The College Board offers some speculative reasons about why some students are college-ready and others are not...Another is that college-ready students took more AP tests
If someone wants to misinterpret something there is no way to stop them, but I don't see how this is genuinely misleading to a fair reader.
Do you think because he uses the word "tests" he is implying that the CB report says just take the tests without taking the classes? Do you think that the CB report isn't actually pushing AP tests because they are just pushing "AP or honors classes"? Neither of those strike me as plausible interpretations. I won't quote the same piece of the CB report a third time, but that section really makes "speculative reasons" something a of a soft-sell as to how hard the CB report is pushing its "characteristics". If those characteristics aren't supposed to be causally related to success, why is the report pushing them as the blueprint for our children?
I'm not holding the NR piece up for any special praise, but I'd like to know where you get your opinion journalism if this is an egregious example.
I'll leave the field to you.
http://xkcd.com/386/