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BACK TO SCHOOL BEGINS
The big story of the week, according to us.
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The big story of the week is the beginning of the back-to-school season, with all the hope, excitement, and fear that’s involved. Here’s what happened in various parts of the country on the first days back:
🔊 Hopes and fears as schools open their doors for new year (Washington Post)
🔊 Relief and excitement, amid concern over delta variant, as Oakland Unified schools reopen (SF Chronicle)
🔊 Delta variant is sucking the joy out of back-to-school 2021 (LAT)
🔊 Parents, districts scrambling as school reopens while COVID-19 cases spike (Dallas Morning News)
🔊 CPS plans weekly COVID-19 tests — but stops short of requiring them (Chicago Sun-Times)
🔊 Florida kids head back to school amid COVID-19 surge (Associated Press)
🔊 COVID clouds another first day of school in Tampa Bay (Tampa Bay Times)
🔊 Mask confusion reigns as TN goes back to school amid COVID surge (Chalkbeat Tennessee)
🔊 Back-to-school on the border means long wait times for US citizen students (El Paso Times)
Already, districts serving more than a third of the nation’s students have opened, according to the Burbio school opening tracker. However, district safety policies and remote options vary widely, according to the NYT write-up of a new CRPE report.
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QUESTIONS ABOUT BAY AREA DISTRICT AIR FILTRATION SPENDING
Best education journalism of the week.
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🏆 BEST: The best story of the week is Schools Spent Millions to Clean Indoor Air, Now Some Fear Technology Could Be Dangerous by NBC Bay Area investigative reporter Bigad Shaban and others. It finds that Bay Area school districts spent millions of dollars in the last year on air cleaning technology to make schools safer for kids in the pandemic. But some of the equipment is now under scrutiny for doing the opposite of what it’s intended to do. Some air purifiers are sitting unused — but already paid for — in storage containers. Some release toxins that are particularly harmful to children. “Industry experts say fears of the pandemic and a willingness of consumers to pay out big bucks have transformed the air cleaning industry into a sort of Wild Wild West,” the team found, citing a rushed process in which some districts failed to do their due diligence. It’s a great story that invites reporters to look into similar things that may have taken place in other districts.
🏆 RUNNER-UP: This week’s runner-up is ‘Speak your truth’: How one student leader’s confrontational approach reflects a generational shift in fighting injustice by Jenna Russell in the Boston Globe. In this empowering, student-centered story, Russell profiles 17-year-old Khymani James, a young Black man raised by a single immigrant mother who overcame traumatic losses and became a star student and school leader. Rather than framing students as victims, the story portrays them as change agents who are learning how to speak up for themselves and their generation. It’s a rare uplifting — but not too rosy — story amid the loss and devastation of the last year and a half. And it’s a good reminder to education reporters about who should be at the center of their beat: the students. “You know that expression, ‘defies the laws of physics’? I defy the laws of politics,” James told Russell. “I answered to the students, and not to anyone else.”
BONUS STORIES:
🏆 As Schools Prepare to Reopen Fully, Covid Safety Rules Are in Flux (NYT)
🏆 Pandemic spurs boom in virtual offerings for US schools (AP)
🏆 Texas Teachers Say GOP’s New Social Studies Law Will Hinder How an Entire Generation Understands Race, History and Current Events (Texas Tribune)
🏆 As schools hire teachers and counselors, a funding cliff looms (Chalkbeat)
🏆 Trailblazing Leader Hired to Fix Colorado Springs Schools. Will Doubling Down on His Reforms Avert COVID Classroom Crisis? (The 74)
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A JOURNALIST DEFENDS SCHOOL RANKINGS
New from The Grade
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In a new column for The Grade, Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews defends school rankings of colleges and high schools that are published by U.S. News and other outlets — and increasingly criticized by journalists and experts.
“Baked into a lot of these assessments of higher education is a series of assumptions that are appalling,” journalist Malcolm Gladwell said in a recent New York Times interview about the U.S. News college rankings. “This thing that they’re relying on, it’s very close to being racist.”
