As you probably know by now, education and immigration policy think-tanker Jason Richwine resigned this afternoon from the Heritage Foundation amid a firestorm over a report he co-authored with Robert Rector arguing that the immigration reform plan being touted by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio would cost $6.3 trillion. The personnel move happened after it was revealed that Richwine had written a doctoral dissertation which asserted that the federal government should use IQ (or perceived levels of cognitive ability) in immigration decisions — especially to keep those immigrants who test low on those exams out of the country — and after Chris Moody of Yahoo News reported that Richwine wrote for the race-baiting outlet Alternative Right. This news led some to speculate that the underlying arguments in that dissertation (and Richwine’s general view that intelligence is genetic and thus unchangeable regardless of environment) may have informed Heritage’s study.[Heritage denied the accusation.] The perceptions that Richwine’s and Rector’s study was bigotry-driven, along with the myriad flaws in the piece (especially in light of the foundation’s own past research supporting expansive immigration policies), the criticisms from those inside and outside the conservative movement over its increasingly politicized research and the lingering animosity between Heritage President (and former senator) Jim DeMint and his onetime colleagues in the federal upper house, may have forced the venerable institution into a corner.
As you would expect, Richwine’s resignation of hasn’t gone down well with fellow think tankers such as Charles Murray, the coauthor if the infamous tome on race and intelligence, Bell Curve, who tweeted that Richwine was a victim of “mindless bashing” and was happy that the American Enterprise Institute had the gesticular fortitude to let him write his bigotry three decades ago. Given the flaws of IQ tests in measuring cognitive ability and potential, the weak correlation between IQ and economic outcomes, and all the other issues, political, ethical, historical, and research-wise, that come with using IQ in reaching any conclusions about anything, Murray and others defending the use of IQ in research should be a lot more thoughtful in defending Richwine then they have been. [Richwine himself should distance himself from using IQ in future research.]
Richwine’s resignation is definitely news within education policy circles. After all, he has written plenty about the education issues, especially in the area of teacher compensation and whether there should be a focus on stemming socioeconomic and gender-based achievement gaps. Particularly for Heritage, Richwine was its most formidable thinker in these discussions (which isn’t saying much), and in many cases, its most-controversial even before the immigration fracas. Not that One can only imagine the conversations now going down among Beltway reform types.
Certainly it is hard to know how much Richwine’s resignation is driven by this study or by other issues between himself and Heritage; after all, there are always the officially stated reasons for a separation of employment and the real reasons left unsaid by all sides unless brought to the courts. [Heritage merely issued the typically oblique press statement offering nothing. ] But if Richwine is being forced to resign over this issue, then it is a terrible thing. Even if you think Richwine’s views are repugnant (as I do), no one should be served up as a fall guy by their former employer because of its own irresponsibility in publishing faulty research and touting a rather faulty agenda. If anything, the embarrassment over the Rector and Richwine study should force Heritage to do some soul searching over the quality of its research overall, especially its politically-driven pieces arguing against Common Core reading and math standards.
More importantly, Heritage shouldn’t have even tried to express shock about Richwine’s penchant for using IQ in his research. Back in 2011, Heritage released a report by Richwine and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute that essentially focused on whether teachers were overpaid based on their “cognitive ability”. The report, which used data from the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Armed Forces Qualification Test to conclude that “teachers exhibit low cognitive ability compared to other college graduates”, was roundly criticized by education policy types for analyzing teacher’s scores on the AFQT without controlling for education and other methodology flaws. The report’s conceit that teacher’s were less intelligent than their peers even led U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan to command his speechwriter to pen a piece taking aim at the report because it “insults teachers.” Your editor, in particular, was critical of Heritage and AEI for indulging in the kind of rhetoric that alludes to eugenicist and racialist thinking (and does the school reform movement no favors). In spite of the criticism, Heritage, along with AEI, touted the Biggs-Richwine report, implicitly backing Richwine’s thinking.
So Heritage can’t think it can just sack Richwine and think it is free and clear of criticism over its efforts. If anything, the think tank may now be subject to even more scrutiny.