The Wall Street Journal - 07.09.2019 - 08.09.2019

A2| Saturday/Sunday, September 7 - 8, 2019 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**

U.S. NEWS

The name of SimilarWeb ,

an internet traffic research

firm, was misspelled as Simil-

iarWeb in a Page One article

Thursday about mass shooters.

About 8,600 non-U.S. for-

eign forces are deployed in Af-

ghanistan. A World News arti-

cle Friday about a proposed

U.S.-Taliban deal to withdraw

foreign forces from Afghani-

stan incorrectly said 17,000.

IWG, the parent of rental

business Regus, has locations

in around 120 countries. A

Heard on the Street column

Friday about We Co.’s planned

initial public offering incor-

rectly said Regus has locations

in 12 countries.

Readers can alert The Wall Street Journal to any errors in news articles by

emailing [email protected] or by calling 888-410-2667.

CORRECTIONSAMPLIFICATIONS

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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U.S. WATCH

IMMIGRATION

Administration Seeks

Tougher Work Rules

The Trump administration

wants to make it harder for asy-

lum seekers to receive work per-

mits while they wait for their

cases to be decided, a move that

could deter some immigrants

from entering the country illegally.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigra-

tion Services, the federal agency

that processes asylum applica-

tions, said Friday it would pro-

pose a rule next week scrapping

a requirement that asylum seek-

ers receive a work permit within

30 days of applying for one.

USCIS Acting Director Ken

Cuccinelli said the agency wants

to allow it more time to screen

applicants for national security

and other concerns.

By doing away with the 30-

day deadline, the government

isn’t obligated to grant these im-

migrants work permits at all.

Federal law states that asylum

seekers may work but aren’t en-

titled to do so.

—Michelle Hackman

SENATE

Facebook Questioned

On Hidden Gun Sales

A group of influential Demo-

cratic senators called on Face-

book Inc. to quickly end the post-

ings of firearms for sale on its

popular Marketplace and de-

manded information about how it

polices gun sales on the service.

In a letter to Chief Executive

Mark Zuckerberg, 15 senators

asked for information about the

company’s knowledge of, and ef-

forts at policing, the sale of

guns on Marketplace. Last

month, The Wall Street Journal

reported sellers of firearms were

clandestinely posting guns for

sale on the service, often dis-

guising them as posts for gun

cases or empty boxes.

A Facebook spokeswoman

said the company had made up-

dates to Marketplace since the

Journal’s article, without elaborat-

ing. The company is “evolving” its

automated system and retraining

human reviewers hired to catch

violating content, she added.

—Parmy Olson

9/

Judge Delays Release

Of Documents in Suit

A judge on Friday agreed to

give the Trump administration

more time to decide whether to

shield documents concerning al-

legations of official Saudi in-

volvement in the Sept. 11, 2001,

terrorist attacks, a sign that top

Justice Department officials are

struggling how to handle de-

mands from victims’ families to

release the information.

The 9/11 victims families are

seeking the information as part

of a lawsuit against Saudi Ara-

bia, accusing its government of

helping coordinate the 2001 ter-

rorist attacks.

Most of the attackers were

from Saudi Arabia; Riyadh has

denied complicity in the attacks.

Invoking the states-secret

privilege requires Attorney Gen-

eral William Barr’s approval. The

judge agreed to postpone a Fri-

day deadline until Thursday after

the Justice Department sug-

gested in a filing that the Federal

Bureau of Investigation intends

to try to keep at least some of

the information from public view.

The U.S. government’s pend-

ing decision comes amid broader

tensions between Washington

and Riyadh.

—Aruna Viswanatha

with regulators, including at-

torneys general, in answering

questions about our business

and the dynamic technology

sector.”

Tech firms generally have

contended that they operate in

highly competitive markets.

The action by the attorneys

general, which has been antici-

pated for weeks, could be ex-

panded to other companies be-

yond Google and Facebook

soon, some of the people said.

Some of the state officials

already contend that the tech

companies’ dominance is pro-

ducing harmful effects.

