The following commentary, which does not necessarily reflect the views of The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board, appeared last week in the (Tacoma) News Tribune:

Mark Twain said it best: There are lies, damn lies and statistics. The latest conscription of educational statistics in the war against charter schools is a case in point.

The front page of the New York Times recently trumpeted a coverup: The U.S. Department of Education had “buried in mountains of data” a set of statistics that “deals a blow” to charter schools, which are self-governing, deregulated public schools.

The story was based on a report from the American Federation of Teachers, which had mined the statistics in question from the department’s 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

As packaged by the AFT, the numbers showed that fourth- and eighth-graders in charter schools were performing about half a year behind students in other public schools. A disparity existed even with an apples-and-apples comparison between poor, urban students in charter and regular public schools.

A story like that could indeed deal a blow to the charter movement — especially in Washington state right now.

The problem with the AFT’s new study lies in the context it neglected to provide and the data it chose to emphasize.

Charter opponents used to claim — without much in the way of evidence — that these schools would harm conventional public schools by “cherry-picking” white, high-achieving students and leaving poor, struggling minority students behind.

Precisely the opposite is true. Nationwide, charter schools educate more than their share of ethnic minorities. And many of their students were having serious difficulties in their old schools — that’s why their parents didn’t leave them in those schools.

There’s no reason to believe charter schools in general are inherently better — or worse — than their conventional counterparts. They are simply different. Both kinds of schools can fail; both can be successful.

But charter schools are one of a variety of educational innovations that might be the answer for certain kinds of students. Washington’s limited experiment with charters certainly shouldn’t be condemned on the basis of a flawed and self-serving report.