In this week’s newsletter: Literacy reform resistance in Ohio and Berkeley. How to cover special education without getting lost in the weeds. A veteran education journalist’s advice for covering book bans. And cursive returns to some elementary school classrooms.
LITERACY PUSHBACK
The big story of the week
This week’s big education story isn’t drama over the Scholastic book fair, the California cursive mandate, or the New Jersey school district that wants to ban Halloween. I don’t think those are serious stories.
The big education story of the week is the resistance to literacy reform that’s being reported in places like Ohio and Berkeley, Calif.
In Ohio, Reading Recovery supporters are suing against the push to adopt research-backed methods (Columbus Dispatch, Associated Press, Ohio Capital Journal).
Meanwhile, student news outlets are reporting that liberal communities like Berkeley are holding onto discredited literacy instruction approaches and materials (Berkeley High Jacket).
What other states and districts are proving slow to reconsider their approach to literacy instruction? What are the practical and political obstacles to change? What are the experiences of students, parents, and teachers in places where literacy instruction isn’t evolving?
Other big education stories of the week:
META SUED: Speaking of lawsuits, more than 40 states have now sued the social media giant Meta, claiming that Instagram and Facebook are harmful to kids’ mental health (Politico, Washington Post, NPR, WBUR). The lawsuit may end up being no more than virtue signaling, but many schools are responding to the social media threat in a much more direct way: taking away kids’ phones during all or part of the school day (CBS, WBUR). Interestingly, some students say it’s school-related stress that drives mental health problems, not social media (Education Week).
SCHOLASTIC REVERSAL: Responding to the backlash against its decision to separate certain titles in their book fairs to better comply with new state laws on reading material, Scholastic reversed course (New York Times, Washington Post, NPR). It wouldn’t be a week in education journalism without a culture war controversy — and in this case, at least the coverage might have helped — but I wish we’d see such close coverage of other more substantive issues.
ISRAEL-HAMAS CONFLICT: As we noted last week, K-12 teachers and administrators continue to struggle with how to talk about the Israel-Hamas conflict with students and families without generating backlash (New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution). In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the state education agency would share resources with teachers to counter misinformation and antisemitism (Texas Tribune).
LOST IN TRANSLATION
The best education journalism of the week
The best education story of the week is the Hechinger Report and Seattle Times collaboration, Parents of special ed students who don’t speak English face another hurdle.
Securing special education services is challenging enough, even without language differences and a shortage of school interpreters. Writing about special education for English learner students is also challenging.
But this story by Neal Morton, Dahlia Bazzaz, and Jenn Smith keeps a strong focus on a parent and child who have gone through the difficult process — opening the story with their experience and returning to them later on.
It weaves in legislative proposals, union bargaining efforts, and educators’ experiences, without losing sight of the people whose lives are most directly affected.
Other great education stories this week:
👏 Parent voices, on-the-ground reporting, and helpful data visualizations distinguish this Sara Wilson story showing that homeschooling rates in Colorado have stabilized at a higher level than before the pandemic (Colorado Newsline).
👏 Spotlighting the owner of an early-childhood education program in Missoula, Mont., Alia Wong depicts the stress and sacrifice typical of working in an industry that is “crumbling in real time” as crucial federal funding expires (USA Today).
👏 Newcomers to a district near Denver gave candid first impressions of their new surroundings to Yesenia Robles in her genuinely uplifting story about how the district is preparing its growing newcomer population to succeed academically and culturally (Chalkbeat Denver).
👏 Schools looking to improve reading scores will appreciate the specific instructional examples in this detailed Kristen Griffith piece about how a Maryland district did just that — by closely analyzing student data and using pandemic funds for personalized instruction (Baltimore Banner, 10/17).
👏 Students robbed of a normal high school experience due to interminable campus renovations are quoted at length in this revealing Jessika Harkay story, which compares their experience with a wealthy neighboring district that’s also getting a new school (CT Mirror).
BOOK BAN COVERAGE
Our latest columns and commentary
“Covering education these days is a bit like juggling knives,” writes veteran WFAE (North Carolina) education reporter Ann Doss Helms in our newest piece. “Especially when it comes to the current culture wars.”
But Doss Helms, who last wrote for The Grade about switching from print to audio, is not here to complain. Instead, she’s sharing helpful insights about her experience covering book challenges.
In her piece, Doss Helms highlights the value that reporters bring to the debate when they provide context and information to readers. What exactly is being challenged? Where is the challenge coming from? What’s the established procedure for evaluating challenges (which are nothing new)? Is the procedure being followed?
The piece goes nicely with last week’s entry from a Texas school library coordinator.
Above: In honor of HBO ordering up a pilot episode of “Nice White Parents,” here’s our 2020 interview with creator Chana Joffe-Walt, Nice White Journalist.