For now, it appears unlikely

the state and federal investiga-

tions will be formally coordi-

nated.

But the federal enforcers

have been meeting with state

attorneys general, and closer

cooperation could develop as

the probes move forward.

“The FTC values our cooper-

ative relationship with the AGs

and routinely coordinates on

tech and antitrust issues,” a

spokeswoman for the FTC said.

The Justice Department de-

clined to comment.

Federal Trade Commission alle-

gations that it repeatedly used

deceptive disclosures and ac-

count settings to lure users into

sharing personal information,

and it remains under federal

scrutiny for issues including

whether it acquired companies

such as Instagram to stave off

competition. State attorneys

general also are expected to ex-

amine those issues, along with

Facebook’s use of data and its

role in the huge digital adver-

tising market.

This year, Google’s share of

the total U.S. digital ad market

will be 37%, and Facebook’s will

be 22%, according to eMar-

keter, a research firm.

Facebook declined to com-

ment.

Google, which also is facing

a Justice Department antitrust

probe, said it is cooperating

with the inquiries.

“Google’s services help peo-

ple every day, create more

choice for consumers, and sup-

port thousands of jobs and

small businesses across the

country,” said Google spokes-

man Jose Castañeda. “We con-

tinue to work constructively

of the people, as well as

whether the firm has stifled in-

novation or harmed consumer

choice and privacy.

Separately, New York Attor-

ney General Letitia James, a

Democrat, confirmed a Wall

Street Journal report that her

office is organizing a bipartisan

probe into whether Facebook

“has stifled competition and

put users at risk,” as she said in

a statement. “We will use every

investigative tool at our dis-

posal to determine whether

Facebook’s actions may have

endangered consumer data, re-

duced the quality of consumers’

choices, or increased the price

of advertising.”

Joining in the Facebook in-

vestigation so far are attorneys

general of Colorado, Florida,

Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina,

Ohio, Tennessee and the Dis-

trict of Columbia, Ms. James

said. The investigation focuses

on Facebook’s “dominance in

the industry and the potential

anticompetitive conduct stem-

ming from that dominance,”

her office said.

Facebook recently agreed to

shell out $5 billion to settle

year in the journals Socio-

logical Science and Educa-

tion Next, Dr. von Hippel

and Caitlin Hamrock, direc-

tor of research at the E3 Al-

liance, a nonprofit that

serves Texas students, wrote

that a primary reason some

newer tests fail to show the

summer learning gap is be-

cause modern tests are

“The important thing is that
the wage increases, which had
slowed, seem to be coming
back,” said Joel Naroff, chief
economist at Naroff Economic
Advisors Inc. “That points to
the simple fact that the labor
market really is tight.”
The unemployment rate
was unchanged at 3.7% in Au-
gust for the third consecutive
month. The jobless rate re-
mains near a 50-year low, a
sign of job security and plenti-
ful work opportunities for mil-
lions of individuals.
Still, its downward trajec-
tory appears to have lost some
momentum. At its August
level, the jobless rate was lit-
tle changed from 3.8% a year
earlier. Between 2010 and
2018, by contrast, it fell on av-
erage 0.6 percentage point a
year.
Investors have been shaken
in recent months by signs the
global economy is slowing. On
Friday China’s central bank re-
leased 900 billion yuan ($
billion) to banks to spur the
economy, and the Bank of Rus-
sia cut its key interest rate for
the third time this year.
Earlier this week the Insti-
tute for Supply Management
reported its closely watched
gauge of U.S. manufacturing
activity contracted for the first
time in three years in August.
The report—coming after data
pointing to contracting factory
activity in the U.K., Germany,
Japan and South Korea—
fueled fears that a manufac-
turing slowdown elsewhere in
the world had reached the U.S.
Many business executives
have said in conference calls
with investors in recent weeks
that uncertainty about trade
between the U.S. and China is
clouding their outlook.

