Pre-holiday ups and downs, covering school vaccine policies, & building trust with sources: 🏆 Best Education Journalism of the Week 🏆 (11/19/2021)

In this week’s newsletter: Schools’ pre-holiday successes and challenges, the problem of too much teacher coverage, and childhood photos from freelancer Aaricka Washington and Politico CA’s Mackenzie Mays

A PRE-HOLIDAY ROLLER COASTER RIDE
The big story of the week, according to us.

Even as vaccines are now available for younger kids and testing and quarantine protocols have been eased, attendance is a challenge, cases are up in some places, and some schools are reducing in-person instruction:

GOOD NEWS
🔊 Amid stable COVID rates, Pa. school officials tout success of reopening (WHYY)
🔊 With kids back in class, Mass. parents are largely optimistic, survey funds (WBUR)
🔊 Schools Embrace More Covid-19 Testing Over Quarantine (Wall Street Journal)
🔊 Houston ISD will consider lifting mask mandate after holidays (Houston Chronicle)
🔊 Vaccinated students at Hopkinton High School can temporarily go mask-free (WBUR)
🔊 $5M on gift cards, prizes to encourage students to get vaccinated (L.A. Times)
🔊 After canceling classes, Chicago vaccinated about 6,600 students (Chalkbeat Chicago)

BAD NEWS
🔊 Parents, teachers baffled by inconsistencies in quarantining, tracing rules (Kaiser Health News)
🔊 Nearly 2,000 Atlanta students ask to move to virtual classes (Atlanta J-C)
🔊 Only half of students showed up at school on bungled mental health day (SD Union-Tribune)
🔊 State limits Boston’s request for remote learning following COVID outbreak (Boston Globe)
🔊 Detroit moves to virtual learning three Fridays in December (Chalkbeat Detroit)
🔊 OR middle school shutting down in-person to address student fights, misbehavior (Oregonian)
🔊 Underventilated Campuses Prone To COVID Cases (Gothamist)
🔊 A COVID strategy backfires at schools (Axios)
🔊 Should schools require the COVID vaccine? Many experts say it’s too soon (NPR)

Another big story: Disputes over race, gender, and other cultural flashpoints. See coverage in The 74, Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, The 19th, Dallas Morning News, NBC News, and USA Today.

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AFGHAN KIDS ARRIVE; 1ST GRADERS STRUGGLE
Best education journalism of the week.

🏆 BEST: The best story of the week is Thousands of Afghan children and teenage refugees will soon be enrolled in America’s public schools by Donna St. George in the Washington Post. With more than 25,000 Afghan kids waiting on military installations around the country, some schools will soon be dealing with an influx of students who may need help with English, adjusting to a new country, and coping with trauma. St. George talked to school leaders and students about what they expect — including all the hope, fear, and relief. Her interviews with kids really stand out in this story. “Now we are here, we are happy. We are so excited — and a little nervous,” said one 14-year-old. Immigrant and refugee students don’t always get the coverage they deserve, but this is a great example of how to write about them with compassion and humanity.  See also: ‘Finally, we are free.’ An emotional homecoming for Sacramento students stuck in Afghanistan (Sacramento Bee)

🏆 RUNNER-UP: This week’s runner-up is ‘The Reading Year’: First grade is critical for reading skills, but kids coming from disrupted kindergarten experiences are way behind by Jackie Mader in The Hechinger Report and USA Today. The story, published on Sunday, is part of The Hechinger Report’s collaborative series on reading remedies that we praised last week. In it, Mader looks at the pandemic’s toll on young learners who missed out on crucial skill-building in the last 18 months. Students have proven they’re capable of catching up, but the stakes for reading are especially high and the number of first graders “well below grade level” in reading last year was 40% — compared with 27% the year before. On top of providing solid information on literacy, Mader also goes into the classroom to report this story, describing students’ and teachers’ real-life struggles to catch kids up. The story begins with a teacher scaling back from teaching kids how to write simple words to teaching them how to write the letter “H” — even needing to remind one student that their paper is upside down. It’s easy to forget this is how literacy often starts. I’m a big fan of literacy stories, and this is one that does not disappoint.

BONUS STORIES: 

🏆 ‘75 kindergartners, one toilet’: Witness testimony in landmark school funding trial (WHYY)
🏆 CO cracks down on schools using weak reading curriculum (Chalkbeat Colorado)
🏆 La. public schools grapple with learning lost to pandemic surges & storms (PBS NewsHour)
🏆 Most teachers are women. But male educators take a ‘glass elevator’ to leadership (Boston Globe)
🏆 Without paid leave, the South’s school policies cause a terrible trickle down (Scalawag)
🏆 Underdog No More, a Deaf Football Team Takes California by Storm (New York Times)

Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s reader survey and interviews to help us improve The Grade — this newsletter included! 

COVERING SCHOOL VACCINE POLICIES
New from The Grade

Above: School vaccine mandates would increase vaccination rates, but could also exacerbate school inequality.

Vaccines are now approved for younger kids. Some schools are encouraging vaccination. Others are linking it to mask and quarantine policies. A small handful are making vaccines mandatory for students. However, many younger kids are going to remain unvaccinated, due to hesitant parents, and vaccine mandates can unintentionally exacerbate inequalities in schools.

This week’s new column from me explores the school vaccine landscape and encourages reporters to ask hard questions, get into schools, and approach school vaccination with an open mind. Mandates and incentives might seem like an obvious solution, but there are no silver bullets.

Coming soon: Ways to improve coverage of tough topics like math instruction and gifted education, what’s missing in coverage of conflicts over Black books, and a holiday gift guide for education reporters.

MEDIA TIDBITS
Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage.

