The rumor mill is ruminating and rumbling, and the word is that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) may soon release its long-delayed report on NAEP math scores for students in public and private schools.

The results of the official report likely will mirror those of an earlier report, also funded by ED but not given the official imprimatur, using similar data sources and statistical methods.  The earlier report found that public school students outperformed students in charter schools and private schools* when background characteristics -- race/ethnicity and SES -- are taken into consideration. 

The report does not measure how much individual students gained over a period of time, meaning that it fails to meet one of the criteria on Jeanne Allen's full-page ad.  (But it does meet the ad's criteria of weighing family background information, accounting for the interaction of student background characteristics and undergoing professional review.)  This leaves an opening for special interests who wish private school students and charter school students had outperformed public school students.  They will criticize the study.  But many of them would be praising the study if the results had turned out in their favor.

The kicker to this story is that the release date may be June 30, the Friday before Independence Day. If that turns out to be true, we can divine the Bush administration's view of this report: bad news.  They release bad news on Fridays.  (ED's inspector general report on Armstrong Williams, for example, was released on a Friday.)  So, if the report comes on this pre-holiday Friday, we can surmise that in the topsy-turvy worldview of the Bush Administration, when students in public schools outperform students in charter schools and private schools, it's bad news to be buried at the bottom of the news cycle.  Ugh.

*It's possible that only the public-private comparison will be released, with the charter-noncharter comparison coming later.