Continued from Page One

Slowdown

Hits Jobs

Growth

THE NUMBERS|By Jo Craven McGinty

True or False: Students Backslide in Summer

Nearly 40
years ago, re-
searchers at
Johns Hop-
kins Univer-
sity launched
a seminal study of student
achievement that identified
what is now known as the
“summer slide.”
The idea is that between
school years, learning slows
for all children, and the
achievement gap separating
the rich and poor grows in-
creasingly large.
The findings launched
myriad programs aimed at
halting the slide; led to the
creation of the National
Summer Learning Associa-
tion, whose slogan is
“Smarter Summers. Brighter
Futures”; and eventually cap-
tured the attention of Mal-
colm Gladwell, who included
the work in his book “Outli-
ers: The Story of Success.”
But recently, a pair of re-
searchers has questioned
whether decades-old re-
search focused on a single
school district should domi-
nate policy discussions.

The work in question is

the Beginning School Study,

which tracked a representa-

tive random sample of first-

graders who entered Balti-

more City Public Schools in

the fall of 1982 and found

that by ninth grade, two-

thirds of the increase in the

achievement gap between

poor and privileged students

could be traced to differ-

ences in summer learning

during the elementary years.

“The Baltimore study was

well done, but it’s a histori-

cal fact,” said Paul von Hip-

pel, an associate professor

of public affairs at the Uni-

versity of Texas at Austin.

“It was true for those kids

on that test at that time. It

does not seem to replicate.”

A

s evidence, he offers

examples of modern

tests that don’t show

a widening summer learning

gap. But even modern tests

don’t always agree, and us-

ing disparate results from

dissimilar tests to demon-

strate that one set of out-

comes is superior to another

is difficult at best.

“There are at least five

possible reasons why you

might get answers about

summer learning loss that

are different from the origi-

nal Beginning School Study,”

said Derek Briggs, director

of the Center for Assess-

ment, Design, Research and

Evaluation at the University

of Colorado, Boulder.

Differences in: student

populations; curricula; test-

ing standards; scaling meth-

ods used to score tests; or

common items, the overlap-

ping content that allows stu-

dent performance to be

evaluated across grades,

could all have an effect.

“Changes in achievement

are based on performance

on the same items,” Dr.

Briggs said. “If the way the

items were chosen shifted,

then it’s hard to disentangle

whether the reason you’re

seeing different things is be-

cause of scaling or because

different common items

were chosen, or because

something else changed.”

In articles published this

scored differently. They ac-

knowledge the tests they ex-

amined differed in other

ways and that some contem-

porary tests do show sum-

mer learning loss.

But if the only difference

between modern tests and

the BSS were how they were

scaled, psychometricians

who measure educational

achievement would antici-

pate the results to show the

same trends, if not the same

magnitude of variance.

“I would generally expect

the direction to be the same,

but a gap that looks huge in

one type of model might not

look so big in another type

of model,” said Leah Feuer-

stahler, an assistant profes-

sor of psychology at Ford-

ham University who

researches psychometric

models.

If the Beginning School

Study could be rescored us-

ing modern scaling methods,

psychometricians would still

expect to see widening

achievement gaps, though

the size of the gaps might

differ. (That experiment isn’t

possible because the under-

lying data no longer exist.)

S

o, do contemporary

test results disprove

the existence of the

summer slide?

The National Academies

of Sciences, Engineering and

Medicine may soon offer

some insight. A committee

was convened last year to

study the state of the sci-

ence on how summertime

experiences affect school-

children, and results are ex-

pected to be published later

this month.

In the meantime, Karl Al-

exander, a sociologist who

with his Johns Hopkins col-

league Doris Entwisle con-

ducted the BSS, defended

his work in the August issue

of Education Next. And on

one thing he agrees with his

critics: “Why should we

have to reach back 30 or

more years to make the case

for summer learning loss?”

Dr. Alexander writes. “I, too,

would welcome new and

better data on this impor-

tant topic.”

School-year change in scores

Summer change in scores

Pioneering research begun in

the 1980s found that poor

students lose more ground

during the summer.

Change in reading scores from

first to ninth grade, by

socioeconomic status

Source: American Sociological Review; Karl

Alexander, Doris Entwisle, Linda Steffel Olson,

Johns Hopkins University

191 points

• 
  

186

47

Poorer Wealthier

Summit Brewing Co., a St.

