Still no accountability for last week’s hatchet job on charter schools. The apparent strategy is either “dig in heels” or “ignore.” Sunday’s Week in Review reiterated the findings with no additional context, and today’s paper includes only a short letter from NCES Commissioner Robert Lerner.
Inside Baseball Afterthought: A big goal of the reorganization of the Department of Education’s research operation in 2002 was trying to separate educational research from politics. The fact that the political folks at the Department of Education were blindsided by the revelation that NCES was working on its own analysis of the NAEP charter school data seems like evidence the new system is actually working…
Still, the Bushies should have known about the NYT story and been more proactively ready to deal with it. Even Eduwonk in the backwoods of Alaska with no Internet knew it was coming!
Update: A new blog, Miscellaneous Objections, written by Ryan Sager an editorial writer for the NY Post, has a lot more on the charter flap.