PEOPLE, JOBS
Who’s going where and doing what
🔥 Career moves: Former education reporter and WBUR On Point producer Grace Tatter is now producing “The Gun Machine,” The Trace’s new podcast collaboration with WBUR. Former education reporter Lauren McGaughy is leaving her post as an investigative reporter for the Dallas Morning News. And another former education reporter Jenny Abamu — who talked to The Grade in 2019 about why she left journalism — is now a U.S. diplomat in Madrid and looking to connect on LinkedIn. The Grade contributor Julia Métraux and others are part of the Solutions Journalism Network’s inaugural class of HEAL Fellows, who will report on the mental health challenges facing young people. Congrats to all!
🔥 Sound off:
“I think the thing that emerged for me is the SRO angle,” Meribah Knight told us via DM when we asked her about education angles in her new podcast, “The Kids of Rutherford County.” “This is a great example of the school to prison pipeline being exacerbated by one irresponsible SRO.”
“Concerns about crime and safety, as well as economic uncertainty, are the main motivators of voting behavior this year,” said researcher Mark Rozell, who’s quoted in this Washington Post story about Virginia voters’ relative apathy toward issues surrounding trans student rights in public schools. “The cultural issues are just not showing up as much as many had expected.” That didn’t stop the Post from making trans issues the focus of the piece.
“If you’re in your 60s in the U.S., you’re part of the most educated generation in the world,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt tells us via email. “If you’re in your 30s, you’re not.” His new book includes a big chapter on schools. For more, listen to him on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer podcast.
Above: Check out the latest documentary installment of OPB’s “Class of 2025” project, which has followed the same group of students for more than a decade. The new documentary chronicles their sophomore year.
APPEARANCES, EVENTS, & NEW RESOURCES
What’s happening and new research
⏰ Atlanta Collaboration: Atlanta Civic Circle and Capital B Atlanta are teaming up with a series of stories about the upcoming school board elections for Atlanta Public Schools. “APS is majority-Black and we felt it was important to elevate journalism and storytelling centered on Black voices,” Atlanta Civic Circle executive director Saba Long told us by email. A bunch of stories have already been published, including one about chronic absenteeism.
⏰ Media appearances: Chalkbeat’s Kalyn Belsha was on WBUR’s “Here & Now” explaining the multimillion-dollar plan to desegregate schools. Fresnoland reporter (and former ed reporter) Julianna Morano was on KVPR Central California breaking down the possible teachers’ strike at Fresno Unified. WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould was on “The Brian Lehrer Show” talking about her story on one family’s year-long battle to get specialized instruction for their child with dyslexia. And WBEZ Chicago’s Nereida Moreno was on “EWA Radio” sharing insights about her reporting on migrant students and families.
⏰ Events: Join education reporter Sarah Carr and others today to learn about how to sustain a career as a long-form journalist. In case you missed it this week: The Solutions Journalism Network hosted a webinar about how to start or fund a news collaborative, which is something education journalists are good at. Boston Globe Great Divide reporter Deanna Pan moderated a post-film discussion after a screening of the documentary “The Highest Standard” about “the cost of three students’ journeys to excellence.” And the Washington Post’s Laura Meckler moderated a Fordham Institute event on race and wealth gaps in advanced education.
⏰ Research: A New York Times analysis of SAT scores shows that few of the country’s poorest students earn high scores. Roughly 4% of teachers — or 136,000 — could lose their jobs when ESSER money runs out, according to Chad Aldeman. Schools’ bonds with parents are a crucial factor in reducing chronic absenteeism, according to new research spotlighted in Education Week. A new policy brief from the Public Policy Institute of California looks at the impact of transitional kindergarten on students’ trajectories in elementary school. And NPR republished a piece from Kavitha Cardoza in the Hechinger Report digging into the research on grow-your-own teacher programs — a hot topic in education coverage these days.
⏰ Resources: With elections just around the corner, head over to Ballotpedia for their coverage of 8,000 school board contests. The Migration Policy Institute released a helpful profile of new immigrant children arriving in U.S. schools, showing a significant increase over the last decade. And learn about how to cover diverse higher ed stories in this EWA blog post, featuring insights from Chalkbeat Colorado’s Jason Gonzales, NPR’s Elissa Nadworny, and USA Today’s Chris Quintana.
THE KICKER
This week’s news that California is mandating cursive instruction for elementary students had me remembering these scribble exercises. If required, I think I could still write cursive, but I know I can’t read it. What about you?
That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!
Reply to this email to send us questions, comments or tips. Know someone else who should be reading Best of the Week? Send them this link to sign up.
Using Feedly or FlipBoard or any other kind of news reader? You can subscribe to The Grade’s “feed” by plugging in this web address: http://www.kappanonline.org/category/the-grade/feed/.
Read more about The Grade here. You can read all the back issues of The Grade’s newsletter, Best of the Week, here.
By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Colleen Connolly, Will Callan, and Greg Toppo.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Grade
Launched in 2015, The Grade is a journalist-run effort to encourage high-quality coverage of K-12 education issues.
