Seattle's Child Magazine: Letter: A Call for Fuller Disclosure

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editor@seattleschild.com

Published: Monday, June 16, 2008

Letter: A Call for Fuller Disclosure

One reader wrote to point out that Linda Thomas' article "Is the Grass Always Greener at Lakeside?" in our June magazine failed to note that The Center on Education Policy, a group that produced a study on public vs. private schooling, is a public education advocacy group.

Here is an excerpt from his letter:

The Center on Education Policy ... hardly would have bothered to publish a study with the opposite outcome.

More importantly, the article implies that the study deals with students generally; in fact, the study focuses only on low-income students at urban high schools. For all we know, this sample could have been selected because it was the only one that fit the outcome desired by the study's funders, as they had a broader sample available to them.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist; I’m a market researcher and see this kind of lopsided study misquoted in the media all the time. In this case, it would have been simple to mention the limitations of the study so as not to mislead the reader.

Thank you,

Matt Fontaine