Today’s clicking (especially from fivethirtyeight.com) led me to two strikingly similar declamatory reports about high school student’s knowledge of civics, complete with chart-laden survey results.

“Arizona schools are failing at [a] core academic mission,” concludes this Goldwater Institute policy brief.

“Oklahoma schools are failing at a core academic mission,” announces this Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs article.

When asked to name the first president of the United States, only 26.5% of the Arizona high school students surveyed answered correctly. Only 49.6% could correctly name the two major political parties in the United States. An even smaller percentage of Oklahoma high school students gave correct answers to these and other questions from the U.S. citizenship test study guide. None of the thousands of students surveyed in either state answered all ten questions correctly.

The shocking thing is that these are garbage studies. Made-up numbers, probably. The acme of vulpigeration. Evil. Makes me sick. (Glad I coined the word, though.)

No way these are real studies. Danny Tarlow over at This Number Crunching Life has taken a mathematical hammer to the Oklahoma “study” quite effectively. (The blatant similarity of the Arizona “study” blows away any shred of possibility that the Oklahoma study is legit. I’d love to see Danny’s face when he sees the Arizona report.)

What’s frightening is that this kind of snake oil has far too good a chance of surviving as fact (which it isn’t) and influencing public policy.

The guilty parties? The Goldwater Institute, which as you might guess is a conservative “think” tank. The OCPA, which describes itself as “the flagship of the conservative movement in Oklahoma.” Matthew Ladner, the author of both reports, who is vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute. And last but not least, Strategic Vision, LLC, which Ladner says “conducted” the studies. In my opinion, the word is concocted. Read about them yourself.

[Updated with correct business name: Strategic Vision, LLC.]