#CoveringCOVID19, a daily update from The Grade to help education journalists cover the COVID-19 crisis.
THE TOP FIVE
Five great education stories about how schools are responding to the COVID-19 crisis:
This Rural School District Has Been Asking for Wi-Fi for Years. Now It’s Finally Getting It. – ProPublica (above)
No Right Answers: How Schools Are Grading Students During The Coronavirus – LAist/KPCC
Schools Lean on Staff Who Speak Students’ Language to Keep English-Learners Connected – EdWeek
Donations aim to bridge gaps for 39,000 Indianapolis students without internet ChalkbeatIN
Secretary DeVos Recommends Maintaining Core Parts Of Disability Law Amid Pandemic – HuffPost (see also Washington Post, Chalkbeat)
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Above: NBC News segment focused on the reopening of some schools in Denmark.
THE RUSH TO REOPEN
Conventional wisdom is that pressures to reopen businesses and social institutions like schools are coming primarily from the White House, Republican governors, and businesses eager to get back to making money.
But there’s another obvious source of pressure: still-employed parents who have been made miserable by the demands of remote learning and getting their jobs done.
And miserable parents who have jobs that allow them to work from home are getting a LOT of media attention, if you haven’t noticed.
The result, from my perspective, has been a premature and somewhat excessive coverage of reopening scenarios, which takes attention away from what’s happening now in most students’ lives.
“When’s school going to open?” is a natural question, no doubt, and as jealous as I am of those of you who are parents I understand that having a school-age child at home now would be extremely difficult.
But I’d argue that the coverage is somewhat overly focused on “What’s next?” and somewhat under-focused on “What’s happening now?”
And let’s not downplay the resistance that will come from teachers unions against a premature reopening of schools. It was the threat of sickouts that helped de Blasio close the schools in NYC.
The day’s best new education news stories are shared out every morning via @thegrade_. Then between 4 and 5 PM Eastern, the daily #coveringCOVID19 roundup comes out. You can find it here.
Above: “Here we are in Newbern, Alabama. This bus stays parked here from 10 to 3 to allow Perry County students to access the strong WiFi signal for distance learning.” – via Trish Crain.
TIDBITS
Furloughed education reporter Linda Borg is writing a furlough journal about the experience of not being at work for a week during a massive education story. You can read what she’s going through here.
Former EWA public editor Linda Perlstein reminds us that one-third of undergraduates attend community college, but media coverage “often doesn’t reflect that.” She invites anyone to reach out to her if you need sources, ideas, examples.
I haven’t seen the study yet, but EWA’s Caroline Hendrie and Greg Toppo headed a Whiteboard Advisors webinar earlier today about how COVID-19 has affected the education media landscape.
That’s it! See you back here tomorrow. Sign up for the weekly email, Best of the Week, which comes out Fridays around noon Eastern.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Russo
Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.
Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/