Paul, Minn.-based brewery

with 80 employees, is pulling

back on hiring to contain cost

pressures cropping up due to

global trade fights, including a

recent 20% price increase for

aluminum cans tied to tariffs.

Mark Stutrud, Summit

Brewing’s president, said Sum-

mit has also deferred capital

spending on some projects.

Yet despite a slowdown in

business, Mr. Stutrud has

boosted employee pay an aver-

age 3.5% over the past year to

retain workers.

“Wehavetobeverycom-

petitive where it comes to

wages and benefits,” he said.

Forecasting firm Macroeco-

nomic Advisers projects eco-

nomic output in the third

quarter will grow at an annual

rate of 2%, matching the 2%

pace in the second quarter

while down from 2.9% in 2018.

Signs of a global slowdown

have sent yields on U.S. long-

term bonds tumbling, in antic-

ipation of low inflation and

Fed rate cuts to stimulate eco-

nomic activity.

In futures markets, investors

are pricing in a quarter-per-

centage-point interest-rate cut

by the Fed at its policy meeting

Sept. 17-18. Rate cuts are meant

to spur growth by reducing the

cost of borrowing, thus making

it cheaper for businesses to in-

vest and for consumers to pur-

chase big-ticket items like

homes and cars.

Fed Chairman Jerome Pow-

ell, speaking in Zurich, Swit-

zerland, did little to push back

against expectations for an-

other rate move this month.

“Our labor market is in quite a

strong position,” he said, play-

ing down fears of recession.

Manufacturing overtime

dipped to 3.2 hours a week,

the lowest level since April

2017. Workers at Pennsylvania-
      based Norcen Industries Inc.,
      which distributes plastics to
      manufacturers and runs a pre-
      cision machine shop, typically
      log five to 10 hours of over-
      time a week during the busy
      summer season.
      But now there is just
      enough work to keep them oc-
      cupied for a regular 40-hour
      work week, said Josh Wil-
      liams, Norcen’s president.
      Customers are “holding off
      on ordering stuff,” he said.
      “They’re all worried about
      pricing.”

Modest job growth in August saw weak manufacturing reflecting a global manufacturing

slowdown. Meanwhile, wages and participation among working-age Americans perked up.

Monthly change in payrolls, seasonally adjusted*

600 thousand jobs

• 
  


• 
  


• 
  


• 
  

0

200

400

2008 ’09 ’10 ’11 ’12 ’13 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’18 ’

RECESSION

August: 130,

Estimate: 150,

June figure revised down by 15,000 jobs to 178,

July revised down 5,000 jobs to 159,

Average weekly earnings

change from a year earlier

Manufacturers purchasing-

managers' indexes†

Labor-force participation rate

ages 25-

2017 ’18 ’

45

50

55

60

65

Germany

U.K.

Japan

South Korea

Note: Numbers are seasonally adjusted *The Labor Department revised payroll numbers downward for early 2018 through early 2019 but have not yet

updated the monthly data. †Readings above 50 indicate expansion; below, contraction

Sources: Labor Department (payrolls, earnings, participation); IHS Markit (Global PMI)

83.

81.

81.

82.

82.

%

2017 ’18 ’

4

0

1

2

3

%

2017 ’18 ’

san group of perhaps more
than 40 attorneys general will
join that effort, which is being
led by Texas Attorney General
Ken Paxton, a Republican, ac-
cording to people familiar with
the matter.
Friday, Mr. Paxton’s office
said the news conference will
detail “a multistate investiga-
tion into whether large tech
companies have engaged in an-
ticompetitive behavior that sti-
fled competition, restricted ac-
cess and harmed consumers.”
Formal civil subpoenas are
likely to begin going out from
that effort soon, according to
the people familiar with the
matter. The investigation will
examine Google’s impact on
digital advertising and informa-
tion markets, according to one

Continued from Page One

Tech Firms

Fa ce New

Scrutiny