However, school rankings are popular with readers and provide useful information, according to Mathews — and do not necessarily exacerbate segregation or inequality
“If anything,” Mathews counters, “some rankings now reveal how well impoverished and minority students are doing.”
Big thanks to Richard Prince for featuring strategic editor Amber C. Walker’s column about community-driven school news gathering in his always-informative roundup of journalism news. Check it out here.
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MEDIA TIDBITS
Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage.
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Above: Ed Yong is back in The Atlantic with How the Pandemic Now Ends, in which he reports on (among other things) the case for reopening schools in person with as many safeguards as possible.
📰 SCHOOL STAFF VACCINATION AND TESTING: The fastest-moving and arguably most important school reopening story right now is the small but growing spread of federal, state, and local support for vaccine mandates or frequent testing for school staff. Vaccination may be the most effective available mitigation strategy we have, but not all school staff have been vaccinated using voluntary means and incentives. And many states and districts don’t seem to know which staff have been vaccinated.
The story has been moving quickly in the last few days. At the national level, Biden administration officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona have come out in favor. (I wonder if DOD and BIA schools under direct federal control are going to be mandated.) The two main teachers unions quickly reversed themselves and came out in favor. At the state level, Hawaii and California have already mandated vaccines for school staff. Washington state initially exempted school staff from its public employee mandate, but the state superintendent has asked the governor to reconsider. Incoming New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will have to make the decision soon. Meanwhile, a handful of districts, including NYC and Denver, have announced local vaccine mandates for school staff, and Seattle has begun the process of adopting some sort of mandate. Union leaders in Philadelphia and Boston, among other places, have come out in favor.
Which states and districts will be next to include (or exclude) teachers from employee mandate rules? What conditions will labor unions and districts add to mandates? There’s no national tracker for vaccine mandates, alas — one might be very popular. It seems likely that many states and districts don’t have information about which employees have been vaccinated. And the Kaiser Family Foundation survey of parent attitudes toward vaccines and masks doesn’t ask about school staff mandates, though I’m hoping it will in the next round. Lots of room for more coverage of a fast-moving and important reopening story.
📰 COVERING EDUCATION WITH A CLIMATE PERSPECTIVE: It used to be that education reporters would brag that all issues — housing, crime, economics — were really education issues. And they are. But lately, climate journalists are making the claim that every beat involves climate. And they may be right. A handful of education journalists including NPR’s Anya Kamenetz seem to be trying to make that happen. And there might be many others. Asked about the intersection of climate and education, journalist Amy Westervelt tells us that there are several ways to get involved, including familiar concerns about fossil fuel companies influencing classroom curricula and shaping student perceptions about what’s possible in terms of policy changes. “That could be a really interesting thread for education reporters to pull on,” she wrote. “Who's creating what sorts of curricula, who's using that curricula, and why, which industries/companies have lobbyists showing up to school board meetings?”
📰 BEWARE “FEELINGS” STORIES: Have you noticed how many stories you’re seeing that focus on how people feel about what’s going on? A few examples: 'I'm terrified': COVID adds to first-day jitters as districts make last-minute safety adjustments (Houston Chronicle), ‘We’re back to panicking’: Moms are hit hardest with camps and day cares closing again (WaPo), 'Terrified' Houston-area parents brace for return of school, as delta throws wrench into COVID plans (Houston Chronicle). They’re everywhere. In my personal life, I’m all about the feelings — just ask my family and loved ones. But as a journalist, I’m wary of making them the center of the coverage (and, in particular, loathe when they’re featured in headlines). Feelings are so heated right now; focusing on them pulls attention toward the extremes. Also, feelings aren’t facts, which are in short supply. I’d much rather have already-overstretched reporters asking hard questions and digging up concrete information than anything else.
To get daily education headlines and hear about education journalism events, follow @thegrade_. To read media commentary and discuss coverage issues, follow @alexanderrusso.
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PEOPLE, JOBS, KUDOS
Who's going where & doing what?
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Above: Join me in following Tracie Mauriello, the state education policy reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette alum has been producing state-level policy stories since June. Megan Menchaca is the Austin American-Statesman’s newest higher ed reporter. Say hi to her on Twitter. Another good new follow: Rafael Garcia, who’s covering local and Kansas education for the Wichita Beacon.
