When it is based on misleading data.
Data has the power to inform and misinform.
Almost half a century ago Darrell Huff wrote in How to Lie with Statistics that The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. While, as a culture, we have a healthy skepticism for statistics used to promote commercial products, we are more trusting of statistics used to evaluate education, especially statistics compiled by governmental bodies. This article deals with an important subset of misleading statistics in literacy education statistics involving limited English proficient children. Data on limited English proficient children, perhaps more than any other educational data, have been effectively used or more properly said, misused to effect literacy education policy in California and the nation. In 1993 the National Assessment of Educational Progress began reporting fourth grade scores state by state rather than only as a national score.