Covering school extremism

School culture wars warrant coverage, according to a veteran journalist who’s written a new book on the topic. She offers some specific ways to avoid merely amplifying the outrage. 

By Laura Pappano

When the school culture wars rage, it’s hard to look away.

Like the breaking news crime grist that may have been your start as a journalist – and was mine (“body found, Pappano get out there”) – the education beat has become surprisingly sensational.

Like it or not, education reporters have a new assignment: Covering extremism.

At first, it might have looked straightforward enough to report on book bans, student protests against LGBTQ+ policies, and educators fired for allegedly teaching “CRT.”

A lot of the coverage has been a survey of ideological conflict and bad public behavior.

But there is more to this story, and as education journalists we must understand it — and include it in our reporting.

The problem of extremism in the schools needs our attention because it is fracturing our communities and wreaking havoc for the next generation who deserve be learning without the political crossfire.

It’s not enough to give more attention to the topic.

Coverage must address misinformation, put happenings in context and share the consequences of actions to educators and students. The so-called “culture wars” are not really about education or learning. But they affect both.

Coverage must address misinformation, put happenings in context and share the consequences of actions to educators and students.

As annoying and distracting as these issues are, we need to dive in.

I know this because I’m a 30-year veteran reporting on schools. I didn’t plan to write a book about this but was compelled as I saw the rising threat to public education.

For the past 18 months I’ve traveled the country and watched hours of school board meetings plus done historical research to report School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education (to be published in January by Beacon Press).

While reporting this book, I have been exposed to some of the most worrisome — and hopeful — forces impacting public education that I have seen in my professional career.

There are some examples of strong coverage to be found…

To be clear, there are some examples of strong coverage to be found.

The Washington Post has recently produced stories that makes sense of the attacks on public schools, like Hannah Natanson’s look at book banning and its deep dive on a sex educator in Michigan.

The latter chronicled the step-by-step attack on the work of Heather Alberda in which reporters Greg Jaffe and Patrick Marley show how vicious attacks get justified as noble efforts to “protect child innocence.”

The story goes beyond the surface to show how an extremist group, Ottawa Impact, targeted and vilified Alberda, subjecting her to public scorn and turning people against her, exacting a personal and emotional toll.

“I have to go into the community, and people think I am a pedophile,” they quoted Alberda saying. “They don’t think I stole a car or embezzled money. They think I’m a sexual predator.”

By using extreme language and labels, the Post reporters show how someone performing a common and needed role — sex educator — is targeted, mis-framed as “sexualizing children,” and ruthlessly attacked. It is a case study in the how a campaign of misinformation can threaten educators and the ability to provide vital services.

Nirvi Shah at USA Today has written — and as an editor given space to — explainer pieces on players like Hillsdale College, which has been invoked as a model for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ New College and a source for far-right K-12 curriculum.

Her piece detailing the college’s background after DeSantis aspired to make New College “the Hillsdale of the South,” acknowledged the widely quoted aspiration, but also shared why it was that “In many ways, Hillsdale College, in south-central Michigan, and New College of Florida, on the state’s Gulf Coast in Sarasota, could not be more different.”

The award-winning “Southlake” podcast by NBC’s Mike Hixenbaugh and Antonia Hylton was riveting and important. It connected the dots and detailed how a community went from collaborating against racism to watching political extremists mobilize to kill a plan to support diversity, equity, and inclusion and lay the foundation for far-right activists to gain control of the school district.

… Unfortunately, such examples are the exception.

Unfortunately, such examples are the exception.

Across the U.S., many education stories remain framed as “both sides” reporting in which misinformation is repeated as fact or key information is left out.

MISCHARACTERIZATIONS AND WORD SALAD

We must beware of mischaracterizations that fail to inform readers fully.

