THE EDUCATION ELECTION
The big story of the week, according to us.
Though not every agrees on how to interpret the results, which were mixed, education appeared to be a more significant issue than usual in some of Tuesday’s most hotly contested races:
🔊 School board races show mixed results for critical race theory (USA Today)
For more national coverage: NBC News, Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, and The 74.
🔊 Do fraught school board meetings offer a view of the future? (Hechinger Report)
🔊 Youngkin pledged more parental control, but changes may prove difficult (Washington Post)
🔊 Denver candidates backed by union are leading (Chalkbeat Colorado)
🔊 Boston voters overwhelming support elected school committee in ballot question results (Boston Herald) See also Boston Globe.
🔊 In Wisconsin, a Republican attempt to oust school board members over race curriculum failed. (New York Times)
🔊 Most business-backed APS candidates edge out union picks (Albuquerque Journal)
🔊 Douglas County’s conservative challengers likely to win school board race (Colorado Sun)
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HEATED CONFLICTS & STALLED-OUT MANDATES
Best education journalism of the week.
🏆 BEST: The best story of the week is Mask Mandates, Critical Race Theory Heat Up School-Board Elections by Douglas Belkin in the Wall Street Journal. A preview of Tuesday’s elections published over the weekend, the piece focuses mostly on Douglas County in Colorado and was one of the best pieces on the contentious races and the role education played in the elections that I saw. In Douglas County, where the student population is 82% white, voters went to the polls to elect four out of seven school board members, and masks and whether or not to teach about social equity were the driving issues. Belkin gives equal weight to parents and educators on both sides of the issues without reducing either to caricatures, painting a picture more complex than we’re used to seeing in coverage of these topics.
🏆 RUNNER-UP: This week’s runner-up is Delayed, diluted, or nonexistent: Vaccine mandates for school staff stall out by Matt Barnum in Chalkbeat. Barnum has been following what happened to school staff vaccine mandates for a while now, and his latest story shows that many of the staff mandates have ended up being more symbolic than realistic. And while the piece could do much better at exploring where these implementation holdups come from — mandates don’t block themselves — the story still provides great value. “The dearth of meaningful mandates highlights the difficulty school districts have had trying to get employees vaccinated while balancing staff shortages and political opposition,” Barnum writes.
BONUS STORIES:
🏆 After months of delay, Afghan students finally returning to Sacramento (Sacto Bee)
🏆 Oakland approves plan to transfer or unenroll unvaccinated students (New York Times)
🏆 At Chicago school, staff, moms, kids step in to keep school clean (Sun Times)
🏆 In this school system, more than 10,000 students remain virtual (Washington Post)
🏆 Fewer Students Left NYC Schools this Year than Other Major Cities (The 74). See also New York Times.
🏆 The racist and sexist roots of child care in America (Hechinger Report)
STUDENTS IN HANDCUFFS
New from The Grade
Above: Nashville Public Radio’s Meribah Knight, who recently co-reported a big piece on juvenile justice abuses in Tennessee, including kids being taken from schools.
In a new interview this week, Nashville Public Radio’s Meribah Knight talked about educators’ little-understood role working with law enforcement. “There were so many failures along the way — at every level of the system. So many people who turned their heads, or when they didn’t and tried to speak up, they were silenced.”
She also gave some great advice for reporters who might want to explore similar stories: Look for lawsuits that have been filed. Ask for data from the administrative office of the court. Call lots of lawyers who represent juvenile defendants, and review statutes governing juveniles.
MEDIA TIDBITS
Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage.
Above: The Hechinger Report’s Ariel Gilreath wrote about how fraught school board meetings may offer a window into future elections, complete with this excellent GIF.
📰 MEDIA COVERAGE & TUESDAY’S RESULTS: Lots has already been said and written about what might have caused the Democratic defeats and near-defeats in Virginia and New Jersey. But relatively little attention has gone to media outlets for their coverage of school board protests leading up to Tuesday’s election. One exception I’ve seen has been an op-ed in the Washington Examiner headlined Washington Post helps another Republican win in Virginia: “McAuliffe, by all appearances, believed the media giants and behaved as if the uprisings against failing, dishonest, and ideology-overrun school boards were some sort of fake, astroturf Fox News mirage.” Misinformed by the media coverage he was seeing, McAuliffe didn’t see it coming.
However, I’d argue that it wasn’t just the Post that missed or botched the story. The New York Times seemed focused on the political/ideological angle. NPR seemed focused on safety concerns. Too little of the coverage dug into why reasonable parents might be pissed at prolonged closures, overly restrictive protocols, and — yes — concerned about the necessary but awkward push towards teaching kids more explicitly about racial injustice. I hope journalists and news outlets will reconsider and revamp their approaches as we go forward.
📰 THE INHERENT VALUE OF EDUCATION REPORTING: “It would be cool to care about education reporting and what happens in schools because children’s lives and experiences are inherently IMPORTANT, not because it’s now spilling over to impact adult political fights,” tweeted former HuffPost education reporter Rebecca Klein the other day. Many folks agreed with this take, but there was also some pushback. “Takes a lot of nerve to say this today after the coverage we’ve seen the past 18 months,” wrote parent advocate Erika Sanzi.
Looking for media commentary and analysis all day, every day? Follow me at @alexanderrusso.
RESOURCES, PEOPLE, JOBS, & EVENTS
Above: Check out the vast range among states when it comes to in-person learning offered during 2020-21. Via Burbio.
🔥 New follows: Jessica Gibbs, who covers Douglas County schools for Colorado Community Media, and Megan Henry, a K-12 reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, are two of my newest follows. Who else should I add?
🔥 Jobs: Edutopia is hiring a remote senior writer and editor. LNP Media Group in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is hiring an education reporter. WBUR, Boston’s public radio, is hiring a new education editor. The Wall Street Journal is still looking for an education beat reporter to cover K-12 schools nationwide. WLRN, South Florida’s NPR member station, is looking for a Miami-based education reporter. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is hiring a metro reporter to cover statewide K-12 education. Any new job opening out there that folks might want to know about? Let us know.
⏰ Media appearance: GBH’s Meg Woolhouse was on WBUR’s Consider This to talk about her story on why teachers of color are burning out. Anyone else? Maybe we missed something.
⏰ You can register now for the Solutions Journalism Summit May 5-8, 2022. Freelance education reporter Bekah McNeel says it’s “the best professional investment I’ve ever made.”
⏰ ICYMI: Yesterday, Amsterdam News, one of the country’s oldest and most influential Black newspapers, and Report for America hosted an event on the importance of Black press. Last year, we wrote about Report for America’s impact on the education beat, which seems to be growing every year.
THE KICKER
“Kid, I can’t wait to tell you about the time society shut down during a pandemic and you slept on mom’s lap, drooling on her shoulder with a double ear infection, while she filed stories and thought of ways to let you know it was all going to be OK.” – Colorado Community Media education reporter Jessica Gibbs in a tweet from the beginning of the pandemic.
That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!
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By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Colleen Connolly.
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.
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