Above: A great  education GIF from Axios

📰 BETTER COVERAGE OF SHORT-TERM SCHOOL BREAKS: I’m not among those deeply concerned about mental health days and short-term closures some schools have been taking recently — not yet, at least. The numbers are too small and the remote days are too few. Some states with low vaccine rates are having a worrisome surge of cases. But I very much would like better reporting on how these decisions are being made — and whether districts’ decisions make sense.

For example, Chalkbeat’s recent piece, Detroit district moves to virtual learning three Fridays in December, doesn’t reveal until the 19th paragraph that the decision was made in negotiation with the teachers union, which had apparently been pushing the idea of going remote on Fridays based in part on the apparent success of a district nearby in keeping COVID case numbers down. Good coverage tells readers about the competing pressures, the alternatives under consideration, and the decision-making moments. It also reminds readers when officials tout approaches like “deep cleaning” that are inaccurate or outdated.

📰 BUILDING TRUST: A big part of a reporter’s job is building trust. It takes time and attention, but the payoff can be big. Last week, the L.A. Times’ Melissa Gomez wrote a story featuring reporting from not just one but two different classrooms. How’d she do it? First of all, she made it a priority. “I knew that it was important to try and show readers how teachers and students navigate conversations about race, ethnicity, and systemic racism,” she said via email. So she began building relationships with teachers over the summer, building a level of trust. “When it came to asking them if they would let me sit in on their lessons, they both agreed… I just explained to them that I thought it was important to show readers how students discuss race, identity, and history versus how it was being portrayed.”

Sometimes, building trust involves time and participation. “My strategy is to invest time — a lot of time — cultivating sources,” responded journalist Trey Kay, who produced the Peabody-winning radio documentary The Great Textbook War. “Sharing meals together is often helpful, but isn’t always enough,” according to Kay. “I often find I need to learn what this person considers to be sacred and I find a way to honor that. This means that I often attend some kind of worship service.” He’s not alone in doing this kind of thing, both to learn more about the people you’re depicting and to demonstrate a willingness to experience things that are important. I’ve been to birthday parties, clubs, and reunions. I’m sure many of you have as well.

📰 BOARD MEETINGS ≠ PUBLIC COMMENT: “Public comment is completely separate from what goes on at the school board meetings,” noted Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin in a recent phone interview. “They’re actually two parallel universes.” She should know. She’s listened in on tons of them, and wrote about the experience last month. In school board meetings, there’s talk about things like accelerated learning, air quality, and transportation, Brundin says. “The story that probably needs to be told is what is happening in school board meetings as is distinct from what is happening in the public comment section. It is like a completely different world.”

Looking for media commentary and analysis all day, every day? Follow me at @alexanderrusso. 

PEOPLE, JOBS, KUDOS

 

Above: Vaccine mandates for school staff are still few and far between, according to this new NPR story. 

🔥 Job moves: TC Palm education reporter Sommer Brugal is heading to the Miami Herald to report on K-12 education. And in case you missed it (like I did), Monica Velez left the Fresno Bee Ed Lab for the Seattle Times Ed Lab over the summer. Her old job in Fresno is now open, and you can apply here. Congrats to all!

🔥 More job openings: EdSource is hiring two journalism residents in the Central Valley in California and Los Angeles. The Seattle Times Ed Lab is hiring a reporter. WBUR, Boston’s public radio, is hiring a new education editor. The Wall Street Journal is still looking for an education reporter to cover K-12 schools nationwide. WLRN, South Florida’s NPR member station, is looking for a Miami-based education reporter.

🔥 New ventures: The Unmuted, a sister effort to Epicenter NYC, covers “schools news you can use and survival strategies for this year and beyond.” The Atlantic’s Adam Harris is working on his second book, this one about the history of the South’s role in politics. Meanwhile, former education reporter Jessica Huseman was interviewed by Nieman Lab about her new online journalism courses at The Friendly State News, where she provides low-cost training on public records and investigative techniques for local newsrooms and freelancers. Huzzah!

🔥 Kudos to New York Times’ reporting fellow Giulia Heyward, whose story on substitutes and teacher shortages made the front page last week. “It’s been a pretty good Friday,” she tweeted.

EVENTS, RESOURCES

Above: CalMatters College Beat journalists built their own database on Cal State vaccination rates with the help of former L.A. Times education reporter Sonali Kohli. Their reporting showed how enforcement of the vaccine mandate differs by campus — and why that’s a problem.

⏰ Media appearances: NPR’s Anya Kamenetz was on the Theory of Everything podcast talking about parental fear and anger. She also made an appearance on the Future of Feeling podcast to talk about how to be a “positive media parent.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Jill Tucker was on Slate’s What Next podcast talking about the recall vote for school board members.

⏰ Podcasts: The Courier Journal’s six-part podcast series A ‘Bad’ School is now available on your favorite podcast app. The New York Times’ The Daily produced a two–part series on “The School Board Wars” about a particularly contentious school board meeting in Central Bucks, Pa. And WBUR’s On Point aired a segment on climate education and corporate influences with journalist Katie Worth, who has a new book out on how climate change is taught in U.S. schools.

⏰ ICYMI: The Seattle Times Ed Lab held a virtual event Tuesday about reading remedies, featuring journalists Jenn Smith of the Seattle Times and Emily Donaldson of the Dallas Morning News. The 74’s Beth Hawkins and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Maureen Downey talked about political support for school choice at a Harvard Kennedy School event last Friday.

⏰ Resources: Check out the weekly update from Burbio featuring trends including more schools closing for mental health breaks and the fallout. Any other regularly updated resources journalists could use? Let us know.

THE KICKER

Above: Politico California’s Mackenzie Mays (left) and freelance reporter Aaricka Washington (right). 

“A photo of you as a child that encapsulates your energy.”

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By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Colleen Connolly.