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Last week, when I heard that the new National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics and U.S. history results were about to be released, my curiosity was piqued. No, not in anticipation of finding out whether the results would be dismal or dismal-er, but because I really wanted to see how the Bush administration would handle the news, good or bad. Schools aren’t held accountable for civics and U.S. history under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and I couldn’t wait to see how the administration would somehow tie the results to its favorite law.

Even though I’m pretty jaded about federal education policy, even I was caught a bit off guard by how Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings spun the at-best moderate improvements in civics and U.S. history:

For the past five years, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has focused attention and support on helping students become stronger readers. The release today by The Nation’s Report Card on U.S. History and Civics proves NCLB is working and preparing our children to succeed….

These results are a testament to what works. As students’ skills in reading fluency and comprehension strengthen, so does their ability to do well in other subject areas. While critics may argue that NCLB leads educators to narrow their curriculum focus, the fact is, when students know how to read and comprehend, they apply these skills to other subjects like history and civics. The result is greater academic gains.

Okay, I can see the conclusion that NCLB isn’t narrowing the curriculum. While NAEP improvements are far from proof of this, the fact that scores went up (though only slightly) certainly casts some doubt on the narrowing theory. But that NCLB’s focus on reading drove history and civics scores up? Come on.

The results of NAEP exams that actually tested reading expose Spellings’ conclusion as baseless. In both 2002 and 2005 4th grade reading scores were stuck at 219 (out of 500), and 8th grade scores dipped from 264 to 262.  And no, the lowest performing students did not make big gains that were somehow masked by overall futility. 4th grade scores were pretty much stagnant for both the bottom and top ten percent of performers, and in 8th grade everyone saw a dip except for the top ten percent, which broke even.

With the NAEP reading tests showing a decline in scores under NCLB, it seems just plain wrong for the U.S. Secretary of Education to declare up-ticks in civics and history as proof that NCLB is improving reading. And isn’t the role of the secretary of education to serve the public, not deceive it?

Unfortunately, such deception is par for the federal education course. As RAND Corporation researcher Milbrey McLaughlin discovered while examining the first ten years of Title I – the heart of Washington’s K-12 effort – federal policymakers routinely downplay, twist, or ignore negative evaluations of programs they support. Why? Because:

Impact studies that lead to macronegative results constitute a threat for many Congressmen, in the same way they threaten program personnel….The teachers, administrators, and others whose salaries are paid by Title I, or whose budgets are balanced by its funds, are, in practice, a more powerful constituency than those poor parents who are disillusioned by its unfulfilled promise.

That’s right: Politicians regularly ignore or gloss over bad news because it’s a threat to them politically, and whether or not students are actually better off is at best of secondary importance. And that makes sense. No matter how selfless or lofty their rhetoric, politicians – including presidents and secretaries of education – are as self-interested as anyone else, and will spin news to their maximum advantage.

But if we can’t trust politicians to be truthful about their policies, how can we hope to infuse honesty into public education? After all, whether the focus of power is at the local, state, or federal level, public schooling is ultimately run by politicians.

The answer, of course, is to take power out of politicians’ hands and give it to parents. Let parents pull their children and the money to educate them out of public schools when they’ve been lied to, or are just dissatisfied. Let the powerful interest that parents have in their own children counter the self-interest of politicians, and stop leaving kids at the mercy of a system built on half-truths and deception.

It’s sad to say, but were some national assessment to show tomorrow that one percent more kids were making it up the gym-class rope, the Education Department’s press release would quite possibly read something like this:

These results are proof that No Child Left Behind is working. Thanks to this good law our children are better equipped than ever before to read rope-climbing manuals and calculate vectors, empowering them to climb ever-longer ropes.

With No Child Left Behind we made a promise to our children that they would reach ever-loftier heights. As these results make clear, NCLB is empowering our kids to do exactly that!

Please, let’s not let this happen. Instead of putting our faith in federal politicians, let’s focus our energies on school choice and getting parents the power that they need.

Neal McCluskey is an education policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom and is the author of Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education.