but to bathe in it.
Sharell has been sick for months – ear infections, skin rashes and coughs. Williams cooks all her meals using bottled water, and has taught the eldest of her three grandchildren, six-year-old Promise, to wash her sister’s face with a flannel. But total isolation is near impossible. Sharell has developed a habit of sucking on her wet towel when no one is looking.
Williams, 48, is terrified of what might happen because the family bathes in the water. Inadequately treated water has coursed into Flint homes at least since April 2014, bringing toxins and poisonous lead that leached off the city’s ageing pipes. There are no safe levels of lead exposure: even low levels can cause lifelong developmental damage to young children.
“I know it’s wrong to do it. We shouldn’t be bathing in it, but what else can we do?” Williams said.
On Monday, all three children will head to hospital for blood tests for toxins . All of Flint’s 8,657 children under the age of six should be considered exposed, according to a recent citywide public health directive.
Since the city’s emergency managers decided to draw Flint’s water from the highly corrosive local river, this small city of 100,000 people – just 70 miles from Michigan’s great lakes, the world’s largest freshwater source – has suffered alone, let down by local, state and federal officials and almost entirely ignored by the rest of America.
Williams can see the river from her living room, in the city’s impoverished north-east. She used to fish for dinner on its banks, but now she can’t bear to look at it.
Steve Deloney carries water which he was using for himself and delivering to his sister. Photograph: Bryan Mitchell for the Guardian
Life has changed immeasurably in the last two years. Residents live in a state of indignity, fear and paranoia. Some refuse to shower, others eat only from paper plates, and many suffer rashes and hair loss. Adding insult to injury, the city’s water bills are among the highest in the US.
Like 41% of Flint residents, Williams has endured this crisis in poverty; like 56% of residents, she is black. She has no income and hitches rides three days a week to spend precious food stamps on the 70 litres of bottled water that her family needs. Although things have got a little easier since national guard troops rolled into town two weeks ago, supply drops have yet to reach her home. Williams scratched her arms. She “ashes” everyday after showering. She wondered whom to blame.
“I feel the governor let us down,” she said. “We never really knew what was going on.”
Rick Snyder, a Republican who ascended to the governor’s office in 2010 without ever serving in public office, has fought off calls for his resignation and criticism about his delayed response to the crisis. It was Snyder’s administration that placed the city under emergency management in 2011, a decision that wrested control from the city council and imposed cost-cutting – which in turn led the city to the filthy river for water. For 18 months the administration ignored signs that water was contaminated, before finally rerouting supplies last October.
Melissa Mays first noticed something was wrong when yellow water spurted through her taps, two months after the switch. It stank. It made her hair fall out. But still, she, her husband and their three boys drank from the taps when the city assured them nothing was wrong.
In the winter of 2014, her son Christian, then 11 years old, fell from his bike and shattered his wrists, which had become brittle. Mays felt her bones ache too – a sure sign of lead poisoning. She noticed the city had quietly advised residents to boil the water before consuming it, and that a General Motors plant had redirected its water after engine parts started rusting.
All her family later tested positive for heavy metal poisoning. Perversely, Mays feels some of the guilt herself.
Elijah Waun-Baker, five, left, and Promise Ward, six, wash their faces using tap water. Photograph: Bryan Mitchell for the Guardian
“It comes when Christian wakes up every night and he’s crying, and there’s nothing I can do. I know that somebody else did this, but it was my job to protect him. I didn’t,” she said. “We’re just seeing the early signs of it. It takes up to five years to see the full effects of lead poisoning.”
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Her days are dictated by the amount of bottled water she keeps in the house. She washes all the food with it, boils her kettle with it. She instructs her boys to shower sitting down, by pouring warm cups of water quickly over their bodies. The sight of steam from the bathroom makes her jump – she worries it could carry the poison into her body through pores.
•••
Mays was at the state capitol on Tuesday, when a humbled Snyder apologised to residents. He blamed state environment officials, later suspending two employees.
She was far from convinced. “If he was sorry, he’d have come and talked to the citizens,” Mays said. “And we’d have shovels in the ground digging those pipes up.”
A cache of files obtained by the Guardian through a public records request shows several red flags that should have tipped off officials about the water catastrophe.
