WASHINGTON INSIGHT

GRAMMAR ‘R’ US: When it comes to the writing proficiency of American students, the news is grim, according to the Nation’s Report Card, issued by the Education Department. While students’ achievements in science and math jumped between 1984 and 1996, average writing scores of 11th-graders slumped. Some of that below-par writing was in evidence in the department’s press release. “The results of these tests tell us that are (sic) nation’s schools are consistently doing a better job in teaching math and science at every age level tested,” Education Secretary Richard W. Riley is quoted as saying. Asked how a verb could have been confused for a possessive pronoun in a Cabinet-level press release on the subject of writing, a department spokesman called it a “typo” and pleaded that he was on vacation when it was released. And it’s been fixed, he added. After all, are Education Department wouldn’t want to look like a victim of the times.

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“VERY SCARY”: Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) cried foul this spring when they discovered that former Los Angeles City Councilman Michael K. Woo, who was working for President Clinton’s AmeriCorps program in 1996, had used government stationery to correspond with former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang. But the agency’s inspector general has cleared Woo of wrongdoing. Woo’s fax appeared to be a legitimate attempt to arrange a meeting for some Indian Americans with a Commerce Department official, Inspector General Luise S. Jordan found. Woo, now an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, said it was “very scary” to have his name tied to the campaign fund-raising affair. “This all had to do with one piece of paper in John Huang’s files,” Woo said. Woo’s fax cost the government less than a dollar. The cost of Jordan’s investigation: Who knows?

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IRREPRESSIBLE: Matt Drudge, the shoot-from-the-hip, Hollywood-based Internet gossip-monger, has run smack into the unforgiving concept of professional responsibility. Earlier this month, his Drudge Report said--falsely--that presidential advisor Sidney Blumenthal has a secret history of beating his wife, Jacqueline Jordan, who also works in the White House. When shown the error of his ways, Drudge retracted the item and apologized--but the damage had been done. Blumenthal--with the backing of Clinton and Vice President Al Gore--filed a $30-million defamation suit against Drudge and his Internet sponsor, America Online. In an e-mail statement, Drudge says the lawsuit “has no relation to anything I have done” and charges that the “White House simply lacks respect for basic principles of free speech and the 1st Amendment guarantee of a free press.”

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QUE PASA? Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan demonstrated again that he can send global financial markets reeling with just a single word--even if that word is taken out of context. At a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last week, the excruciatingly precise central bank chief mused that Mexico may have exacerbated the peso crisis of 1994 by failing to provide enough economic data to warn investors that its economy was under strain. “I don’t know what the appropriate amount of disclosure is,” he mused, “but . . . what level we have now is too low.” Although most of his audience realized that Greenspan was talking about the situation two years ago, a wire service reported his comments without explaining that--prompting a 3% plunge in the Mexican stock market and forcing Greenspan aides to issue a clarification. Greenspan also said America was on the brink of “insolvency”--in the year 1895--but fortunately the wire services didn’t touch that one.