Thank you for affording the opportunity to comment on your article about fairness and the work I did while at the Center on Education Policy. In February 2012 I retired from that position. So, your article deals with activities from prior years, and yet it is worth addressing.

You contend in this piece that you are measuring the fairness of my work at CEP. Well, I find your commentary strikingly unfair in two regards.

First, when you repeat someone’s criticism about our research methodology, you say that I did not respond to that claim in my answer that was published in the Washington Post of April 11, 2006. You mustn’t have read the full response because I pointed out that we used the very same research methods as the U.S. Department of Education, colleges and universities, and research organizations. If our methods had been erroneously designed to produce a particular result as you allege, the American Educational Research Association would not have awarded me one of its highest honors for that work. Neither would President George W. Bush and congressional leaders have cited our work. In fact, Mr. Bush labeled it as “non-partisan,” which is direct refutation of your theme of partisanship.

The second point is that you fail to acknowledge that I always tried to have our work scientifically based. Education Week of March 2013 carried an article I wrote, Reaching Across the Ideological Aisle, describing those efforts using as an example our multi-year research on student achievement. That research was directed by five experts of varying backgrounds, including Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution and Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. Those experts not only set the rules for our research, they also saw and commented on all draft reports of that research. After the commentary appeared, both Mr. Hanushek and Mr. Hess sent me e-mails telling of their positive views of that whole experience.

Thus, your article is fundamentally unfair in its descriptions of my work. I believe the reason you are publishing such a biased article is that the Center for Education Reform is unhappy that I have written about the research that shows the lack of general success in raising student achievement of both school vouchers and charter schools. Those approaches to education change are the main elements of your organization’s mission.

Since you can’t kill the message, you are trying to maim one of the messengers. Your claims of a pursuit of fairness and impartiality are false.