Dear Alexander Russo: 

I was surprised to find that a recent claim by President Bush was "new to" you.  Yesterday wasn't the first time President Bush made the claim that "During the most recent five-year period on record, nine-year-olds made more progress in reading than in the previous 28 years combined."

The claim has been made repeatedly by the president and Secretary Spellings and other administration officials in op-eds and speeches and newsletters.  Also, we cited it often -- one might say obsessively -- on this blog.  See here, here, here and here.  (As someone who has been a frequent scolder of other bloggers for not reading your blog, it's surprising to find that you weren't reading ours.)

At the very least, you might have noticed a news article that mentioned the claim a few months after we wrote about it.  It appeared in Education Week and is available, like your blog, on the Ed Week Web site.  The article questioned the Bush administration's stat-citing to support NCLB.

By the way, yesterday's claim is the technically accurate but still misleading version of the claim, which is based on NAEP scores.  At times, Bush administration officials had substituted "last five years" for "most recent "most recent five-year period" -- making the claim not just deceptive but false. 

The truth is that the five-year period included time before NCLB was signed, so it's a stretch (putting it politely) to use the gains as evidence that NCLB is working.

Hey, thanks for reading. 

P.S.  UPDATE:   Alexander Russo politely acknowledges our crusade against the Bush administration's claims