Situational Accountability: Innumeracy and Performance Measurement Illiteracy

Situational Accountability: A Look at Gov. Rick Perry's Approach to Accountability and Transparency (transcription included)
I recently found this clip on YouTube (as posted by thecentristword) and was so intrigued that I downloaded it, transcribed it, inserted the transcription, and re-posted it so that others might be able to initiate their own discourse analysis. The clip speaks for itself.
I am concerned about the lack of funding for rigorous program assessment and data-driven performance measurement. Are accountability and transparency in the eyes of the beholder?
TRANSCRIPT:
Moderator: Let me ask you another one (previously elicited questions) here on a different topic, Governor, why does Texas continue with abstinence education programs when they don't seem to be working? In fact, I think we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.

Governor: Abstinence works.

Moderator: But we are the third highest teen pregnancy, we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country. The questioner's point is, it doesn't seem to be working....abstinence education...

Governor: It...works, ah, maybe it's... maybe it's the way it's being taught or they way it's being applied out there, but the fact of the matter is... it is the best form of...to teach our children.

Moderator: Can you -

Governor: And I'm sorry...

Moderator: ...give me a statistic suggesting it works?

Governor: And the point is, if, ... if we're not teaching it, and if we're not impressing it upon them, then, no; but if, if, if the point is, you know, we're gonna go stand up here and say, listen, y'all go have sex and go have the ah whatever is going on, and we'll worry with that, and here are the, here's the ways to have safe sex. I'm sorry, you can call me old fashioned, if you want, but I'm not going to stand up in front of the people of the State of Texas and say, that's the way we need to go and forget about abstinence.

Moderator: That's not what the ques, and with respect Governor, that's not what the questioner was asking, the questioner was simply saying, we're spending money on abstinence education, we're the third highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. Is there a problem, a disconnect between one and the other?

Governor: I don't know. Look, it, it., it gets in line with... ah ... it gets in line with other programs that we have that we spend money on, and do they work one hundred percent or do they work five percent? That's a bigger and a better issue than, well we have the third highest teenage pregnancy rate. Ah, are we, on the amount of money we are spending, are we getting a return on that that is appropriate?

Governor: I think-

Moderator: And your belief is that we are?

Governor: I think those are some dollars that are well spend. For instance, we're spending dollar to check kids for steroids, right? And what'd we find? Seven? Fifteen? And we spend x numbers of ah, Look I'm not...

Moderator: You think that was a poor expenditure.

Governor: I am saying that if, no I'm trying to make a comparable here, if that's (steroid program) a good expenditure, then I would suggest to you the dollars we're spending on abstinence education is a good expenditure.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Accountability
• Rick Perry
• transparency
• innumeracy
• mathematical illiteracy
• evaluation
• performance
• measurement

[mnaicck]

By this logic, he should be all for welfare.