New details in Uvalde, toxic school shooting coverage, & a reporter reveals a childhood secret: 🏆 Best Education Journalism of the Week 🏆 (6/24/2022)

AN EDUCATION ANGLE IN UVALDE?
The big story of the week, according to us:

🔊 ‘What did we know in 6th grade?’ — TEA reviewing Uvalde shooter’s school history (KXAN)
🔊 At Uvalde hearings, Texas lawmakers zero-in on truancy reforms (Dallas Morning News)
🔊 Uvalde shooter ‘moving toward a pathway to violence’ nearly a year before massacre, DPS director says (San Antonio Express-News)
🔊 Texas mental health services hadn’t reached Uvalde before shooting as teacher says gunman ‘scared’ her (The Independent)

Other big stories this week: The anti-CRT Cherokee County parents who pushed out a Georgia educator ran for — and lost — their races for school board (GA Recorder, Atlanta Journal Constitution). There were also a couple of much-discussed stories about conflicts among high school students (NY Magazine) and progressive organization staff (The Intercept).

Also: The Supreme Court ruled in a case in Maine that religious schools can’t be excluded from public funding (New York Times, Chalkbeat). News outlets can’t seem to resist producing cringey teacher-focused stories (NPR, Wall Street Journal, Marketplace). And in Boston, the city and state are clashing over the plan to avert a state takeover of the district as it looms ever closer (Boston Globe, Boston Herald).

🏆 BEST: The best story of the week is California is richer than ever. Why is it last in the nation for school bus access? by Mackenzie Mays in the LA Times. Mays looks at a facet of schools that is rarely focused on, noting that school buses are a critical element of school attendance. Just 9% of California students take the bus to school, the lowest of any state and far below the 33% national average. That means that more than two-thirds of California’s students are driven to school each day. Schools may be open again, but without bus transportation some kids don’t show up — especially as gas prices rise. “That school bus is a lifeline,” said one superintendent. But schools in California aren’t required to provide buses, and the state hasn’t increased the amount it spends on buses since 1981. This is a great example of the many ways that schools impact students’ lives. This is also a regional story with strong national appeal.

🏆 RUNNER-UP: This week’s runner-up is What Chicago schools are like with fewer police officers by Nader Issa and Sarah Karp in the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. The story is actually from late last week, but it’s an important and timely story nonetheless. Over the past two years, Chicago Public Schools has reduced its payment to the police department by two-thirds, part of “a complicated, emotional, and messy effort to change the response to student behavior from punitive to restorative.” So what has the change wrought? Fewer calls to police from schools. A district-wide change in mindset about what so-called “bad behavior” means — and warrants. But also an increase in suspensions. Reducing school police is not a perfect solution, and the picture is messy and complicated. This is a great example of reporters following up to see how policy changes affect kids and schools — and capturing the nuance of the experiment rather than trying to oversimplify..

BONUS STORIES:
🏆 After Steering Mississippi’s Unlikely Learning Miracle, Carey Wright Steps Down (The 74)
🏆 Inside One Family’s Homelessness Nightmare (Voice of San Diego)
🏆 There wasn’t a mass exodus of teachers in Colorado, but teachers of color are still in short supply (Colorado Public Radio)
🏆 Run, hide, fight: School shooter drills can be traumatic, but do they work? (USA Today)
🏆 A family’s journey from a school prayer dispute to the Supreme Court (Washington Post)
🏆 How a teacher joined a movement to keep Black girls involved in STEM (The 19th)
🏆 ‘All hands on deck’ to close widening reading gaps in elementary schools (GBH Boston)

School shootings are horrifying and on the rise but still much less common than you might think. And media coverage that focuses on mass shooting events at schools isn’t helping, according to The Guardian’s Lois Beckett and a small but growing number of others raising questions about how the media cover gun violence.

