Why education journalists should lean into ‘general-purpose’ news — and how to regain reader trust during a critical moment.
By Alexander Russo
If there’s anyone who knows education research and journalism, it’s Jeff Henig.
Recently retired from a long stint at Columbia’s Teachers College – with a previous stint at George Washington University – the political scientist has been one of the most frequently interviewed and quoted education researchers out there.
Henig wrote the book about media coverage of education issues – literally: Spin Cycle: How Research Gets Used in Policy Debates. And he’s got a whole family full of journalists, including his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and nephew. No surprise, he’s got a lot to say about how journalists pick, report, and write stories – especially those about research into hot topics like charter schools and private school choice.
Looking at charter school coverage, for example, Henig finds that news coverage is less ideologically slanted than observers may believe. But among his most unexpected insights is that education stories have increasingly been absorbed into what he calls “general-purpose” political coverage (i.e., stories that are only partly or indirectly about schools) — and that education journalists getting involved in covering politics is a good thing.
“It can seem like a distraction when education journalists drift into general-purpose politics instead of focusing on teachers and classrooms, but I think we need more of that kind of work,” Henig told me in a recent conversation.
“Journalists who try too hard to screen out that dimension risk missing the real story.”
Henig also speaks to lost trust in journalism, noting that the traditional coverage approaches — focusing on disagreements, emphasizing “new” information — generates short-term interest at a steep price:
“Over the long run, it undermines readers’ confidence and trust,” Henig notes.
At the same time, Henig warns against overly careful and reassuring coverage he’s seen during the new Trump administration.
“My biggest concern, to date, is that journalists may have been too eager to reassure readers that their worst fears are overdrawn.”
Conducted live and electronically, this interview has been edited and condensed.
Russo: Looking back to the pandemic, what’s your insight on coverage of school system responses – and the debate over their effectiveness?
Henig: Journalists — like the rest of us — spent the early days of the pandemic trying to get their heads around issues that were scary and not yet well understood. They felt a responsibility to make sure readers understood the risks were grave (they were grave). In retrospect, some elements of the coverage may have been off-base (think of washing your groceries) or overstated (the arrival of vaccines portrayed as panacea) or misdirected (too much attention to masks in schools at the expense of too little to ventilation). It’s too easy to point a finger of blame, but if I had to point one, I’d aim it more at public health officials than the journalists who carried their messages.
Where I do think many education journalists missed the mark was in the second year. By then, most school districts were moving back into in-person teaching and mandatory masking was being reconsidered, but the story line of overreaction by schools and teachers and widespread parent dissatisfaction with public school bureaucracies still got a lot of play. By then, partisan and ideological actors were deliberately fanning the fuels of those stories as a way to shift public sentiment against teacher unions and towards private school choice. Education journalists were too slow to pick up on that element.
Russo: What are the lessons for journalists that you glean from November’s elections — and the generalized mistrust of the modern-day news coverage?
Henig: The outcome of the elections — particularly the presidential election and those that affected the party balance in Congress — will have major implications for education, but education issues and concerns were not what determined those outcomes.
While many Americans value and care about education, they only rarely cast their votes for national offices based on what candidates and party platforms say about it. Education journalists need to do a better job of understanding this seeming paradox and avoid falling into the trap of interpreting general election results as mandates about what the public does and doesn’t like about what schools do.
The broad mistrust of modern-day news coverage is partially attributable to the way mainstream media’s efforts to be “fair and balanced” can feel artificial and anachronistic to voters on both the right and the left, who fervently believe the stakes are too high to let balance rule the day.
I don’t believe that journalists should shed their traditional commitment to objectivity, but objectivity is a fragile boat when the social and political waters are as roiled as they are today.
Russo: Do you see any connection between the recent events — the spread of private school choice and prolonged school shutdowns — and the shift to Trump?
Henig: The shift toward Trump in this last election was evident across almost all places and subgroups regardless of where closure and choice were objective factors. If there’s a causal story it likely runs the other direction.
Partisan and ideological actors were deliberately fanning the fuels of those stories as a way to shift public sentiment against teacher unions and towards private school choice. Education journalists were too slow to pick up on that element.
Russo: What was the main insight from Spin Cycle — and what if anything has changed since then?
Henig: I started the book because I had found, from working in the in the school choice arena, that while researchers commonly were identified as falling into either the “pro” camp or the “anti” camp, when I talked to folks on both sides, they had nuanced views that weren’t as starkly opposed to one another as it would seem when I saw them quoted in the media. So I was curious about why that was — why the messaging and the interpretation of the research got more polarized.
That’s largely still the case, especially as research gets spun through social media. But as I noted at the time—and as has since been more strongly manifested—researchers have become more aware of the ways that simplistic pro- and anti- claims don’t hold up to careful scrutiny.
Russo: Why did you decide to focus on the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) charter school study coverage?
Henig: Released in August 2004, the AFT study on charter schools was the first to present national data on charter school outcomes, and it claimed that charter schools were not performing any better than traditional public schools — and maybe were performing even worse.
