| đ BEST: The best story of the week is A Devastating Year For Many Chicago Students by WBEZâs Sarah Karp. Karp takes a deep dive into attendance numbers and grades and finds that 40 Chicago high schools with almost all low-income students fared the worst. The average daily attendance rate at these schools was around 75% compared to 91% citywide, and 1 in 5 grades given out in math or English was an F. Karp speaks to teachers who struggled to stay in touch with these students and had to decide whether it was better to fail them or let them pass. She also looks into financial data, to see how money will be spent on these students in particular. But Karp also puts a human face on these teens, depicting one student who had been motivated to go to school before the pandemic for a Dungeons & Dragons club he started and then suddenly found himself without that lifeline. At home, his father lost his job, and his grades spiralled. Check it out. Itâs well worth the time.Related: In Distance-Learning Investigation: Shortfall In Student Engagement Despite High Attendance Numbers, KVPR Valley Public Radioâs Soreath Hok reports about how student attendance data in Fresno was high but the students were often not engaged. âJust because students were officially in attendance, or at least logged in, that didnât mean they were participating or even there,â she writes.
đ RUNNER-UP: This weekâs runner-up is Pandemic School Year Anxieties: In Chelsea, Counselors Navigate Rise In Mental Health Needs by Carrie Jung in WBUR. There have been a lot of stories about mental health concerns among students, but Jung takes a close look at the day-to-day realities of that as students, especially teenagers, head back to school. For example, she found that a lot of students are self-conscious about how their appearance has changed during roughly 400 days since theyâd last been in person. And she describes how Chelsea Public Schools are using counselors and social workers to help students navigate a return to school as best they can.
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THE DEBATE OVER TEACHING KIDS ABOUT RACISM
The big story of the week, according to us.
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HOW TO COVER THE ‘YEAR OF ED FINANCE’
New from The Grade |
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School spending stories are abundant and well intended, though theyâre not often especially helpful to readers.
But in a guest column this week, Dr. Marguerite Roza of Edunomics at Georgetown explains how reporters can find information and add value to stories about school spending this summer and fall.
Her pointers: Remember itâs districts that decide. Put dollars in per-student terms. Tell readers how decisions are made. Get specific about what’s being bought. Ask districts what the money will do â and whether the plan matches up with what parents want. âItâs worth making sure to see how district spending plans do or donât match up against community priorities and preferences,â Roza writes. âYou may be surprised.”
Most of all, Roza advises reporters to âFollow the money…Donât forget the students.”
Thanks to John Bailey for linking to this article in his essential daily COVID-19 Policy Update newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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MEDIA TIDBITS
Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage.
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Above: TIME Magazineâs latest cover story tackles the big education story of the day: Inside the Fight Over What Kids Learn About Americaâs History by Olivia B. Waxman.
đ°Â  âNEEDLESS SUFFERINGâ FROM REMOTE LEARNING: Slowly but surely, reporters are inching toward deeper questions about the risks and impacts of last yearâs school shutdowns. Last weekend, NPRâs Lourdes Navarro asked now-former Biden COVID guru Andy Slavitt about âneedless sufferingâ from prolonged systemic school closings. “I mean, yes, 600,000 Americans dead â it’s a colossal, unfathomable number,â said Navarro. âBut in addition to that tragedy, was there also a lot of needless suffering? I’m thinking about school kids and parents who are wondering if schools really needed to be closed so widely. I mean, should they have been?â
đ°Â  GUN VIOLENCE AND REMOTE LEARNING: I donât want to do anything to exaggerate school gun violence (which remains rare) or to overstate any possible connection between school gun incidents and prolonged remote learning (which is unproven), but the Postâs John Woodrow Cox is reporting that this spring saw a small but notable surge in school gun incidents that could be related to the prolonged school shutdown. âThe boy had unraveled during the pandemic, as had so many other children across the country,â writes Woodrow Cox about one student who brought a gun to school and shot it off, hoping to be killed. âHis family had moved to a new home, leaving behind the friends heâd made in their old neighborhood. Heâd finished elementary school on a computer screen and started middle school the same way.â Worth exploring.
đ°Â  HOW TO INTERVIEW KIDS: Some great insights from education reporters for interviewing kids and including them in your stories: â1. Leave your pride at the door,â tweeted former Houston Public Media education reporter Laura Isensee, riffing off advice she recalled from NPRâs Cory Turner. â2. Actually listen 3. Remember the goal is to capture kids as kids.â Isensee added, âyouâre there to listen and really are interested in what they are saying, youâre not just eavesdropping.â Added former Texas Tribune education reporter Aliyya Swaby: âI’ve heard some reporters lament that kids, especially younger ones, are not âquotable.â Which often means they don’t talk like adults. And duh! They’re not adults. That’s why you’re talking to them.â Check out the whole thread!
