As usual, Stossel tortures facts to make his point

I didn't expect it would take long for syndicated columnist and host of ABC's 20/20 John Stossel to attack the Department of Education study which indicated that the superiority of private schools is a myth.
Stossel, who has done 20/20 reports and written columns concerning his belief in the power of school choice and the failure of the public schools, is hitting the same themes in his latest column.
On his programs, Stossel has used the New York city public schools and their problems with union regulations as a whipping boy for the failure of all public schools. Public schools in Missouri and in most of the nation are not like public schools in New York.
Stossel notes that the scores of private school students on the most recent study were higher but that the data was "tortured" to take into account other factors, such as "race, ethnicity, income and parents' educational background." At that point, the public schools did just as well, and in some cases better than private schools.
He then admits that this is a "valid statistical tool," but quickly adds "it's prone to research bias." Perhaps so, but how does that explain why the study was kept on the shelf for more than a year while the Bush Administration looked for ways to disprove its findings, then released it with little or no fanfare? And let's face it, even though it was published in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, this has not been as widely publicized in the broadcast media as you might expect.
Another criticism made by Stossel is that the study takes in only fourth and eighth graders. He writes, "That's just the beginning of a student's education. American 4th graders do pretty well in international competitions. It's by 12th grade that Americans are so far behind. The longer they spend in America's bureaucratic schools, the worse they do. I'd like to see The Times publish results of 12th grade comparisons, but I won't hold my breath."
Nowhere in his column does Stossel mention the four-word reason that explains why the study focused on those classes: No Child Left Behind. This federal act calls for testing of third through eighth graders. While a study of 12th graders would have enormous value, as Stossel suggests, this study appears to have been commissioned to show the alleged superiority of private schools in teaching the students who are targeted by No Child Left Behind.
And then Stossel resorts to an old tactic: when all else fails, cite studies without providing any information about those studies. He writes:

"On international tests, Americans now lag behind students from less developed nations like Poland and Korea that spend a fraction as much money on education.
The people who run the international tests told us, 'the biggest predictor of student success is choice.' Nations that 'attach the money to the kids' and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better."

What international tests? Who are these people who run them? While Stossel admittedly has only a limited amount of space for his column, at least one specific would have been nice.
Finally, Stossel brings the reader back to what has become a cottage industry for him: selling his theme that the media backs the educational establishment and that only he can see the real truth, that the free market and big business are better for America every time. It helps sell his books and brings him big bucks to talk at business meetings and seminars.

"Why are the mainstream media so eager to defend a unionized government monopoly?" he writes. "Maybe The Times gave the 'adjusted' test data (and an earlier version of it published in January) so much play partly because of the editors' dislike of 'conservative Christian' schools (which did poorly in the study) and the Bush administration (which has talked about bringing market competition to education). But I suspect the biggest reason is that the editors just don't like capitalism and free markets."