Education studies are often ignored by the national media, but this one got a lot of attention. The New York Times covered the report on the front page and “above the fold:” the most prominent positioning. That article sparked a huge backlash from the school choice community. One pro-choice organization took out full page ads in both the Times and the Wall Street Journal asserting that the study “failed to meet professional standards.” That ad, in turn, was criticized by other researchers, who charged that some of those who had signed it had used similar data and methods themselves and argued that the Times’ coverage was appropriate and generally on the mark. I thought the case highlighted some general and enduring aspects of both the potential and the limitation of research as a policy guide.
The school choice folks were angry at the Times for its seemingly anti-charter coverage, and the anti-school choice folks were angry at the Wall Street Journal for what they saw as its more favorable coverage. So I collected and examined what those two outlets actually had published. And what I found was that the coverage in the basic news elements of the papers wasn’t all that sharply different. There was a slight tendency for the Wall Street Journal to focus more on positive findings about charters and the Times to focus more on negative ones, and that was especially the case when one looked at the headlines alone.
The differences between the outlets’ coverage were really very minor, with one important exception: pieces published in the papers’ opinion pages. The perception of the Wall Street Journal as sort of in the voucher/charter camp was largely driven by who it gave access to in its opinion pages.
Russo: What did you find out, either through the research you did for the book or otherwise, about the gap between the actual research and what the people had to say in person or at conferences? Where did that gap seem to come from?
Henig: One thing I found interesting was how reporters talked about what they needed to do to convince their editors to run a story. They felt pressure to make the case that a study was saying something new and different. Editors, they felt, weren’t willing to give space to a study that provided additional support for things the paper had already written about, say by studying a different city or state, by applying more recent or higher-quality data, or by using a more sophisticated analytical technique.
This “tell me something that’s new” stance contributes over time to sort of a back-and-forth kind of thing that sometimes drives the public crazy. First you hear coffee’s bad for your health, then you hear coffee’s good for your health. Then it’s bad. Then it’s good. And there was a similar kind of dynamic on the coverage of the pros and cons of school choice. It’s possible this insistence on framing findings as “new” generates reader interest in the near term, but over the long run it undermines readers’ confidence and trust.
It’s possible this insistence on framing findings as “new” generates reader interest in the near term, but over the long run it undermines readers’ confidence and trust.
Russo: Does the modern-day coverage of current private school choice in all its various forms exhibit similar difference-emphasizing features?
Henig: There’s a core of education journalists who consistently take the time to put contemporary education policies in historical context, and who try to avoid treating each new study in isolation from the broader literature. But education lacks the stature of some higher-profile beats, so often those covering the field don’t have deep background knowledge that would help them distinguish what’s new from what is not. And sometimes that means recognizing differences.
Journalists sometimes fold the more recent voucher and Education Savings Account policies into a broad phenomenon they label “choice,” without realizing that recent universal voucher programs are quite different from older programs that limited vouchers to those with greater need, and without distinguishing between programs, like charters, that include mechanisms for public accountability and newer ones that don’t require participating schools to report on what they do or what their students learn.
Russo: What do you think about the media attention to issues of equity and gender and anti-racism in schools? Do you feel like that’s been an important and useful shift? Do you think debates over school culture are as ubiquitous as it sometimes seems, reading the news?
Henig: Another line of my research and writing has been how education politics in general has gotten absorbed into what I refer to as general-purpose politics. General purpose politics more typically has been handled by state legislatures and mayors and city councils, and less by school boards and education bureaucrats.
A lot of the energy and resources behind the emphasis on these culture war issues is coming from groups that are fighting a different battle. They’re not fighting the battle to improve education. They’re fighting the battle of mobilizing MAGA folks or trying to turn suburban households that are in purple areas either red by appealing to these issues or blue by raising the specter of book banning and things like that. A lot of that’s elite — driven, driven by national actors rather than necessarily authentic local concerns — although, if you put it together with the last election, you’ve got to acknowledge there is some real bite for some of these culture war issues, particularly the issue of transgender athletes. That’s been something that’s struck a nerve at the grassroots level, even if it didn’t necessarily originate from there.
Russo: What should newsrooms and education journalists do about these “general-purpose” stories — cover them, ignore them, or something in between? What would be most helpful?
Henig: I know it can seem like a distraction when education journalists drift into general-purpose politics instead of focusing on teachers and classrooms, but I think we need more of that kind of work. Politicians, parties, and interest groups that are fighting broader political battles set funding and regulatory parameters that have critical downstream implications for what schools and teachers can do. Journalists who try too hard to screen out that dimension risk missing the real story.
Russo: You think education reporters should lean into covering general-purpose debates, even though you describe them as essentially elite-driven national political issues? How is that supposed to work?