đ°Â  A RACIAL RECKONING IN EDUCATION REPORTING? “I think the field of journalism needs to diversify its ranks across the board in order to improve reporting on issues about race in education,” Black Education Research Collective director and Columbia University professor Sonya Douglass Horsford told me via email in response to a query about last week’s much-discussed Casey Parker story about Black homeschooling in the New Yorker. “There is an entire perspective missing from dominant coverage of educational inequality and it will require a racial reckoning and awakening in education reporting to change it, whether Black homeschooling or another other education practice, policy, or issue.” You can follow her here.
đ°Â  OSTER PROFILE HIGHLIGHTS NYT CHALLENGES: I wonât belabor the point, but this weekâs New York Times profile of Emily Oster failed to give sufficient credit to the Brown economist for her prescient efforts to consider school reopening and contrasted sharply with reporter Dana Goldsteinâs previous profiles of teachers union head Randi Weingarten crediting her with much and criticizing her for little. This is not the kind of education journalism that we need from one of the nationâs top news outlets.
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PEOPLE, JOBS
Who’s going where & doing what?
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| ABOVE: Clockwise from top left, CALmatters’ Joe Hong, Politico’s Jessica Calefati, Chalkbeat’s MĂłnica Rhor, and the Washington Post’s Emmanuel Felton.đ„ New hires: CalMatters has a new K-12 reporter: Joe Hong, who previously covered education for KBPS and the Desert Sun Media Group in California. For his first story for CalMatters, he wrote about record enrollment in summer school and asked, is it enough? Philadelphia Inquirer investigative reporter Jessica Calefati is returning to the education beat, joining Politico to report on higher education. In a personal essay introducing herself as Chalkbeatâs newest story editor, MĂłnica Rohr writes: âHow, I often wondered, would my parents have weathered a year like this when I was in elementary school? Would I have been one of the kids holding on by a thread?â Congrats to former Spencer fellow Emmanuel Felton who will be the new race and ethnicity reporter at the Washington Post and is still working on his book about the experiences of Black children being bused to white schools outside Boston.
đ„ Jobs: The Wall Street Journal is hiring a national K-12 reporter to replace Tawnell Hobbs, who is now a senior writer working on special projects, education editor Chastity Pratt tells us. And BuzzFeed is looking for someone to fill Feltonâs shoes on the inequality beat now that heâs headed to the Post.
đ„ Bad news! The Wall Street Journalâs Leslie Brody, who has covered New York City metro education issues for several years, was among those who lost their job when the paper axed the Greater New York team this week. âIt’s been a great ride, with a fun, savvy, spirited bunch of colleagues who always pitched in to help each other,â Brody told us. âIt’s a shame to see the team disbanded.â
đ„ Standing with Sawchuk: As noted by colleague Andrew Ujifusa, the outpouring of support for EdWeekâs amazing Stephen Sawchuk has been great to see. Sawchuk described receiving horrible antigay comments in response to a video explainer he did recently. âI know this is all part of the game, but it really hurts, and it really bothers me,â he wrote. Read supportive comments from other education journalists and add your own.
đ„ Parting wisdom: âLong hours tweeting from the back of a school board meeting don’t win awards, but as an education reporter, you’ll see the actual impact of your work on the schools and students you cover,â KCUR education reporter Elle Moxley tells us. After seven years at KCUR, Moxley is moving on to work for Kansas City Public Schools. Her advice for education reporters? Join EWA; learn the history of desegregation in your district; take time to engage with parents, community leaders, and teachers, and do your research on housing policy. She also told us the story sheâs most proud of is The Goodbye Kids, cowritten with Barb Shelly about kids who switch schools frequently. |
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EVENTS
What just happened & what’s coming next?
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| â°Â Yes, that was friend of education journalism Tyler Kingkade on NPR’s Fresh Air just the other day, talking about his investigation into the forces behind the current critical race debate.â°Â Join Clubhouse on Sunday, June 27, for a discussion of the condition of public schools. Register here. If you missed yesterdayâs critical race theory webinar from EWA, thereâs video soon! Catch up on EWA Radioâs Lessons from the Educational Equity Beat here.
â°Â Attention, young journalists! Apply to be part of NPRâs NexGenRadio. The project offers five days of training in digital and audio journalism. Some will be in-person and some online this year. The first deadline to apply â for OPB in Portland â is tonight!
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Above: How did the New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones end up becoming a journalist, anyway? As a Waterloo, IA high school student, she complained to a teacher “that our high school newspaper never seemed to write about kids like me.” The rest is history.
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That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!
By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Michele Jacques and Colleen Connolly.
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