The authors express concern to Tim Russert of NBC over what appeared to be a dogged advocacy of educational vouchers unwarranted by the facts.

A letter to the editor of the Washington Post points out that the Heritage Foundation's report, "No Excuses" sheds little light on the prospects for the nation's most troubled urban schools, which lack the resources in effort, time, and money that have been showered on the 21 schools in the Heritage study.

Recent discussions of federal initiatives to help schools reduce class size have produced rebuttals suggesting smaller classes don't improve educational outcomes. However, the research used to make the case against smaller class size is based on a very different data set, that of pupil-teacher ratio, which is not at all the same. A solid body of research conclusively demonstrates that smaller classes are associated with improved educational outcomes.

A May 10, 2000, commentary by Diane Ravitch, arguing for the government to stop sending Title I money to schools and send the funds instead to poor parents who would choose which schools to enroll their children, ignores the reality that the nation's highest quality schools don't have room for more students.

The headline on a February 28, 2000, story about a study of a privately funded voucher plan may have placed undue emphasis on positive findings of the study, thus obscuring both its contradictory results and the study's inherent flaws.

A response to Gary Rosen's assertion, in the February 2000 issue of Commentary, that school vouchers are rooted in American democratic traditions. While advocates prefer vouchers as an opportunity to help poor urban school children, internationally vouchers have been found to reinforce existing social hierarchies, leaving the poor further behind. A slightly shorter version of this essay was submitted to Commentary as a letter to the editor February 29, 2000.