Q: Did Obama change his back-to-school speech in response to pressure from conservatives? A: One exercise in the accompanying lesson plan was reworded. Click to Read the Full Post Read More →
Summary After 100 days in office, we find President Obama is sticking to the facts – mostly. Nevertheless, we find that the president has occasionally made claims that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant. He has claimed that private economists agreed with the forecast in his budget, when they were really more pessimistic. He’s used Bush-like budget-speak trying to sound frugal while raising spending to previously unimagined levels. And he has exaggerated... Click to Read the Full Post
Summary Last year, the president touted U.S. gains in education, saying that our "fourth- and eighth-graders achieved the highest math scores on record." He bragged that "African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs." Last week, the president said those eighth-graders weren’t so great at math after all. He claimed they had "fallen to ninth place" in the world, and he bemoaned a high school dropout rate that had "tripled" over three decades. What... Click to Read the Full Post
We’ve noticed that in talking about education, politicians like to use statistics that show the U.S. is way behind other countries. That certainly makes it easier to tout whatever education policies the pols are pushing. But sometimes kids in the U.S. perform better than politicians make it sound. Our colleagues at PolitiFact.com caught President Obama misleadingly claiming last week that "In eighth grade math, we’ve fallen to ninth place." U.S. eighth graders are in ninth place,... Click to Read the Full Post
It wasn’t exactly in a favorable light, per se. On NPR’s “Morning Edition” today, anchor Steve Inskeep asked Sen. John McCain about balancing honor and winning in a campaign that Inskeep called “brutal.” In their conversation, Inskeep asked about a particular ad that we found to be “false”: Inskeep: Have you come back to your advisers at any point and said, “That ad,” like for example the ad that ran with your name on it saying that Barack... Click to Read the Full Post
Several readers have written to us objecting to our story “Off Base on Sex Ed,” which said a McCain ad on sex education was “simply false.” These readers cite a story in the conservative National Review by Byron York headlined, “On Sex-Ed Ad, McCain Is Right.” York is certainly entitled to his interpretation of the ad. We have read his article, which doesn’t mention FactCheck.org or our story, and we still find an ad that says Obama’s “one accomplishment”... Click to Read the Full Post
In our recent article “Sliming Palin,” we addressed the pervasive rumor that Gov. Palin slashed funding for special needs education. She didn’t. Instead, she increased funding. Here’s more detail on how an increase got mistaken for a 62 percent decrease. The evidence that’s been cited to support the false decrease claim: The special schools component of the education budget for fiscal year 2007, before Palin was governor, was $8.3 million. The special schools budget... Click to Read the Full Post
