Inadvertent Admission or Slip of the Tongue?

Regarding the recent discovery that the Department of Education left out black students in its analysis of the impact of race on loan repayment that was used to support new regulations, the Department’s response was

accurate figures would have had no impact on the final regulations.

I presume this was just a slip of the tongue, and that the Department meant “revised” rather than “accurate.”

But there is also the possibility that whatever the Department meant, the initial quote is more accurate and amounts to an inadvertent admission. When it first took office, this administration made a big deal about how unlike its predecessor’s faith-based policies, they would be guided by science. But that hasn’t been the case. It seems that whenever there is tension between science and ideology, ideology wins (e.g., the DC voucher program: the Department’s own science showed it worked, but the administration tried to kill it anyway).

I like some aspects and dislike other aspects of the new regulations. But based on the policy making we’ve seen so far, I can’t avoid the suspicion that they would have been implemented regardless of what the science showed, which is more than a little disappointing.