📢 LifeWise is promoting a new study claiming its Bible program produces “academic gains exceeding 30%” and “nearly 50% lower absenteeism.”

Those are enormous claims. But even on an initial review, there are serious reasons not to accept them at face value. 🤨
The new report was prepared by Thomas P. Miller & Associates (TPMA), an Indianapolis-based consulting firm that also produced LifeWise’s previous outcomes report. (2023)

We asked Dr. Charles Riedesel, a professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s School of Computing, to review that earlier report. His conclusion was blunt:

“This study, while appearing authoritative, is fraught with deception and flaws that are readily apparent to those with statistical training.” 😳

Now TPMA is back with another LifeWise report, and several problems stand out immediately. 👀

🚩The schools were not randomly selected or randomly assigned LifeWise.
🚩Schools and communities chose whether to adopt the program.That means schools with LifeWise may already differ from schools without it in ways that affect attendance, suspensions, and test scores.
Important outside factors do not appear to be fully accounted for.
🚩The report includes controls for income, English-language learners, and disability rates. But it does not appear to fully account for changes in state law, school funding, district policies, local demographics, or other differences between the places where LifeWise is heavily concentrated and the places where it is not.
🚩The report repeatedly turns modest differences into dramatic promotional claims. One example compares attendance rates of approximately:

88.45% without LifeWise
93.30% with LifeWise

That is a difference of about 4.85 percentage points.➡️In plain English, out of 100 students, that is roughly: 88 students attending instead of 93.

But when those same numbers are converted into absence rates, they become:

11.55% absent
6.70% absent

The decrease from 11.55 to 6.70 can then be advertised as an improvement of more than 40%—and similar comparisons are used to support the claim of “nearly 50% lower absenteeism.”

Same data. MUCH more dramatic headline. 😡

🚩The report reads like promotional material. It includes large branded graphics declaring:
“Attendance is Higher.”
“Behavior is Better.”
“Academics Improve.”

🚩It does not include an obvious disclosure identifying who commissioned or funded the report.

🚨And the central problem remains:

Finding different outcomes in schools with LifeWise does NOT prove that LifeWise caused those outcomes. This report may show an association- It does NOT automatically establish causation.

This is only our initial review of the new study. More details- and a full, updated rebuttal are coming

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