A failing grade.

The new Sunday Post-Dispatch offers up pro motional mush, story summaries and 'Imagination" teasers on its re-designed front page. There is very little in the way of hard news. But watch out if some hard news actually finds the Post!

On Jan.30, the Post ran a Sunday lead story on how 32 out of 57 school districts in the St. Louis area failed an interim state accreditation report. That story on an incomplete and faulty assessment of area schools sent teachers and administrators running for cover.

Angry parents grabbed the phones and asked administrators: How can the teachers be failing so badly? Where's all the tax money going? What in heaven's name is going wrong with our public schools?

Angry school officials noted that the Post story was overeblown and did not emphasize the problems with what was only an interim report. For example:

* Schools that don't send enough graduates to pursue vocational work or training were penalized.

* Schools using performance tests that were not the equivalent of state-sanctioned tests were penalized.

* Year-to-year comparison testing for class improvement failed to take into account student turnover.

* Schools that were being judged on faulty data only have the chance to correct misinformation in the actual evaluation year when the school is up for accreditation.

In most cases, all of these data glitches will be addressed when the real accreditation for schools comes around.

So who really deserves an "F" in all of this commotion over a report card that was not really a report card? Should an "F" go to the daily press where the reporting was sensational, slipshod and incomplete?

Don Corrigan is a professor in the School of Communications at Webster University and he also edits three weekly newspapers.