I don't usually get involved in Education issues as the political arguments are usually about tactics that I know nothing about, not about whether our children should be well-educated or not.

Nevertheless, I will post this exchange of ideas since the Times came out so strongly against President Bush on it yesterday.

The Times original article yesterday - Nation's Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal
And their Op-Ed piece today - Bad News on the Charter Front
Counter-argument in the Wall Street Journal - Dog Eats AFT Homework

There was also this response from the Secretary of Education reported by the same person who wrote the original story - Education Secretary Defends Charter Schools

It wasn't until I read the last line of that article that I realized what the problem was.

The secretary's reaction prompted surprise from Darvin Winnick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the national test for the federal government. Mr. Winnick said that while he would interpret the scores with caution, he did not see much cause for arguing with the outcomes themselves.

"The data is probably what it is,'' Mr. Winnick said. "N.A.E.P. is pretty accurate. There shouldn't be any question about the results.''

The problem is that the headline and the reporting jump to the conclusion that Charter Schools are "Lagging Behind". In fact, the data isn't about the schools at all, it was about the students, and everyone seems to agree that the students coming in to charter schools are almost by definition lower performers to begin with. There is definitely something to the argument that a school should be judged on the progressive achievement of their students, and that it is impossible to judge a school solely on it's student base when you're not dealing with the same population.

I cannot say definitively who is right and who is wrong, but I think the front page report and headline was definitely unfair.