🏆 Best Education Journalism of the Week 🏆 (07/24/20) #EWA20

REOPENING OVERVIEWS

🏆 In Reversal, Trump Says Schools In Coronavirus Hot Spots Should Delay Reopening (NPR)
🏆 Back to school? Most major schools are heading toward online class as COVID-19 cases spike (USA Today)
🏆 Trump trains his eyes on education as he hunts path to victory (Washington Post)
🏆 Red-state school leaders resist Trump’s call to reopen schools (Washington Post)
🏆 How Online School Will Be Better This Fall—but Still a Burden on Parents(Wall Street Journal)
🏆 Reopening Schools Is Way Harder Than It Should Be (Chalkbeat/NYT Sunday Review)
🏆 School Districts’ Reopening Plans: A Snapshot (Education Week)

DISTRICT REOPENING PLANS
🏆 Hartford schools plan for full-time return, with options for remote learning (Hartford Courant)
🏆 Parents, students respond to Boston’s proposed ‘hybrid’ school plan (Boston Globe)
🏆 LAUSD Schools may soon apply for waivers to reopen — but only with union support (LA Times)
🏆 Fairfax schools backtrack on in-person reopening option (The Washington Post)
🏆 Seattle schools should be all-online in the fall, district says, reversing earlier decision (Seattle Times)
🏆 A look at how MCPS’ remote learning plan compares to other districts(Bethesda Magazine)
🏆 Across Virginia, school reopening is the hot-button issue of the summer(Richmond Times-Dispatch)
🏆 Newark eyes mix of in-person and online learning but families will have ‘ultimate choice’ (Chalkbeat)
🏆 CPS rethinking plan to keep high school juniors and seniors at home this fall (Chicago Sun-Times)
🏆 Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery call for all-virtual start to school year, scrapping earlier plans (Washington Post)

INEQUALITY 
🏆 Thousands of MD children will fall behind without in-person schooling, advocates warn (BaltSun)
🏆 Parents of Special Needs Students to Demand In-Person Instruction in Lawsuit(NY1)
🏆 How long will it take to revolutionize equity in education? (Seattle Times)
🏆 Nearly a dozen MA districts faulted for asking parents to sign away rights(Boston Globe)
🏆 1 in 3 American Indian, Black, and Latino Children Fall Into Digital Divide(Education Week) 
🏆 Study finds black and Latino students face significant ‘funding gap’(Washington Post)
🏆 CA is short 1 million laptops and hot spots for kids as it prepares online school(Sacramento Bee)
🏆 Charter schools that offer homeschool forced to waitlist thousands (ABC10 San Diego)

TEACHERS AND PARENTS
🏆 Only about 1 in 10 Americans think schools should reopen without restrictions(AP)
🏆 Will Parents Send Kids Back To School? Study Reveals Differences Across Race (Romper)
🏆 Slight majority of CPS parents want schools to reopen in some form, poll finds(Chicago Sun-Times)
🏆 Many public health experts say children should return to school in the fall(Baltimore Sun)
🏆 Teachers Are Scared to Go Back to School. Will They Strike? (Education Week)

Many other stories are featured in the MEDIA TIDBITS section below.  For additional stories every morning, follow along on Twitter.

Above: EWA’s executive officers (top row) and senior staff were on the hot seat early on during #EWA20.

The week’s focus was the annual Education Writers Association conference, held online this year. Before the conference started, we published 6 must-see sessions, featuring panels with Casey Parks, Chastity Pratt, Jenny Brundin, and Nikole Hannah-Jones. Great topics, great panelists. So much impressive journalism to celebrate.

And indeed, the conference has been full of great topics, speakers, and awards. However, for me the big news out of EWA20 was the exchange between EWA officers and directors and EWA member journalists that took place at a little-watched annual members meeting.

As described here, freelancer Melinda Anderson and others pressed the board and staff to explain why they’d picked a white male Michigan State journalism professor to write a guide on making education coverage more inclusive, especially when there’s so much expertise and talent among EWA members. “This is more than an issue of optics,” noted Anderson. “Please explain the thinking that went into the planning and delivery of this guide.” 

It was a frank and difficult conversation, but I think a productive and important one. Read my recap and crossed fingers that EWA decides to make the recording of the session available soon.

ICYMI: Last week’s column was How to cover the wrenching debate over reopening schools. 

