If all you know about the federally funded school voucher program in the District of Columbia is what you've read in the Washington Post, then your view of vouchers is shaped by the slick PR operation at the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF), half-truths, and sympathetic anecdotes without context.

In an article last fall, for example, the Post described a parent who had received federally funded vouchers for two of her children to attend private schools. But a Post editor said in a phone conversation last week that WSF, which oversees the federally funded voucher program and had initially put the Post in contact with the family, recently told the Post that the family had not received the vouchers.

More recently, the Post ran on May 31 a long front-page paean to the voucher program. Focusing on two poignant anecdotes, the Post misses the larger news story, buried in an accompanying table, that demand for vouchers is projected to be low. Last year, WSF said the low number of applicants was due to the short time WSF had to inform parents. This year, WSF is in full spin mode, claiming success despite the projection that demand is down. But that significant contradiction isn't mentioned in the 1800-word article about the D.C. voucher program -- or any other Post article.

In light of these and other lapses, here's a quick primer on how to read news coverage of vouchers in the Post and other media:

• Does the coverage keep personal stories in context? While vouchers may "work" for one parent, independent research, summarized here (pdf) shows they aren't effective in helping the vast majority of students learn.
• Does the coverage weigh the impact of using public funds to support schools that simply refuse to educate students who are difficult to teach? Private schools have greater latitude than public schools in dealing with such students. For example, this dynamic should have been explored in a recent Post article about a frustrated voucher parent; however, it is not even mentioned.
• Did the voucher students ever attend low-performing public schools? Some private schools, as the Post has noted, use tax-funded vouchers to replace existing private funds. And some of the voucher families featured in the Post appear to live in areas with schools whose students score at or above the national average on standardized tests.
• Are the people interviewed typical? Remember that the organization running the program often provides people for reporters to contact. The stories they tell may be the exception rather than the rule.
• Does the coverage gloss over evidence that the program's eligibility requirements are lax or not enforced?

The editorial page of the Post has taken an unsupportable position in endorsing the D.C. voucher program, which shifts attention and resources from the many students in the city's public schools. We have always looked to the news pages of the Post not only to be objective but also to thoroughly examine the facts. It's especially disappointing, then, that the Post's voucher coverage has not fulfilled its obligation to fact check claims made by WSF.

June 8, 2005