Best education journalism of the week 08/21

BEST OF THE WEEK

The week’s best education journalism, all in one place:

BACK TO SCHOOL🏆 Los Angeles Unified Has An Ambitious Plan To Bring Students Back (NPR)
🏆 Reopening FL Schools Is Likened to Military Operation (New York Times)
🏆 Computer glitches, pleas for patience, worried parents and giddy kids mark back to school (LA Times)
🏆 Bridgeport sticks with its in-person reopening plan (CT Insider)
🏆 Dallas ISD unveils its much-awaited reopening plan, with one key detail still a mystery (Dallas Morning News)
🏆 Schools Are Reopening, Then Quickly Closing Due to Outbreaks (WSJ)

TEACHER PUSHBACK

🏆 AZ Teachers Waged a Sickout Over Coronavirus Concerns (TIME)
🏆 Suburban teachers challenge return to classrooms (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
🏆 NYC Schools Face Strike As District Plans To Reopen (NPR)
🏆 NYC teachers union opposes plan to reopen schools (Washington Post)
🏆 Chicago’s new fall plan includes full days of remote and live learning, but prompt union grievance (Chicago Tribune)
🏆 Detroit teachers vote to allow union leadership to call ‘safety’ strike (Chalkbeat)
🏆 As teachers unions rally against a return to classrooms, critics see little effort to improve school (Boston Globe)

STUDENTS AND PARENTS

🏆 Your child’s a no-show at virtual school? You may get a call from foster care (Boston Globe)
🏆 Working parents face tough decisions as schools reopen (Washington Post)
🏆 Montgomery County schools are closed to classes but open to child-care programs (Washington Post)
🏆 Philadelphia to open centers for students whose families have ‘no other options’ (Chalkbeat)
🏆 Parents Brace for a Go-It-Alone School Year (New York Times)
🏆 Rural families without internet face tough choice on school (AP)
🏆 The Freedom and Fulfillment of Home-Schooling (New York Times)

INEQUALITY AND RACE

🏆 How White Progressives Undermine School Integration (New York Times)
🏆 Houston schools lost contact with tens of thousands of students (Houston Chronicle)
🏆 Cincinnati private school discriminates against Black hair styles, family says (Cincinnati Enquirer)
🏆 High schoolers across the country are banding together to demand their schools teach more Black history and read more Black authors (Washington Post)
🏆 Police in Chicago Public Schools will get more training and oversight (Chicago Tribune)

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

ALARMIST REOPENING STORIES AND PANDEMIC REPORTING TIPS

In this week’s column, I tackled the question of how to convey the serious risks and strong emotions that surround the COVID cases at schools and the larger reopening debate without unnecessarily fanning readers’ fears. That’s not an easy task, given the seriousness of the situation and the intensity of the politics. But it’s crucial, and I have some simple ideas that would help.Earlier in the week, we published a new piece from contributor Colleen Connolly about what education reporters have learned about reporting on schools in a pandemic. Reporters including the Boston Globe’s Bianca Vázquez Toness, USA Today’s Erin Richards, WBEZ Chicago’s Susie An, and the Texas Tribune’s Aliyya Swaby shared tips, including trying their best to get those in-person interviews when possible, finding new ways to connect with sources online, relying on teamwork, and scouring data for story ideas that don’t rely on face-to-face meetings.

Belated thanks to the folks at Nieman Lab for including our “Education Lab” story in their recent newsletter!

VIDEO: Five kids and one cell phone hot spot; a low-income family in Los Angeles is trying to ensure its kids can learn virtually. Watch here.