“Credulous coverage that accepts the false belief that children are most at risk of being shot in schools is incredibly dangerous,” says Beckett, both because it overstates the risks and distracts from “Black and brown kids dying outside of school” in everyday gun violence.

Big thanks to The Guardian’s Beckett and On the Media’s Katya Rogers for allowing us to republish this 2019 interview, which was rebroadcast after the Uvalde shooting.

Above, left to right: Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Eric Stirgus, the Washington Post’s Craig Timberg, and the Texas Tribune’s William Melhado.

🔥 New hires & promotions: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has named Eric Stirgus as its new education editor, who formerly covered higher ed and Gwinnett County schools. The Washington Post’s Craig Timberg, who edited education coverage in 2009 and 2010, is taking on a new role: senior editor for collaborative investigations. And Texas Tribune fellow William Melhado published his first story with the outlet this week, a follow-up on the investigation into the Uvalde school shooting. Congrats to all!

🔥 Spotlight on solutions: It’s unfortunately still unusual to see well-reported education stories focused on promising approaches and preliminary successes. But here are two recent examples: the CT Mirror’s Ginny Monk and Adria Watson (now at the Boston Globe) wrote about a school fighting absenteeism by creating Hogwarts Houses for students and The 74’s Kevin Mahnken wrote about Mississippi’s “unlikely learning miracle.” More, please?

🔥 Appearances: Atlanta Journal-Constitution education reporters Cassidy Alexander and Josh Reyes were live on Facebook to talk about the results of metro Atlanta’s school board races. You can still watch the replay. The 74’s Beth Hawkins was on the Education Exchange podcast talking about the fallout of the recent Minneapolis teachers’ strike. NPR’s Anya Kamenetz was interviewed by Jon Favreau a couple of weeks ago, talking among other things about how most cities opened bars before they opened schools. The 74’s Linda Jacobson and the Seattle Times’ Dahlia Bazzaz were interviewed about the trials and tribulations of being education reporters.

Above: Great job on Thursday night’s PBS NewsHour describing proposed Title IX changes by the Washington Post’s Moriah Balingit, who was also recently praised by a source for going back over a segment to make sure the story was accurate.

⏰ Podcasts: Today’s edition of the New York Times’ The Daily focuses on the selective admissions debate in San Francisco and nationally. WHYY’s Schooled podcast is back with episodes on the suspension of 32 Philly teachers in the 1950s and teachers’ thoughts about why they might quit now. NPR Code Switch’s has a new episode of School Colors out today, highlighting the pushback against the district’s diversity push that emerged in Queens. KPBS interviews author Leslie T. Fenwick, who wrote about how Brown vs. Board of Education led to Black educators losing their jobs. And EWA interviewed Matt Drange too! (Read our previous Q&A with the Insider reporter who investigated his own high school journalism teacher’s predatory behavior.)

⏰ New resources: Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab has a new district-level learning loss calculator. The 74 reported on the annual federal Condition of Education report, highlighting the growing need for schools to help English language learners. They also ran a story on the Harris Poll showing that education is an issue driving parents at the polls for the midterm elections. Brookings has a report out showing the suburbs are much more diverse than you think. Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism finds that people under 35 are most interested in broader topics including education.

⏰ Conferences: Lots of education journalists in Denver at #IRE22 including Chalkbeat’s Eric Gorski and Melanie Asmar, NBC News’ Erin Einhorn, the Hechinger Report’s Neal Morton, and the Wall Street Journal’s Melissa Korn. Former LA Times education reporter Sonali Kohli is among several familiar folks appearing on panels. Who will be at #EWA22 next month, will any of us recognize each other after three years, and will there be color-coded COVID wristbands?

THE KICKER

“As a kid I couldn’t say: I’m undocumented, I don’t live in the school district, my mother cleans houses, I am Mexican.” Longtime KPCC education reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez talks about his own childhood experiences in a new episode of the podcast “Imperfect Paradise.”

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By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Colleen Connolly.