Henig: “Elite-driven” doesn’t mean unimportant. Let’s call it like it is. Elites have more money and power and ability to control the flow of information. The on-the-ground realities that the public confronts are shaped and interpreted for them by elites. I’d love for us to live in a society where the balance of influence shifted away from elites toward some reasonably well-defined and authentic public voice. In the meantime, I think education journalists should pay attention to the levers of power and who is pressing on them. Not exclusively and not at the expense of also featuring stories about teachers, communities, and the proverbial grassroots. But in good measure.
Russo: Two months in, how’s the coverage of the new administration been?
Henig: Let me first acknowledge the challenge. This has been a chaotic period in which pronouncements do not always line up with actions, and in which a general fog of uncertainty is exacerbated by the lack of solid information. The people and institutions responsible for collecting and disseminating data are being disappeared. Sources that journalists might previously have called for background have been locked out of their offices. The mechanisms of procuring information via the Freedom of Information Act have been eroded.
My biggest concern, to date, is that journalists may have been too eager to reassure readers that their worst fears are overdrawn. They repeat the messages that “only Congress” can eliminate the Department of Education; that funding will be better targeted but not necessarily diminished; that functions like civil rights enforcement and protection of kids with special needs is just being “reassigned”; that federal courts and blue state legislatures will buffer against the worst administration transgressions. Those reassuring messages have some grounding in history, and in earlier times I might have mouthed them myself. But I’m much less confident that they still hold today, and in that case they may obscure risks that readers need to understand.
My biggest concern, to date, is that journalists may have been too eager to reassure readers that their worst fears are overdrawn.
Russo: Based on all your experiences, what would you tell researchers to do when they get a call from a journalist, and what would you ask journalists to do?
Henig: I think there are some risks to talking to journalists, and some journalists will distort intentionally for the sake of a story or they’ll pull out the most dramatic quote or edit out the caveats that researchers consider important.
But talking with journalists is also a legitimate responsibility that researchers need to take into account. If we don’t take on the role of interpreting research for the general public, then others will fill that gap, and those others may have less understanding or less wholesome motivations. Moreover, I came to conclude from my own experience that I wasn’t really misquoted much at all.
My advice is to respond to reporters and to do so quickly, because if you don’t call back quickly, you’ll be too late to do any good for the journalist working on deadline. But not to agree to an interview if it’s outside of your area of expertise. Early on, I sometimes responded to [questions outside my area of expertise], and those interviews are the only ones that I came to regret.
There are a lot of journalists out there who I’ve talked to many times, and I’m happy to talk to them, because I’ve seen that they’re trying to get it, and they’re not just plugging me in to be the counter to Paul Peterson, or the counter to Jay Green, or something like that. I pretty much operate on the assumption that people are dealing with me in good faith, and I would have to say that over 90% of the time, I think that’s been the case.
Russo: What advice would you give to current or future education journalists? What would you recommend that they do a little more, a little differently, or continue to do if they’re doing a great job?
Henig: Avoid the temptation, which is strong, to find two people who will beat each other up on the page and allow you to tell the story that way. Avoid that as much as possible. This is where the editors sometimes become a challenge because the hand-to-hand combat format is seen as more compelling. Another thing to avoid is the tendency to treat each individual study as the focus, rather than try to get some sense of what the literature has shown over time.
Russo: What about media coverage of a single research study?
Henig: I try to encourage people to look across the literature rather than treat the latest study in isolation. Any single study is going to have soft spots. And if you want to discredit it, it’s easy for anyone trained in research to find something. That doesn’t mean that research can be interpreted to say anything at all. I don’t think that’s right. I think there’s good research and bad research. But I think that research over time tends to be somewhat self-correcting and accumulating.
Russo: Now that you’ve retired, are there a couple of other people that journalists should call who are interested in issues of political science and policy?
Henig: The people who I find myself sending journalists to now, partly because of the kinds of questions they’re asking me, would include Rebecca Jacobson at Michigan State, who is doing a lot of research on culture wars and who’s funding them. She and I, along with Sarah Reckhow at Michigan State co-authored a book on outside money in school board elections in 2019, and education journalists are increasingly interested in this “dark money” angle.
If people are interested in the local New York City stuff and local school boards, I’d send them to Jonathan Collins at Teachers College, who, like me, is a political scientist who studies education. There aren’t that many trained political scientists who focus on education, although the number is growing. I sometimes steer reporters to Josh Cowen at Michigan State because he’s doing a lot on the most recent trend of state-initiated universal vouchers. He’s interesting and takes seriously the responsibility to interpret evidence for public consumption. My former students Melissa Lyon and David Houston are doing important work on teacher unions and political polarization in education politics, respectively; often when reporters reach out I’ll point them in their direction.
Previously from The Grade
How to cover education now that Trump has won?
Covering school choice during the 2024 campaign season (Josh Cowen interview)
What happens when education reporters write about politics? (Jennifer Berkshire interview)
ProPublica’s Eli Hager on covering choice in a new era
Journalism should help debunk the education myth it helped create (Jon Shelton)
