UPDATE: The New York Times article about the report mentions our previous blog post.  Has the NCLBlog officially "arrived" now that it has appeared in the "paper of record?"

The U.S. Department of Education finally has released a comparison of student achievement in public and private schools. 

The study, which uses 4th and 8th grade NAEP scores for reading and math, seeks to account for student background characteristics, thus eliminating the wealth advantage of private school students and providing an apples-to-apples comparison.  We wrote before that (1) ED seemed to be reluctant or slow to release the data, (2) ED seemed likely to dump it on a news-killing Friday, and (3) the results likely would echo a similar study, which showed public school students outperforming private school students.

Here’s the scorecard for our predictions:

(1)  Three-year-old data?  Yes, ED was slow to release it.  What's more, charter school data collected at the same time still hasn't been released.  Anyone think it will come out next month?  There's four Fridays to choose from.

(2)  We guessed Friday, June 30 -- missed by two weeks, but we got the day of the week right.

(3)  Half-right.  The 4th-grade math results show public students outperforming private school students, but in 8th-grade reading private school students outperform public school students. (The two other public-private comparisons were not statistically significant.)

The study is good news for public schools, whose students do as well as private schools' when background factors are taken into account.  And it's bad news for those who want to use tax dollars to send more and more kids to private schools via tuition tax credits and vouchers.  Money would be better spent on proven reforms in the public schools attended by 90% of children.