MEDIA TIDBITS

Above: So THIS is why the Times acquired Serial, Inc. Here’s the trailer for the first Serial/Nytimes podcast, called Nice White Parents. The trailer calls white parents “arguably the most powerful force in our schools,” and makes the claim that they’re largely to blame for the current (historical) mess. It drops on July 30. 

📰 CONTEXTUALIZING REMOTE-ONLY’S RISKS AND BENEFITS: While districts and public opinion polling are increasingly skewed toward remote-only instruction to start the year, public health experts and epidemiologists have continued to point out the mix of pros and cons — and the media’s failure to capture that nuance. “I think where media has sometimes oversimplified is in not consistently acknowledging that there is no choice here between risk and safety,” wrote epidemiologist Benjamin Linas, who wrote a generally pro-reopening piece for Vox. Too often, according to Linas, “media and individuals cite statistics about risk of COVID infection and bad outcomes, without acknowledging that if we stay closed, we are accepting other bad outcomes.” As of July 23, 9 of the 15 largest school districts are choosing remote learning only as their back-to-school instructional model, reports EdWeek. As of this morning, Boston and Hartford recently announced some in-person options, and LAUSD will allow schools to petition for in-person offerings.

📰 POD PEOPLE: Parent pods were the hot topic to cover this week, which is no surprise given journalism’s never-ending love for emotionally charged, novelty-seeking stories. Coverage has appeared in the LA Times, Washington Post, Marin IJ, San Diego Union-Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and Hechinger Report, among others. The New York Times featured it in a much-discussed oped. Outrage and novelty aside, however, it’s not at all clear how many such arrangements are going to be. And there are also at least two “pod” stories here: One is the equity story, in which parents unintentionally exacerbate inequalities by seeking out options unavailable to everyone. The other is the inability of school systems to offer pod-like options for families that can’t organize or pay for them on their own but want or need some additional in-person learning for their kids.

Missed some previous editions? You can see the archive of past newsletters here. Additional reporting by Colleen Connolly.

PEOPLE, AWARDS, JOBS 
Who’s going where & doing what?

🔥 Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! The Christian Science Monitor is looking for an education writer/editor. Details here. The Dallas Morning News is looking to fill three Dallas Morning News Education Lab jobs. Education reporter: https://bit.ly/32LSLDU. Audience engagement producer: https://bit.ly/3hjkn7s. Reporting fellow:https://bit.ly/2WMtntN. More info on the education lab here. Apply by July 31!

🔥 The Seattle Times education team is pushing hard right now, and I love it. For example, reporters Hannah Furfaro and Katherine Long explained recently how the past months have helped focus the Education Lab team on structural racism and educational equity.  “I have not experienced racism. In many ways, this makes me ill-suited to write about it…. [but] stories about racism are not only about Black and brown people — they are also about those who are white, like me, who… contribute to making things worse,” Furfaro says in the piece. All that being said, the education team’s next hire (to replace Neal Morton) is also going to be a really important one.

🔥 The day after her EWA20 appearance, Nikole Hannah-Jones was back on Zoom for ISJOJ2020 (The 21st International Symposium on Online Journalism), where she told interviewer Jeff Jarvis and participating journalists to cover race on every beat you have. And it has to be more than a catalog of disparities. Covering racial issues is part of covering your community completely, says  Hannah-Jones. “This is not like asterisk news about the Black communities.”

🔥 The LA Times has lost many talented Latino journalists over the years. Esmeralda Bermudez tweeted a list. Among them are some amazing former education journalists.

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⏰ Yep, that was the NYT’s Pam Belluck on a recent episode of The Daily podcast, talking about the science of reopening schools. Hers was an especially careful and thorough story about the risks and benefits of in-person reopenings.

⏰ “Today’s the day! Publication day for UNACCEPTABLE! Exclamation mark!” the Wall Street Journal’s Melissa Korn tweeted, giving a shout-out to those who preordered the book she wrote with Jennifer Levitz, “Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit, and the Making of the College Admissions Scandal.” It was published this week. Want a copy? Order it here.

⏰ You have a month to submit your best stuff for the Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability. It’s being run this year by contributor Amy Silverman, who’s written some great pieces about covering kids with disabilities over the past year.

⏰ Coming Wednesday, July 29: The Digital Divide’s Zoom webinar on Education, Race And Virtual Learning. Among the speakers for the noon to 1 p.m. event: Boston Globe reporter Meghan Irons and Rossier School of Education Dean Pedro A. Noguera.

That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!

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