U.S. Cutting Back on Details in Data About Charter Schools from the New York Times (registration required.) Just when data was starting to show that charter schools were lagging behind public schools the Education Department is cutting back on the amount of information it collects about their performance.

"Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said the decision to switch to a random sample had been made in the first year of the Bush administration "for technical reasons." "There is nothing sinister or untoward about this.""