When “all hands” isn’t enough

Covering COVID-19: A daily update featuring coverage, resources, and ideas to help journalists cover the massive impact of the coronavirus crisis on schools.

THE TOP FIVE

Here are five great education stories about how schools are responding to the COVID-19 crisis:

🏫 15,000 L.A. high school students are AWOL online, 40,000 fail to check in daily amid coronavirus closures – LA Times [see also LAUSD coronavirus shutdown worsens student inequities]

🏫 Confusion, uncertainty on first day of state-mandated remote learning for Washington school districts – Seattle Times

🏫 CPS remote learning plan: District to distribute 100K laptops, iPads and Chromebooks for at-home use – Chicago Sun-Times

🏫 What Coronavirus-Stricken Schools Want From the Feds Next: Online Learning Help – EdWeek

🏫 States & Schools Are Stepping Up Online Learning — but Still Have a Long Way to Go – The 74

WHEN “ALL HANDS” ISN’T ENOUGH 

Education’s importance to the COVID-19 story is close to inarguable. Students across the United States and the world are suddenly not going to school. Millions of teachers, school staff, and parents are immediately affected. Along with health care and the economy, education is among the most important stories related to the COVID-19 crisis.

And it’s clear that education journalists are working their tails off to report the story. It’s all hands on deck.

But if anything has become clear these past few weeks, there are simply too few education journalists left to do this extraordinarily difficult job properly — and soon there will be fewer and fewer of them, after newspaper chain cuts that were announced this week.

Making matters worse, education reporters are being pulled off the beat to cover other parts of the crisis.

What we’re seeing is the very obvious result of at least a decade of bit-by-bit downsizing, in which big-city newspapers went from having 5-10 education reporters to having just one or two. No conceivable amount of work from such a downsized group of people can fill the current need for timely, accurate information.

For now, at least, all hands on deck aren’t enough hands.

MAKING THE MAP

Here are two new items from The Grade you should check out:

A new piece from Mary Jo DiLonardo, Making the map, tells the story behind EdWeek’s decision to create the school closure map that so many of us have relied on in recent weeks — and the crazy amounts of work that went into making and maintaining it. What comes next in terms of viral data visualization is anybody’s guess.

As you may have noticed, mainstream coverage of the COVID-19 schools story surged then retreated. A Media Cloud analysis of mainstream coverage shows a steep dropoff last week, which may have been the result of confusion about what to cover next or education reporters being pulled off the beat to write other stories.

One of our upcoming pieces will look at changes newsrooms have made to allow reporters working from home to do their jobs under difficult circumstances. So far, we know about work flexibility efforts at Chalkbeat and Hechinger Report, but let us know about others!

TIDBITS

😷 Good news! New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein says she has recovered from COVID-19. Read all about the harrowing journey here and add your voices to the colleagues and readers who are relieved she’s OK.

😷 Surprising pretty much nobody, EWA has postponed the big annual conference it was planning for later this month. However, they’re doing lots of other things, including holding a Tuesday webinar on the school-related goodies in the federal stimulus bill (or whatever we’re calling it), featuring EdWeek’s Andrew Ujifusa. There’s also a Thursday webinar, Remote learning in the time of COVID-19, featuring Ben Herold. Register now!

😷 Help a reporter out? The Hechinger Report’s Lillian Mongeau is looking for health care professionals trying to use emergency child care. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Nader Issa is looking for students, parents, and teachers who have questions about school closures.

That’s it! You’re all done! See you tomorrow.