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Caveat Emptor Award

Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice for NEPC Review: The High Cost of Failing to Reform Public Education in Missouri (March 2006) and for NEPC Review: School Choice by the Numbers: The Fiscal Effect of School Choice Programs 1990-2006 (May 2007) and for NEPC Review: The ABC's of School Choice (September 2007)
Center on Education Policy for NEPC Review: Are Private High Schools Better Academically Than Public High Schools? (October 2007)

This year's grand prize is given to the Friedman Foundation for its impressive body of shoddy work, artistically combining exaggeration, misleading statements, skewed use of research, and unsupported conclusions. Perhaps the most worthy of these is a September 2007 Friedman handbook entitled, The ABC’s of School Choice. It purported to summarize the research on several forms of choice programs. Our reviewer concluded, "Evidence -- particularly on the issue of achievement -- is consistently abused in this report, both by misrepresenting individual studies (including those by voucher advocates) and misrepresenting the general body of research on choice."