Gary Rubinstein has a peculiar habit of insisting on integrity of reporting. He gets hot and bothered when people claim “miracle achievements” but hide the facts or distort them.

He noticed an article in USA Today that both appeared to criticize charter schools and at the same time to claim that some of them had achieved astonishing college graduation results.

The bottom line, said USA Today, was that many charter school students don’t make it through college. But, it also said, their college graduation rate is far higher than that of comparable low-income students.

Gary did an inquiry, and he learned that the writer of the article–as is typical–did not take the charters’ high attrition rates into account.

So, in the end, the article was another phony claim about the “success” of charter schools, when that “success” depends on shedding large numbers of students.

The star example: Democracy Prep in…