MEDIA TIDBITS

Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage:

📰 THE UNBEARABLE WHITENESS OF PUBLIC RADIO: Laura Garbes wrote an important American Prospect piece about “how whiteness dilutes voices of color in public radio” that you should probably read if you’re interested in how race affects news coverage. “Over half of my interview sample gave examples of concrete resistance they encountered when proposing stories that made white people feel uncentered or uncomfortable,” Garbes writes, describing cringe-worthy anecdotes about oblivious editors and little-disguised efforts to keep accented voices out of stories. When you’re done, read nine education reporters reflecting on their experiences with race in the newsroom from earlier this summer.📰 SPOTLIGHTING TEACHERS UNIONS: Kudos to the Boston Globe, New York Times, Chalkbeat bureaus, and other outlets shining a light on the increasingly prominent role of teachers unions pushing back against reopening efforts. Teachers’ concerns and union efforts are important to cover, given their powerful role in shaping plans and influencing the debate. However, they also need to be distinguished from parents’ concerns and preferences, which are often quite different. Parents and teachers have publicly differed on whether or not to reopen in-person instruction in a handful of locations, and may differ in more places as schools reopen.

📰 SCHOOL REOPENING POP-UPS: The New York Times has launched a three-day-a-week newsletter on the topic called the Coronavirus Schools Briefing, produced by Adam Pasick and Amelia Nierenberg, who describes the effort as a “pop-up newsletter to help contextualize how the pandemic is changing education.” ProPublica is also making an effort to cover the story. notes reporter Annie Waldman: “@ProPublica is covering school, college and university reopenings during COVID-19, and we need your help.” In an effort more loosely connected to the reopening story, KPCC’s Jill Repogle announced that “for at least the next 2 yrs, my colleague @briannaclee & I will be reporting for @KPCC @LAist on the varied pathways to higher education & the obstacles along the way.”

📰 UNIONIZATION COMES TO NONPROFIT EDUCATION NEWS: Chalkbeat became the first nonprofit education news team that I know of to become unionized — and they did it with management cooperation. Greater newsroom diversity, transparency on salaries, and equitable protections regarding layoffs or furloughs are listed as among the reasons that they pursued unionization. (In the most recent newsroom diversity survey, Chalkbeat reported that 58 percent of its editorial staff are white.) Curious about how unionization might affect education coverage? Check out Rachel Cohen’s February story on covering education in a unionized newsroom, which features education reporters describing their experiences. Other nonprofit education news outlets like Inside Higher Ed, EdWeek, EdSource, and Hechinger Report could follow, though I don’t imagine all will do so.

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?

🔥 The New York Times published an interview with Leon Neyfakh (above) about his latest season of the “Fiasco” podcast, which tells the story of school desegregation efforts in Boston. “What drew me to it, is it’s the kind of story if you hear it in detail, it can really teach you something about how the world works, now and forever,” Neyfakh said. Listen to the podcast here.🔥 New jobs alert! USA Today is expanding its education team and hiring a reporter to focus on inequities in education. And the Washington Post is hiring an editor to run its education team. Stephen Smith, who has been the education editor since 2017, has officially moved over to the national desk as a health and science editor.

🔥 More moves: Boston Globe reporter Malcolm Gay, who is part of The Great Divide team, is moving back to his old beat covering the arts. Gay was a lead writer and reporter for the Globe’s award-winning “Valedictorians Project” and one of the founding members of the Globe’s investigative education team.

🔥 Jessica Bakeman, education reporter for Miami’s NPR station WLRN, was named Journalist of the Year by SPJ Florida. Congratulations, Jessica!

🔥 Freelance education reporter Aaricka Washington says she’s got exciting news to share, and we can’t wait. Washington wrote an amazing piece for The Grade about her layoff experience, which too many people are experiencing this year.

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EVENTS

⏰ Oh, hey, here’s a new foundation-supported outfit embedded in the NYT, The Headway Initiative (above), like I mentioned a few weeks ago. Not a great name, but crossed fingers for readers that education is one of the topics the Times chooses for its deep dives. And watch out, education news nonprofits!⏰ The new Chalkbeat Philadelphia bureau is up and running, featuring longtime Notebook reporter Dale Mezzacappa. Check out their work here. They’re still looking for a bureau chief. You can apply here.

⏰ Nikole Hannah-Jones is among the featured speakers at this year’s SPJ conference September 12-13. More info here.

THE KICKER

WBUR education editor Kathleen McNerney’s 4-year-old was excited about her radio spot, but not very impressed.

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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/