Media Ignores Federal Report that Undercuts Obama Administration Initiative

Dan Lips / January 22, 2010

When a Congressionally-mandated study released in 2008 found that President Bush’s favorite reading program was a failure, it was national news.  An article by Greg Toppo in the USA Today blared the headline “Study: Bush’s Reading First Program Ineffective” and reported that the results could be a “knockout punch” for the program.  Similar articles appeared in the New York Times (by Sam Dillon) and Washington Post (by Maria Glod).

But when a similarly devastating report was published last week that undercuts a pillar of President Obama’s education plans, none of these papers has bothered to report it.   As we have reported, the Department of Health and Human Services finally released the results of a national evaluation of the Head Start program that Congress mandated in the late 1990s. (more…)