Fall 2020 schools coverage turns a corner

Coverage has been improving over the past couple of weeks. Here’s how.

By Alexander Russo

For much too long, coverage of the school reopening process has been overly alarmist, highlighting perceived risks over the possibility of success.

However, over the past couple of weeks since the New Yorker and ProPublica published Alec MacGillis’ harrowing story about kids left behind by remote learning, media coverage of the school reopening debate has been steadily improving.

The tendencies still remain strong to focus on the conflicting claims among parents, teachers, and district officials or to emphasize COVID case counts in isolation from other factors. There’s still lots of room for improvement.

But the general trend has been toward more measured assessments of the tentative successes that some districts seem to be having with in-person and hybrid offerings.

Opinion pages and cable TV news still lead the way, followed by education reporters. However, education news outlets are finding their ways into the story through various angles.

The goal is to keep improving the context and nuance as much as possible, and to keep prioritizing coverage of the needs of vulnerable students who are not being well-served by remote learning.

There are now an estimated 30 million kids back in school, full-time or otherwise, and — so far — no major outbreaks. That’s a story that has not yet been told as thoroughly as it should be.

What’s happening

A lot more K-12 schools have opened in the past few weeks, and so far pretty much without the major outbreaks that have been such a regular part of college and university efforts.

Six of the 10 largest school districts in the U.S. are already offering or plan to offer in-person instruction to some or all grades by the end of this month, according to Education Week.

A recent interview with CBS News cited a figure of 30 million kids back in school, full-time or otherwise.

Of course, there have been several well-publicized setbacks and delays. Boston schools recently delayed their reopening plans after an increase in infection rates and conflicts with the teachers union. New York City closed a relative handful of its schools in response to community outbreaks. And teachers unions in Sacramento are pushing for a 2021 return to in-person education.

However, the overall trend seems to be a shift toward returning to in-person instruction among districts. Nearly 32% of kids now attend schools that offer five-day in-person instruction, according to Burbio’s latest K-12 School Opening Tracker.

Stragglers

Some of the recent coverage has contained familiar errors.

A recent New York Times piece focused on the NYC schools with the highest percentages of parents opting out of in-person instruction, rather than focusing on a more representative example. It passes along parents’ fears and educators’ claims that opt-out numbers will grow even higher without any validation. They could go higher, but they could also drop.

The Washington Post’s opinion columnist Dana Milbank recently wrote about his concerns, calling schools unsafe and implying that teachers were dying in disproportionate numbers. Their deaths may be depicted more often than others’ deaths, but relatively few of them have died. The obligation to present facts accurately remains, even for an opinion piece.

And outlets including the Boston Globe and ProPublica continue to struggle with reporting school COVID cases in proper context, focusing on reporting raw case numbers, which often makes the situation appear riskier than it is. They often provide context in the body of the story, but by then it’s too late. The raw numbers make for good headlines, and in many cases they’re all reporters have to work with. But if we can’t get this basic skill taken care of, it’s going to be a long, long fall.

Is it safe?

However, a small but growing cohort of media outlets have recently addressed the preliminary successes of in-person classes and the core question of whether it makes sense to keep so many kids away from in-person classes.

They include the Washington Post, ProPublica/New Yorker, Bloomberg News, CNN, the NYT, NY Mag, Slate, MSNBC, AP, and USA Today.

One major factor has been the growing understanding of how reopening decisions have been made. This week, Education Week published a piece on research showing that reopening decisions were being made for political reasons rather than based on infection levels.

Another factor has been a growing understanding that schools may not be the infection vectors they had been presented to be. Earlier this week, “Good Morning America” had public health expert Ashish Jha on to talk about his view that reopening schools has not been a major cause of outbreaks.

“The tide does seem to be turning, a bit, in the media toward pressing for schools to open,” noted freelance journalist David Zweig, though he laments that so many kids are still not going to school in person if they want to make that choice.

Reported stories lagging so far

Thus far, much of the attention on the effects of extending remote instruction has appeared on opinion pages, rather than in reported news stories written by education journalists.

Opinion writers like Bloomberg News’ Joe Nocera and the Washington Post’s Helaine Olen have argued for reconsidering school closures, along with New York Times columnists Nick Kristof and Ross Douthat.

The LA Times editorial page weighed in on the issue, the first major editorial page to address whether schools should stay shut that I know of since July’s Wall Street Journal editorial.

News reporters have now begun to find their way into the story as well.

Several news outlets have reported on disputes over reopening, such as parents who have protested and filed lawsuits to get school districts to offer athletics to kids. The LA Times, USA Today and the Washington Post have all written about parent protests in favor of in-person sports and classes recently.

Other outlets have spotlighted districts and states that have made more progress in restoring in-person learning, and the inequities that emerge. The New York Times recently reported on Rhode Island’s success in getting lots of kids back into buildings, which many other New England states have not done.  In a recent poll covered by Chalkbeat, 75% of Black parents and 68% of Hispanic parents said their child was learning fully online, in contrast with 48% of white parents.*

*Correction: The original version of this piece claimed that Chalkbeat commissioned this survey. 

A few outlets, like Education Week, have reported on the challenges and successes of returning to in-person instruction. This piece by Stephen Sawchuk was the best recent example I’ve seen of a piece looking at the bigger picture. It turns out that getting kids to wear masks isn’t as hard as many expected.

Focusing on COVID data tracking efforts and leaders in this area is another popular approach. Forbes and Bloomberg News have profiled Brown University’s Emily Oster in recent weeks. The Boston Globe ran an interview with her just a few days ago. CNN’s Chris Cuomo had her on his show this past Friday.

A few outlets like Reuters have reported the numbers in percentage terms, rather than raw case numbers: “Over 700 primary, middle and high schools that have at least partially reopened, reported that 0.07% of students and 0.14% of staff had a confirmed coronavirus infection.”

The Washington Post’s Hannah Natanson made the effort to fact-check claims that Northern Virginia teachers are going to resign or take leave in droves. Much-publicized threats about mass resignations appear to have been overblown, according to a recent USA Today story.

What’s next?

Education journalists are understandably frustrated by the heated debate and the endless demands to include issues and add nuance.

However, recent history shows that outlets can successfully address the reopening debate in new and constructive ways.