In February 2015, just weeks after the University of Michigan-Flint reported elevated lead levels on campus, Flint resident Lee-Anne Walters brought the high lead levels in her household’s water to officials’ attention. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Michigan’s department of environmental quality (MDEQ) discussed Walters’ lead results in an email later that month.
With the subject line “HIGH LEAD: FLINT Water testing Results”, the EPA’s Jennifer Crooks wrote to local officials that she had been discussing Walters’ “water situation” for several weeks. Crooks was stunned by the results: 104 parts per billion of lead. The EPA’s regulatory limit is 15 parts per billion.
“WOW!!! Did he find the LEAD!” Crooks wrote, adding: “She has 2 children under the age of 3 … Big worries here.”
But state environmental officials felt it was an isolated case. They assuaged the fears of an EPA expert, Miguel Del Toral, by saying the city used corrosion controls to prevent the river from leaching contaminants off the water pipes. Del Toral later confirmed that wasn’t the case in a 25 April email, writing that the “whole town may have much higher lead levels” than state officials believed.
The lack of corrosion control in Flint, he later wrote, was a “major concern from a public health standpoint”.
It would not be until October 2015, when schools reported lead contamination levels as high as 101 parts per billion, that government officials conceded the situation in Flint was a “public safety issue”.
Eric Davis, 53, shows his dry skin and rash that he believes the water has caused. Photograph: Bryan Mitchell for the Guardian
At a makeshift bottled water collection point, run by a county politician in the city’s north side, a line of cars stretched around the block on Friday. Like refugees from their city, volunteers stuffed cars full of crates. At the eight distribution points manned by the national guard, residents were required to bring identification and could, as of Saturday, collect only one crate per day. The Guardian witnessed several people turned away by troops.
Eric Davis, an unemployed labourer on the city’s north side, stopped drinking the tap water just two months ago. He continues to shower in it and has rashes on his eyelids. The 53-year-old sat in his living room clutching a Red Cross-delivered crate of water, and pointed to the dry skin and bloody scratches on his knees and arms.
“My skin ain’t never been like this,” he said. “My body feels contaminated. It feels like they trying to kill us out here.”
His flatmate, 58-year-old Jeffrey Moore, has refused to shower for two weeks. Instead, he boils water and wipes it over his body. “We’re alone out here,” he said.
A few blocks away, Randy Huyck, his wife and six children shared the feeling of isolation. Their two-storey house, with leaking pipes and rancid mould, was deemed uninhabitable by the city, and the family faces eviction. Abandoned or burned houses line their street, evidence of the city’s declining population and economic collapse.
Huyck continues to bathe and cook with the water.
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“I can’t afford to buy water,” he said. “With six kids and no money coming in, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Until a few weeks ago, with a Michigan primary looming in March, Flint’s water crisis was barely acknowledged on the US presidential campaign trail or in the national media. Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton called the delayed response by Michigan officials “unconscionable”, and Bernie Sanders has repeatedly called for Snyder to resign. On Sunday, Jeb Bush praised Synder “for stepping up right now”. His rivals in the chaotic Republican race have kept silent.
On Thursday, Barack Obama announced $80m in aid for the people of Flint. “Our children should not have to be worried about the water that they’re drinking in American cities,” he said. “That’s not something that we should accept.”
But residents here fear the money will never reach them, and are angered that Obama chose not to visit the city during a trip to Detroit this week.
Grant Porter, five, reacts as his mother Ardis Porter, 26, tries to comfort him while having his blood drawn to be tested for lead. Photograph: Bryan Mitchell for the Guardian
At the Masonic temple in downtown Flint on Saturday, hundreds of residents arrived to test their bodies for lead. The testing kits, paid for not by the government but by a local lawyer, ran out within an hour.
Ardis Porter, 26, and her five-year-old son, Grant, got here early enough to see a nurse. They stopped using tap water to brush their teeth only two weeks ago. Grant, whose hair started falling out in November, cried as the needle pierced his skin. Ardis worries her unborn child may also have been exposed.
“They should be testing everybody because they’ve exposed us all to this,” said Ardis Porter. “It wouldn’t be handled like this in other areas. People don’t care about the poor.”