Moms for Liberty, for example, is not, as one story in TC Palm, the digital outlet of the Gannett-owned Treasure Coast Palm Newspapers in Florida, put it, “a parent-advocacy group that tackles parents’ rights and education issues.” It is an extremist group with a far-right political agenda, alliances, and funders.

Covering these attacks on public education requires us to look at the education landscape differently, to look deeper and beyond the rhetoric to understand the far-right politics at play.

Politicians are taking actions in the name of education that are not about student learning but rather about what they call “protecting” children. They say they’re upholding “parents’ rights” when they are actually attacking the institution of public schools by demanding that all learning align with their very particular and narrow views, which is not how schools work.

To energize their claims, they produce a confusing word salad of untrue accusations about what is happening in classrooms. So when public officials talk in abstractions or spread misinformation, we must raise questions — call BS — rather than quote them and hope readers figure it out.

When public officials talk in abstractions or spread misinformation, we must raise questions rather than quote them and hope readers figure it out.

It takes time to walk through false claims, even ones that sound insane. Yet we must call out extremist rhetoric, no matter how ridiculous or obvious it seems to us as journalists. In fact, many people around the country are confused — getting angry about “SEL” even as they have no idea what it is. We must explain.

That’s what Rebecca Crosby, a research assistant at Popular Information, did in a story, “Inside the Campaign to Cancel Sex Ed,” which described a recent session at the Moms for Liberty National Summit in Philadelphia. She broke it all down, point by point. (No, kids are not starting the process of cutting off their penises in the cafeteria at lunch. That and other false claims by audience members, she reported, “went unchecked” by the speaker.)

Crosby further clarified that “Moms for Liberty are not just holding forums criticizing sex ed. They are successfully altering sex ed curriculum to conform to their agenda.” She reported that the session leader “objected to curriculums that recognize LGBTQ people and relationships without treating them as abnormal.”

Crosby also detailed a move by Moms for Liberty in Leon County, Fla., to postpone approval of the school district’s sex ed curriculum by arguing that, “the curriculum was ‘dehumanizing’ and ‘harm[ed] children.’” Crosby shared the basis for the complaint — “that the word ‘anal’ was used more than 30 times in the instructional materials,’ even though the word was only used to ‘refer to the risks of sexually transmitted diseases.’” Such details matter.

 COMPLICATING THE NARRATIVE

Covering hot-button school issues is more complex than it seems.

There is not always a neat Republican-Democrat divide.

One Texas mom I interviewed is a self-described “conservative” and gun owner but does not, she said, want her 18-year-old to be able to buy an AK-47 or have her public schools run by people with Q-Anon bumper stickers on their vehicles.

Moms in North Idaho, who just led a recall of two far-right school board members, are mostly Republicans, conservatives, and religious. But they were clear on this: They were not extremists.

There is not always a neat Republican-Democrat divide.

Also, culture war coverage should give kids enough credit for being able to think on their own and make basic decisions.

Coverage repeatedly fails to question the weakness of extremist claims of “protecting children’s innocence” or to press on the problematic goal of controlling every aspect of a child’s upbringing.

Such notions are unrealistic and ignore that schools are where kids learn to navigate social relationships and develop a sense of who they are.

In working with students in grades 3-8 to publish a student newspaper, The East Rock Record, in New Haven, Conn., it’s obvious to me that even at young ages children have minds of their own and views about nearly everything. We should respect that.

Give kids enough credit for being able to think on their own and make basic decisions.

EXPOSING RELATIONSHIPS

To understand and explain this landscape, we must notice relationships.

For example, the spread of vouchers and education savings accounts with little to no income restriction is not something state legislatures (Arizona, Florida, Arkansas, Utah, Iowa, West Virginia) created from thin air. Rather, ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a far-right lobbying group long supported by Koch industries, has a library of “model policies” that surface as legislative proposals. ALEC’s “Hope Scholarship Act” offers ready-made language for voucher legislation.

