Editor’s Note: A tip of the hat to former Chester County Commissioner Carol Aichele for bringing the New York Time’s correction to our attention.

On Tuesday, VISTA Today posted a story entitled “New Study Indicates Unionville and Great Valley Students Test Well Above Grade Level.” It was based on a New York Times report on the research conducted by education professors and their associates at Stanford University. They analyzed test scores in reading and math from school districts across the country to conclude that socioeconomic conditions matter greatly

Any time someone works with that much data – even if those people work at one of the nation’s elite colleges or one of the world’s most-respected newspapers – mistakes are bound to be made. And one certainly was made at the expense of the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District.

As we wrote on Tuesday, the research indicated that, “according to the sliding scale of wealth and achievement, the students in the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, an area of considerable wealth, average only 0.5 levels above their grade.”

That statement is false, because the researchers inadvertently linked a virtual charter school to the district. The students at said charter school had lower test scores than those in Tredyffrin-Easttown.

The New York Times corrected the error and removed the school district from its graphic. Click here to read the Times story in its entirety, and scroll to the bottom to see the retraction.

_________

Top photo credit: Children in primary school on the first day of classes in the new school year via photopin (license)