The following is the text (with some hyperlinks added) of a letter I sent tonight to Daniel Okrent, public editor of The New York Times, regarding the recent Chartergate scandal:

Dear Mr. Okrent,

I hope you had a relaxing vacation, but while you were away in August, the paper of record got itself into a bit of mischief on the education beat. I’ve enjoyed your column so far (as, predictably, have so many Times-skeptics), and I realize that many issues are thrust in your face daily, but one lead story, “Charter Schools Trail in Results, U.S. Data Reveals” (Aug. 17), cries out to be addressed.

There are three reasons for this: 1) the biased way in which the story was played, 2) the prominent way in which the story was played and 3) the Times’ failure to acknowledge any problems with the story after they were uncovered in other venues.

And that’s not to mention the ways in which the Times is further failing to honestly report on the results from charter schools even today.

Let’s go point-by-point:

1) As is clear from reading the story itself (though not clear until the 10th paragraph, after the jump) this negative story about charter schools was given to the Times by one of the most prominent opponents of charter schools in America: the American Federation of Teachers. This, off the bat, should have provided the paper with ample reason for skepticism. Instead, the Times presented the story in much the way the union must have hoped: as a tremendous blow to the charter-school movement and the Bush administration.

Now, aside form the motives of the union, there were problems with the story itself. The union, as it happened, had taken a bunch of yet-to-be-released federal data on charter schools and conducted its own analysis. The union (big surprise) found that charter schools were not up to snuff. Specifically, the story said that students in charter schools were performing about a half a year behind the students in the nearest traditional public schools.

This, however, was not the scandal the Times wished it to be. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of charter schools understands the population these publicly funded, privately run schools serve: overwhelmingly poor, overwhelmingly minority and (logically) having a hard enough time in public schools to prompt them to seek alternatives. In other words, charter schools have worse scores because they’re trying to educate tougher kids. As the AFT report itself acknowledges — conveniently buried — when you correct for race, the supposed “gap” disappears.

The Times story did not even acknowledge this caveat in defense of charter schools — a caveat that even a hostile interest group had the integrity to note.

2) The placement of the story on page one, as the lead, speaks for itself. It should also be noted, however, that the story served as one engagement in a larger campaign the Times has undertaken against the No Child Left Behind act, often at the expense of the truth. I am not particularly a defender of President Bush or his law, but the series is quickly coming to rival the Times’ famed Augusta coverage under a previous regime.

3) The Times’ failure to acknowledge any error on its part is perhaps the most egregious aspect of this incident. The paper has yet to acknowledge the simple fact noted above, that the supposed gap between charter school students and other public school students disappears when accounting for race.

This flaw was pointed out in a number of venues, not least of which was in an editorial in the paper where I am employed, The New York Post.

Quite to the contrary, the Times took its own faulty story and ran with it, using it as the basis of an editorial, “Bad News on the Charter Front” (Aug. 18). Now, this was only a day later, but, I can assure you, the faults with the story were already being publicized widely on the Internet, at well-read sites including the moderate-liberal Eduwonk.com. The Times knew about the study’s flaws, and it willfully ignored them.

AND NOW…

The Times continues to fail to tell the real story on charter schools. On September 8, The New York Post reported the results of a new study by a professor at Harvard University, Caroline Hoxby.

Whereas the AFT study was based on a sample of about 3 percent of the 4th-grade charter-school students in the nation, Hoxby’s study is based on data about virtually all of the 4th-grade charter-school students in the nation. And her results were quite the opposite of the AFT’s. Hoxby found that: “Compared to students in the nearest regular public school, charter students are 4 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 2 percent more likely to be proficient in math, on their state’s exams.”

This is good news for the charter school movement, and it’s news of which readers of the “paper of record” have yet to be informed as of this writing.

Hoxby’s study can be seen at:

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers.html

Someone at the Times might want to look into it.

I’ve gone on at some length here, but at the same time I’ve only scratched the surface of the many problems in the Times’ education coverage. You may be familiar already with the controversy surrounding this story. I — or, I’m sure, any supporter of education reform — would be happy to fill you in on further details.

I can be reached by e-mail or by telephone at 212-xxx-xxxx.

This correspondence has been published electronically, at http://www.rhsager.com, in the interest of open debate.

Thank you for your time.

Best,
Ryan Sager