The annual U.S. News and World Report project on the nation's "Best High Schools" revealed that Common Core of Data, a rich repository of federally-maintained statistics on the nation's public schools, contained some data errors. First exposed when a Las Vegas high school received an honor from the magazine based on incorrect data, the Education Department investigated and turned up more problems.
At a recent meeting sponsored by the federal National Center on Education Statistics, officials said a "perfect storm" caused several data check procedures to fail, and outlined plans to prevent such problems from happening again. My colleague Sarah Sparks has the details in a recent post on her blog Inside School Research.
Robert Morse, the director of data research for U.S. News, participated in the same meeting and offered his perspective on the issue.
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