What Boston parents really want from education news

Parents want to know what they can do to help their child and improve the schools they attend, not how bad things are in the school system. 

By Colleen Connolly

Vernée Wilkinson talks to parents all the time.

Usually, it’s about things like how to get their kids to school or how to get an IEP — and to make sure the school delivers on what’s promised once a child does have one.

As director of the advisory board at School Facts Boston, a nonprofit run by Boston families to improve education for all, Wilkinson also hears a lot about disadvantages that Black students and English learners face.

“Those population groups have been historically marginalized and continue to be marginalized,” Wilkinson told us in a recent interview. “We try to figure out ways that these challenges don’t have to be passed on to the next generation.”

Education journalism should be a go-to resource for these parents, but Wilkinson says the families she works with aren’t likely to look there, which is partly why her organization puts out its own reports.

The main reason, she says, is that education journalism tends to focus on depressing data and familiar stories that parents already know.

“As a parent who’s worked in the nonprofit education space for a long time — and also as a Black Bostonian — these are issues we’ve faced for generations,” she says.

“These are issues we’ve faced for generations.”

To better serve parents, she says, reporters should invest more time into writing news that parents can use, such as write-ups with practical solutions for getting an IEP or lists of ways parents can get involved to create change at the schools themselves.

However, these kinds of stories, sometimes categorized as “news you can use” or “service journalism,” aren’t produced regularly by news outlets — in Boston or many other places.

It’s no secret that what parents want from education journalism is often not what they get.

“One of the most common things we hear is that people want actionable information,” noted Loretta Chao in a recent analysis of the American Journalism Project’s survey of 5,000 local news consumers. “People don’t just want education policy stories — they want to know, step by step, how they’re supposed to choose programs for their children and get them in. … People want to know about decisions before they’re made, and they want decision makers to be accountable for outcomes.”

However, immediate-use, actionable stories aren’t a regular part of what the traditional news outlets in Boston or many other parts of the country tend to produce.

Above: Wilkinson and the organization she works with to help parents navigate the Boston schools.

For her part, Wilkinson doesn’t blame the media as much as she does state and district leaders who feed the information that journalists report on.

There are times, of course when the more traditional news stories need to be reported and provide crucial information or validation for parents. For example, Wilkinson praises this piece in the Boston Globe about the two-decade-long decline in enrollment of Black students in BPS, saying it accurately portrayed a real problem facing Boston families.

Nonetheless, she would like to see something other than the usual dreary headlines about low test scores, inequities in schools, and buildings in disrepair.

“At a certain point, it’s like watching a violent movie over and over and over again,” Wilkinson says. These stories represent “a certain form of violence towards children.”

These stories represent “a certain form of violence towards children.” 

Here are some tips Wilkinson offered for journalists to refocus their coverage:

Focus less on the numbers and avoid repetition

According to Wilkinson, parents already know the sad statistics that get repeated year after year in alarming headlines.

“The news outlets are reporting the data and they’re doing their jobs, but it seems like every 18 months or so, we’ll get a new article about facilities, a new update about transportation, a new update about the state of education for ELL students, the state of education for students with special needs, the state of education for Black and Brown students — and it’s the same issues over and over and over again,” Wilkinson says.

Parents know this because they and their kids are living it, Wilkinson says.

For a general audience, they are informative. But for local parents, they don’t offer much.

Give parents some hope

According to Wilkinson (and the AJP survey previously mentioned), parents want action and solutions, and journalism that focuses on that is more appealing.

Some regions with large education teams, like Seattle and Dallas, have an explicit solutions focus.

For example, instead of reporting only on low test scores, Meghan Mangrum reported for the Dallas Morning News last year about what advocates think the redesigned state tests should look like.

For the Seattle Times, Claire Bryan recently reported on a school district program offering students mental health counseling.

At the national level, the Christian Science Monitor also produces regular stories about progress being made.

But many education teams — including in Boston — lack an ongoing commitment to produce these kinds of stories.

Perhaps it’s time for more outlets to reconsider their approach.

Above: Wilkinson featured in the 2022 Boston Globe story, A mother’s journey, helping families navigate Boston Public Schools and protecting her own from it.

Address parents’ specific information needs

Journalists love a data-rich story. It helps to bolster the narrative and hold officials to account. Numbers are objective and they can tell important stories on their own.

But Wilkinson says parents don’t often care much about that.

“The data points that they’re following are their children, and those are the ones they should be focused on,” she says. The questions parents want answered are “How is their social/emotional well-being? How are they doing with their peers? How is their diet and nutrition? Even, ‘Is it cold season?” “

Journalists cannot report on every child, but they can tell parents how to obtain and judge that information — and offer experts’ advice on what parents can do to get the best outcomes for their children.

Other practical things that news coverage only rarely addresses include when to sign up for summer programs, how to get into honors programs, how to get a job in the school district, how to become a teacher, and what to do if your school isn’t providing services you think are needed.

You’ll find stories like these on parent websites and the occasional news outlet, like U.S. News, but rarely in most local newspapers.

These stories aren’t sexy. They don’t win Pulitzers. But they can make a big difference to parents.

Provide information that can empower

Is there an opportunity for parents to get involved in something at the school or district level or provide feedback at a critical stage, but the district hasn’t made that information very accessible? You can let parents know, Wilkinson says.

School Facts Boston does exactly this, holding meetings with parents, writing reports, and providing fact sheets with easy-to-access information.

“We recently met with our family advisory board, and we spent a good portion of the meeting discussing what to think about, what to discuss, and what to be looking for when your school community is in the midst of a principal transition,” Wilkinson says. “Just being aware that there is a hiring search committee and you can potentially volunteer if you want to be part of that process is important.”

Demystifying the processes by which district and school decisions get made — and making them accessible to parents — can go a long way toward providing them with news they can use.

Follow up on stories that are important to parents

“Fifteen thousand Black students have left the district over the past 20 years,” Wilkinson says, referring to the Globe story she admires. “That seems like the sort of information that would at least warrant some follow-up questions and concerns. If the district isn’t going to do those sorts of things, then are there other outlets that can take on some of that work?”

Outlets that do follow up on topics of importance to parents might find that more parents would be willing to talk to them.

“A lot of families have fatigue or skepticism around engaging with the media because they’ve been telling these stories for years without the outcomes they need and deserve,” she says.

“If there were media outlets where they really felt like speaking out led to change, then they would absolutely be showing up and speaking up. Wherever change is happening, families are going to show up.”

Colleen Connolly is a bilingual journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Smithsonian, and Imprint. Read more about her work here. Follow her at @ColleenMConn.

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