Yet when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation to create “Education Freedom Accounts,” language that mimics Gov. Ron DeSantis, an explainer piece in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette credited COVID-19 — not politics — for multiple states’ adoption of vouchers. There is no mention either that the state’s secretary of education, Jacob Oliva, came from Florida, which has overseen the largest voucher expansion in the nation.

We need to follow the relationships — and the money. And we must now pay attention to local school board elections that once hardly registered as news. Today, they are a key educational battleground. National players and super PACs with deep pockets are surfacing in local communities — and winning. Many have heard how Patriot Mobile, the Christian conservative cell phone company, in early 2022 formed the Patriot Mobile Action super PAC and spent over $400,000 to pick and back 11 far-right school board candidates in North Texas. All won. They “flipped” four school boards to far-right majorities.

As journalists, we need to review candidate campaign filings for school board races (and also track the voter turnout of those races as seats are often decided by a few votes with very low voter participation).

TIPS AND RESOURCES

It can be hard to see where and how national players are influencing local school boards, but it has become a key part of the far-right agenda. Many groups are good at hiding their financial support (and filings don’t require nonprofits to list their donors, unlike campaigns).

Watch for activities led by The Leadership Institute. As a 501 c(3), it cannot engage in political advocacy, but it trains “conservative activists” and recently opened a school board training center in Sarasota, Fla. The group’s donations from “public support” more than doubled from 2017 to 2021 from $14.5 million to $29.8 million a year. Yet I have not seen any stories about such trainings.

Super PACs cannot donate to individual campaigns, but Transparency USA will show where those like Patriot Mobile Action are spending so called “dark money” on behalf of local school board PACs and candidates (for a primer on “dark money” follow Maurice Cunningham’s work).

Sites like MediaMatters (and its SourceWatch partner) and ProPublica’s database and explanatory reports can help.

It is also important for us to delve behind anodyne-sounding groups to look at messaging, who is on the board, and funding. While many far-right groups try to cast themselves as “grass-roots” organizations that are all about parent advocacy, it is our job as journalists to pay attention and question.

Always ask, “What is the impact?” That became the basis for a story I did for The Hechinger Report after DeSantis signed into law the state’s latest voucher expansion. He billed it as “educational freedom,” but what about those who lack resources?

What happens when all this money leaves a large school district that serves many low-income students who cannot access the vouchers?

A report in The Dallas Morning News provided context, while a Ft. Worth Star-Telegram story reported it as just another vote.

Why does this matter? Because “flipped” school boards change how schools operate, what curriculum they teach, what books are in libraries, and how schools will — or will not — protect LGBTQ+ students.  And the quality of the coverage makes all the difference.

In Keller ISD in Texas, for example, the new school board passed a policy barring any book mentioning gender fluidity in the district. The board also restricted transgender students’ access to bathrooms and barred use of preferred pronouns.

A report in The Dallas Morning News provided context, while a Ft. Worth Star-Telegram story reported it as just another vote.

There is nothing wrong with conservative values. It has always been our job as journalists to listen and seek fairness. But it is also our job to call out misinformation and to point out situations in which our publicly funded learning spaces, which must welcome and include all, are being overtaken to promote an extremist political game plan. It may not be what we signed up for, but it is here at our doorstep.

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Laura Pappano is an education journalist, author, and founder of The New Haven Student Journalism Project. Her newest book, School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education will be published by Beacon Press in January 2024. You can follow her @LauraPappano (on X/Twitter), on Facebook and LinkedIn, or her website LauraPappano.com. (On Instagram follow @eastrockrecord).

Previously from The Grade

An expert journalist’s guide to covering book bans (Ann Doss Helms)
‘Grapevine’; more than just another school culture wars clash? (Bekah McNeel)
How to cover school culture war stories (Solochek, Sawcheck, Chambers, et al)
The school ‘red wave’ that didn’t happen
‘Squid Game’ school board coverage isn’t helping
For education journalists, the culture war is the easy, less important story (Nic Garcia)