HBCU teacher pipeline, helping refugee kids, & a reporter’s sudden firing: Best Education Journalism of the Week (3/3/23)

In this week’s newsletter: A new report on the Black teacher HBCU pipeline. How one school engages refugee families. New rules for education journalism (which some ed reporters don’t like). Why the Dallas Morning News suddenly fired a veteran education reporter. And a sweet moment between a Muslim reporter and two young hijab-wearing students. 

HBCU TEACHER PIPELINE
The big story of the week

The big story of the week is the role HBCUs play in producing new teachers and bolstering teacher diversity. It’s well known that Black and brown kids — whose numbers are growing in many places — need to see more teachers that look like them in their classrooms. However, that’s rarely the case. Black men make up just 4% of teachers in Maryland, for example. 

According to a new report covered by several outlets, HBCUs produce nearly half of all the Black teachers in the U.S. and are helping address a longstanding teacher shortage in certain places and subjects. But, of course, HBCUs can’t do it all on their own. And Black teachers and other under-represented groups are often disproportionately affected by seniority-based layoff requirements negotiated into union contracts (Associated Press, Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, USA Today).

Other big stories of the week:

TEACHING BLACK HISTORY ANYWAY: Despite criticism of the new AP African American studies course, several recent articles show that classes on Black history are alive and well in many places — sometimes in the classroom, sometimes out (WBUR Here & Now, Sentinel Colorado, Chalkbeat Philadelphia, Capital B). 

STUDENT LOAN ARGUMENT: The Supreme Court heard arguments this week on the legality of President Biden’s plan to forgive $400 billion in student loans — up to $20,000 per student. Six conservative states have challenged the plan, calling it an abuse of executive authority, and the court’s conservative majority seemed to agree  (New York Times, CNN, CNBC). 

SCHOOL CYBER ATTACKS: Hackers seem to be increasingly targeting school districts including Minneapolis and Los Angeles Unified, with 14% of parents saying their kids’ schools have experienced a ransomware attack. The results are disruptions and revelation of personal data (eSchool News, Sahan Journal, The 74).

RIGHT-WING SETBACKS: Right-wing proposals get tons of attention, which tends to make readers think that they are successful. But that’s not always the case. And at least some of the times, those setbacks get reported, too. Just recently, an effort to make school board elections partisan died in Indiana and a bill aimed at trans youth died in Virginia. (The 74, Washington Post.)

ENGAGING REFUGEE STUDENTS
The best education journalism of the week

The best story of the week is Sawsan Morrar’s How Sacramento-area schools find ways to engage hundreds of families who don’t speak English for the Sacramento Bee. 

The piece describes how the San Juan Unified School District (near Sacramento) has adapted to serve recent arrivals from Afghanistan and other places. At schools with large numbers of English learners and refugees, this includes adding staff and English development classes, as well as home visits and cultural opportunities — all part of a 17-member Newcomer Support team.

While I would have liked to have known more about how the district pulled this off, what makes the piece particularly effective is that it includes vivid snippets of classroom lessons and student interactions, makes key distinctions about the needs of the most recent immigrants, and provides lots of accompanying images. 

Most of all, Morrar makes clear from her reporting and the quotes she includes that the newcomer students and their families bring strengths and provide inspiration to English-speaking students and staff who work with them.

For a cute reporting moment Morrar experienced while working on this story, see the kicker below. 

BONUS:

🏆 She pushed back her student’s hijab. Was it a mistake or an act of hate? (Washington Post)
🏆 How a Texas girl scared of school shootings was punished (Dallas Morning News)
🏆 Career-training companies scoop up federal funds with little oversight (Hechinger Report/Washington Post)
🏆 3 years since the pandemic wrecked attendance, kids still aren’t showing up to school (NPR)
🏆 Surprise! Teen Morale and Optimism Are on the Rise. (EdWeek)
🏆 Every year, there are more applicants to Philly charters than seats. But demand is still lower than before the pandemic. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
🏆 Hug it out: DeKalb school spreads love and joy with weekly embraces (AJC)

NEW RULES
What we’ve been up to at The Grade

All around us, journalists are changing things up to make their work more useful and to rebuild trust with readers and communities. Why not the education beat?

That’s the idea behind this week’s new column, New rules for education journalism, which includes a few suggestions from me and others. 

There was a fair amount of pushback from journalists against my admonition that reporters should seek nuance and complexity over emotion.

“Your rule presumes journalism should appeal only to the intellect,” emailed former NPR education correspondent Larry Abramson. “Good journalism should make you mad and inspire change.”

TRAINING FUTURE GAMERS
Coverage of promising school innovations & signs of progress

💡 A Japanese high school conceived as a training ground for elite gamers has been attracting an unexpected demographic: dropouts from traditional schools (New York Times). 

💡 Washington’s high school graduation rate is on the upswing, with big improvements for certain underserved communities like unhoused and disabled students (Seattle Times). 