🔥 New bylines! The Texas Tribune’s new education reporter Brian Lopez has started his new gig strong: check out his latest story on a lawsuit filed in response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates in schools. And the WSJ’s new national K-12 reporter Ben Chapman is back reporting on schools, covering mask confusion as schools reopen and the California teacher vaccine mandate.
🔥 Texas ed reporters on fire: There’s lots of school mask (and CRT) drama happening in the Lone Star State. Follow Corbett Smith and the rest of the Dallas Morning News Ed Lab to keep up. Also, be sure to follow the Houston Chronicle’s Hannah Dellinger and Alejandro Serrano, among many others.
🔥 Jobs: WBUR is hiring a new education editor. Chalkbeat is hiring for lots of positions. U.S. News & World Report is hiring an education reporter to cover the college beat. EWA is hiring a program manager, a communications coordinator, and a program specialist. The 74 is hiring a senior education reporter to focus on policy, equity, and solutions. The News-Press and Naples Daily News in Florida are hiring an education reporter. Any new job opening out there that folks might want to know about? Let us know.
🔥 Congrats! The Florida Times-Union's Emily Bloch nabbed two second-place awards in the 2021 SPJ Sunshine State Awards’ new media engagement and education beat reporting categories.
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APPEARANCES, RESOURCES, BOOKS
What just happened & what's coming next?
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Above: New York Times’ reporter Teo Bugbee reviewed the new Hulu documentary “Homeroom,” about members of the Class of 2020’s senior year amid social, racial, and COVID turmoil. Check out the trailer here.
⏰ Got some time? Check out the Wall Street Journal’s back-to-school Future of Everything package, which features some fascinating stories about education and technology (among other things). And COVID-19 Data Dispatch, run by Betsy Ladyzhets, unveiled its latest project, featuring five school districts that kept their communities safe last year.
⏰ Appearances: Check out Monday’s episode of The Daily on kids going back to school in Arkansas as the Delta variant takes hold and the state bans mask mandates in schools. NYT reporter Richard Fausset discusses what he learned. NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz took part in a panel discussion with authors Jordan Shapiro (“Father Figure”) and Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski (“When You Wonder, You’re Learning”) via D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose. Check out the conversation here.
⏰ Resources: Burbio’s School Reopening Trends blog offers a wealth of information for reporters, updated each week online and throughout the week on social. You can also check out District Administration’s mask tracker and CRPE’s new report, State leaders must choose accountability over complacency in reopening plans. “While state leaders are increasingly stepping into conflicts over mask and vaccine mandates,” the report finds, “many have, once again, ceded their role in ensuring districts keep students safe and learning.”
⏰ Books: Chalkbeat Chicago featured an excerpt from “Refugee High: Coming of Age in America” by Elly Fishman, which documents the lives of four refugee students and their educators at a Chicago high school. The Atlantic’s Adam Harris shared the schedule of virtual events for his new book, “The State Must Provide.” In a review, the Century Foundation’s Conor Williams says that white author and activist Courtney Martin’s book, “Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America From My Daughter’s School,” makes clear that the author’s efforts “are no match for the deeply ingrained, structural inequities that shape Oakland public schools."
⏰ Vote for U.S. News education reporter Lauren Camera’s SXSW EDU 2022 panel! She’ll discuss the effects of learning loss among America’s youngest students in the pandemic. Check out the rest of the panel options here.
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“If you're like me, you're probably feeling ground down by yet another uncertain and chaotic back-to-school season,” tweeted Detroit Free Press ed reporter Lily Altavena (above left). Her advice? “Don't live on Twitter and try to take a break from the noise.”
“I don’t dream of more work,” tweeted Chalkbeat Indiana’s Aaricka Washington (above right). “I don’t dream of grinding myself to dust. I dream of joy. Of freedom. And I want there to be a way for teachers and journalists to have the space to dream of those things too.”
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That's all, folks. Thanks for reading!
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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 Michele Jacques and Colleen Connolly.
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