Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that the Department of Education seems to have buried a politically inconvenient study on school choice. When Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi asked the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan what happened, he didn’t exactly have a good explanation:

When Congress effectively shut down the D.C. voucher program last month, snatching $7,500 Opportunity Scholarship vouchers from disadvantaged kids, it failed to conduct substantive debate (as is rapidly becoming tradition).
Then the Wall Street Journal editorial board reported that the Department of Education had buried a study that illustrated unquestionable and pervasive improvement among kids who won vouchers, compared to the kids who didn’t. Not only was the report disregarded, the Department of Education issued a gag order on any discussion about it.
Is this what Duncan meant by following the evidence?
When I had the chance to ask Duncan — at a meeting of the Denver Post editorial board on Tuesday — whether he was alerted to this study before Congress eradicated the D.C. program, he offered an unequivocal “no.” He then called the WSJ editorial “fundamentally dishonest” and maintained that no one had even tried to contact him, despite the newspaper’s contention that it did, repeatedly.
When I called the Wall Street Journal, I discovered a different — that is, meticulously sourced and exceedingly convincing — story, including documented e-mail conversations between the author and higher-ups in Duncan’s office. The voucher study — which showed progress compounding yearly — had been around since November and its existence is mandated by law. So at best, Duncan was willfully ignorant.