The Star needs to correct article about tax credits

by David Safier

The Star's education reporter, Alexis Huicochea, made two glaring errors in her story about school tax credits in today's Star. They should be corrected immediately on the web, and a correction should be placed in tomorrow's paper. (I'm sending this post to Huicochea so she is aware of the errors.)

1. The article states, "The deadline for tax-credit contributions is Friday." That's true for public schools tax credits, but not for private schools. People who followed the private school tax credit story, which got lots of ink in the East Valley Trib and the AZ Republic (and very little coverage in the Star), know the legislature did almost nothing to reform the law's serious weaknesses, but it extended the deadline for donations to April 15 of the next year. You can find that information on page 3 of the state's publication about school tax credits (it's the final item), or you can go to the website of any School Tuition Organization (like here and here), where they are delighted to tell you, you can contribute until April 15, 2011, and take it off your 2010 taxes.
2. The article states, "In the case of private schools, contributions provide tuition assistance for financially needy students." In fact, the contributions can be used to pay for the tuition of millionaires' kids — 100% of that rich kid's tuition, in fact, if the parents have all their relatives and friends "recommend" their contributions go toward paying his/her private school costs. While some STOs do means testing on all children who receive scholarships, others have no such requirement.

NOTE: As a trained sentence parser, I admit, it's possible to contend the sentence about contributions going to needy students is factually correct, since it doesn't say "All contributions." However, I'm sure journalism schools teach their students a well written article must communicate clearly and effectively. I never went to journalism school (Full disclosure: I'm not a journalist, nor do I play one on BfA), but I tried to teach my high school English students about the importance of clarity in good writing.