💡 California’s free K-12 meal program, which serves students regardless of income eligibility, is saving families from having to make tough financial tradeoffs, and it’s being replicated in other states (Sacramento Bee). 

💡 More than 260 childcare providers in Colorado, most of them in “day care deserts,” have been able to open or expand thanks to a grant program created by the state legislature in 2020 (Colorado Sun).

Read more about the importance of covering promising innovations and preliminary successes.

PEOPLE, AWARDS
Who’s going where and doing what

Above: Washington Post national higher ed reporter Danielle Douglas-Gabriel appeared on the PBS NewsHour to discuss the Supreme Court response to the Biden loan forgiveness plan. She was also on WBUR Here & Now talking about it. 

🔥 Awards: Finalists announced last week for the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) awards include several education-related stories such as the New Yorker’s “Waiting for the Bus in Uvalde,” the New York Times/Serial Productions’ “Trojan Horse Affair,” The Atlantic’s “We Need to Take Away Children,” several episodes of Gimlet Media’s “Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s,” and ESPN’s “Untold.” See the full list of finalists here.

🔥 Fired: Veteran education reporter Meghan Mangrum was fired from her job at the Dallas Morning News after she sent a tweet addressing the Black mayor of Dallas as “bruh,” to which he and some others took offense. But not everyone is buying the notion that the tweet was problematic or that Mangrum was fired for it. “This had nothing to do with the word,” tweeted EWA’s Kavitha Cardoza. “It was all about the union.” (Mangrum agrees.)

🔥 Career moves: Chalkbeat’s Kae Petrin announced they’ll be using their data journalism skills to report on the environment for the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk — in addition to still working for Chalkbeat. And former Capital B national education reporter Giulia Heyward announced her next move: reporting on politics for WNYC and Gothamist. Congrats to both!

🔥 Dispatch from Ukraine: NPR higher ed reporter Elissa Nadworny has been reporting from Ukraine off and on the last year, and on Sunday she shared a bit about her experience: “I’ve interviewed dozens of children and their families there, and I’ve been reflecting on the fact that no child in Ukraine is unaffected… Kids are acting out; they’re angry and sad, clingy and regressing (sucking their thumbs). In the central city of Dnipro, Vera, 10, told me she watches YouTube videos about people traveling. ‘I just watch people live a peaceful life, not like this.’” 

APPEARANCES, EVENTS, & NEW RESOURCES
What’s happening and new research

Above: Child labor is booming among migrant kids thanks to a “chain of willful ignorance” including under-reporting by school officials, according to a new piece in the New York Times by Hannah Dreier.

⏰ Reading & SXSW EDU: The SXSW event I’m most looking forward to is the March 7 screening of a new documentary, “Right to Read,” which tells the story of one teacher who’s trying to revamp reading instruction at her school. For more on reading, check out Asher Lehrer-Small’s piece in The 74 this week on how schools are still pouring money into reading materials that teach kids to guess words.

⏰ Upcoming: Speaking of SXSW, The 74 has done us a favor by rounding up 23 panels and sessions worth seeing. Also, Jake Tapper will moderate a live CNN Town Hall on education on March 9, with Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a guest. 

⏰ Podcasts: AL.com’s Trisha Powell Crain was on the Next in Ed podcast talking about how she got her start in education reporting. (It’s a great story if you haven’t heard it.) And Chris Hayes spoke with Minnijean Brown-Trickey, a civil rights activist and member of the Little Rock Nine, about her troubling experience with school integration for his podcast Why Is This Happening? 

⏰ ICYMI: Votebeat and PEN America held an event yesterday on community engagement journalism to help newsrooms better understand “information voids.” EWA held a webinar on Tuesday about how to cover the school voucher expansion. See also their explainer on the topic. More than 20 states have added new private school choice programs or expanded existing ones.

⏰ Research on teachers strikes: An article from Pew reports that democrats are divided over strikes by teachers and principals. According to Boston.com, 12 states allow public school educators to strike, and Massachusetts could be next. But as Mike Jonas reports in Commonwealth magazine, congressional support for teachers strikes (including from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey) are at odds with the views of state leadership.

⏰ Journalism resources: Amid the controversy at the New York Times about their reporting on trans kids, the NBCU Academy put out a piece on how journalists can responsibly report on trans kids. Check out this yes! magazine op-ed on how to build an antiracist newsroom. Not sure where to find kids to talk to IRL? It’s OK. Borderless Magazine has a list of 50 places where reporters can connect with the community outside of the internet. 

THE KICKER

Asked by two young girls wearing hijabs whether she was Muslim, Sacramento Bee education reporter Sawsan Morrar (left) said, “Yes I am! You have a beautiful hijab on!”

“Their faces were beaming, and that small moment was a highlight of my career,” tweeted Morrar. “I hope they are often reminded that they could be anything they want to be.”

 

That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!

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By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Colleen Connolly.