William Marvel: Schoolcraft

The headline and lede on the Sun's top story for Jan. 4 seemed so provocatively misleading that it might have been composed by a committee from the Conway Education Association, or by a staffer from Breitbart News. Luring readers with a teaser that gave precisely the opposite impression from the one created by the story itself, it told those too lazy to turn the page that our largest local charter school is a miserable failure.

The slight was doubtless inadvertent, but just as certainly it did some undeserved damage. Under the bold announcement "Local school on low-performing list," skimmers of the front page saw that the "Department of Education has named Northeast Woodland Chartered Public School, located in the Tech Village in Conway Village, as among the lowest performing in the state." Only on pages 7 and 8 did readers learn that the ranking resulted largely from the state's insistence on entering scores of "zero" for the considerable number of students whose parents declined to have them take the test. In actuality, Northeast Woodland seems to be surpassing our other local public schools, academically — as was implied by a comparison of last year's statistics, toward the end of page 7.