In this week’s newsletter: Disappointing NAEP scores — and coverage. Rubber rooms in Philadelphia. Debunking ICE raid rumors. A former “All Things Considered” producer shines. And a puckish reformer “fixes” NAEP coverage artwork.
DISMAL NAEP EXPLANATION
The big education story of the week
The big education story of the week is the continued downturn in NAEP math and reading scores — and the abundant but dutiful coverage of the results in mainstream and trade education press.
Virtually all outlets played the news straight and relatively safe, focusing on the yearslong slide that began before the pandemic and that schools can’t seem to shake, even several years (and $190 billion) later (New York Times, Washington Post, The 74, Wall Street Journal).
A few smartly attempted to expand the narrative, focusing on the worsening achievement gap between high- and low-achieving students (AP, Chalkbeat, Hechinger, EdWeek). A few drew attention to lingering attendance problems, noting that lower-performing students were more likely to report missing five or more days of school in the previous month (NPR, NYT). And most outlets pointed out what’s perhaps the one surprising bit of news: Louisiana’s success in reading.
Best lede: “The kids are not bouncing back.” (The Hechinger Report) Best quote: “I don’t think this is the canary in the coal mine. This is a flock of dead birds in the coal mine.” (Dan Goldhaber in the Washington Post) Best analysis: Last year’s 4th graders were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit and were likely some of the hardest-hit by school closures and disruptions (Mike Petrilli in EdWeek). Wildest detail: “In separate statements Wednesday, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions downplayed the importance of the NAEP findings.” (Washington Times).
But readers looking for incisive analysis of the results had to turn to non-journalists like 50CAN’s Marc Porter Magee, who created several helpful charts, Ed Navigator’s Tim Daly, who explored the effects of newly-arrived kids on test results, and Sacramento high school teacher and blogger Larry Ferlazzo’s assortment of “level-headed” resources.
Other big education stories of the week include chaos over Trump administration funding freezes and delays in getting kids back to school after the LA wildfires. Check out @thegrade_ for each day’s most important education news.
RUBBER ROOMS REMAIN
The best education journalism of the week
The best education journalism of the week is Bedbugs, lounge chairs and ‘absolutely nothing’ to do: tales from inside Philly schools’ rubber room (above) by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Kristen A. Graham.
Sixteen years after Steven Brill’s New Yorker article exposed how teachers who’d been removed from classrooms were semi-permanently assigned to so-called rubber rooms, the Inquirer’s Graham offers a similarly gobsmacking dispatch from Philadelphia’s present-day version of the same thing.
Located in the district headquarters building, Philadelphia’s rubber room holds roughly 66 teachers. Some nap and read books. Others simply check in and disappear — attending concerts, taking yoga classes and in one case working toward National Board Certification.
Graham offers a detail-rich account of windowless conference rooms and a culture that weirdly resembles jail, with occupants enduring bedbugs, competing for chairs near electrical outlets, and making deals over access to extension cords. (On Halloween, a few even show up dressed as prisoners.)
Part of an Inquirer team that won a Public Service Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for an investigative series on violence in city schools, Graham says this story was in some ways her white whale. “I had heard all these wild stories about what went on there, and once I caught it, it turned out to be even crazier than the rumors made it out to be.” Eventually she spoke to a dozen current or past rubber room occupants. “They’re still calling.”
Other education stories we liked include the $6.4 million price tag of equity in a suburban D.C. district (Fairfax County Times), why many low-income students pick pricy private colleges (CalMatters), the wrestling club that teaches kids about story structure (ESPN), and what it’s like to be an LA kid who lost everything in the wildfires (New York Times).
A PROBLEM TOO EASILY IGNORED
Our latest columns and commentary
Why don’t school staff intervene or report when they see boundary-crossing behavior by adults in schools?
Discomfort and lack of training, according to expert Charol Shakeshaft.
“We believe we care about children’s safety,” she told me. But “as it turns out, keeping children safe is complicated and requires thoughtful prevention approaches.”
In this our fourth installment in the School Secrecy series, Shakeshaft urges reporters to focus on what schools have or haven’t done to keep kids safe rather than on individual instances that are uncovered.
Above: In a new interview, TikTok star Mandy McLaren describes how she found a surprising new audience on the video-sharing platform.
PEOPLE, JOBS, & EVENTS
Who’s going where and what’s happening
📰 Spotlight: If you’ve heard and seen the name Jonaki Mehta a lot lately, you’re not alone. In just the last week, the NPR education reporter has filed stories about NAEP, choice, and the LA wildfire recovery effort. Asked about any superpowers she might have from having previously been an All Things Considered producer, she notes that it’s helpful “knowing the inner workings of how one of our flagship shows operates and what their priorities are.” It also doesn’t hurt that she knows a lot of people on the show — and how to work with sound.
Asked about covering the education beat, she says she enjoys talking to young people and learning a complex new beat. “And reporting on education for radio has its own unique challenges: As my editor Steve [Drummond] says, capturing learning as it’s happening, in real time, is really hard to do. But when you do, it’s magic!”
📰 Covering school deportation rumors: Asked about how her paper avoided publishing rumors about ICE agents approaching students, San Francisco education reporter Jill Tucker tells me that the paper “waited until we had solid information to report rather than just simply reporting what was in the SFUSD letter that went out.” They were first to report that the rumor was false. “Our job is not to just spread what people are saying or hearing, but rather report what is accurate,” says Tucker. “What we need to push for is faster response from the authorities who have that accurate information.”
Asked about a similar situation in Chicago, managing editor overseeing the Chicago bureau Eric Gorski writes that Chalkbeat Chicago published the district’s quickly-debunked account of ICE agents attempting to enter a school because it “was the first official account of the day’s events, and it needed to be reported.” According to Gorski, the story included the standard “developing story” language and the team updated the story and headline “as quickly as possible as new information came in.”
📰 Appreciation: Kudos to NBC News reporters for obtaining and publishing a Trump White House statement that ICE does not have a mandate to target schools for deportation sweeps and that “we expect these situations to be extremely rare.” Congrats to Courier Journal reporters who uncovered allegations of student mistreatment at Highlands Latin School that led to its landlord (a church) voting to sever ties with the school. And to everyone who’s been named to EWA’s latest class of fellows.
Any other job changes, recognition, events, or appearances we should know about? Ping us at thegrade2015@gmail or @thegrade_ and let us know!
THE KICKER
We saved the best for last.
Mean? A little. Misleading? Maybe. Funny? You be the judge.
That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!
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By Alexander Russo
