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REDUCING DISRUPTION
The big-picture story of the week, according to us.

The big story of the week is district and school efforts at reducing school disruptions, which include ramping up testing, reducing quarantine rules, and refining mask and vaccine rules. Some of the coverage:

🔊 A simple solution to endless school quarantines (Vox)
🔊 A New Covid Testing Model Aims to Spare Students From Quarantine (New York Times)
🔊 Philly health officials relax rules around school building closures (Chalkbeat)
🔊 LA County offers modified COVID-19 quarantine option (LA Daily News)
🔊 LAUSD and Teachers Have Agreed On A 'Continuity Of Learning Plan' (LAist)
🔊 Unvaccinated and masked students no longer have to quarantine (Chalkbeat NY)
🔊 Health office reversed recommendation to close school (Sacramento Bee)
🔊 Miami-Dade schools to ease COVID quarantine protocols (Miami Herald)

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DEBUNKING TEACHER VACCINE MANDATES
Best education journalism of the week.
🏆 BEST: The best story of the week is What mandate? Across U.S., teacher vaccine rules slow to reach classrooms by Matt Barnum for Chalkbeat. Vaccines are one of the most effective ways to keep COVID out of schools, and a small but growing number of schools, districts, and states have announced mandates for teachers and school staff (and, to a much smaller extent, students). But Barnum’s reporting shows that teacher vaccine mandates have not been crafted or implemented nearly as thoroughly as most readers might expect. “In some cases, negotiations are ongoing,” he writes. “In others, a testing opt-out provides a significant loophole. Many aren’t imposing vaccine rules whatsoever.” Kudos to Barnum for looking below the surface on this critical issue.

🏆 RUNNER-UP: This week’s runner-up is NYC students who moved, got jobs during pandemic remote learning now face tough choices as in-person classes return by Michael Elsen-Rooney in the New York Daily News. There were a lot of stories last year about students juggling increased work hours while tuning into remote learning on their phones. But there has been little follow-up on those same students since in-person learning has resumed. As Elsen-Rooney reports, many of them — especially older teens trying to graduate — now must decide if they should return to class full-time in person or keep the jobs that kept their families afloat in the last year and a half. “What am I going to do?” said one student who had been fired after taking a week off from work to go back to school. “Do I go back? Do I work? Do I drop out? What do I do? That’s a very hard choice for a 19-year-old to make.”

BONUS STORIES: 

🏆 California schools prepare for thousands of Afghan refugee students (EdSource)
🏆 Charter Schools Saw Their Highest Enrollment Growth Since 2015 (The 74)
🏆 Students with disabilities across California stuck in limbo (CalMatters)
🏆 From carrots to Crispitos: How AL  schools are battling food shortages (AL.com)
🏆 Lamont Administration Won't Release School Air Quality Results (WNPR)
🏆 A few caveats to consider as we look at alarming coronavirus data (Boston Globe)

GOOD NEWS!?
SCHOOL IS BACK.

New from The Grade

For several weeks now, back to school has been going much better than it might seem from the media coverage that it’s received. And that’s the subject of this week’s new column, which describes a mystifying and misleading situation in which in-person school has come roaring back to life while media coverage has generally focused on setbacks and snafus. 

Despite enormous challenges, the vast majority of K-12 school districts are providing full-time in-person learning to kids. Parents are sending their kids back. Teachers are teaching them. And yet, media coverage has overwhelmingly focused on setbacks. 

Thanks to John Bailey for including this week’s column in yesterday’s COVID-19 Policy Update and to Marianna Limas for including my interview with data journalist Betsy Ladyzhets in the latest issue of the Science Writing News Roundup.

Coming soon: A white parent’s insights on coverage of predominantly Black schools like the one her daughters attend.

MEDIA TIDBITS
Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage.
Above: A preview of the latest New York Times for Kids, including stories about what going back to school this year was like from the student perspective.

📰 YOU SHOULD BE IN CLASSROOMS BY NOW: So U.S. kids are finally back in classrooms, by and large. But how about reporters? At this point, they should be back in schools, too — or complaining loudly about being denied access. How are kids and teachers adjusting to the return to school life? What are they learning? Is school different from last year or even before the pandemic? So far, I've seen lots of first-day stories, and some stories about how hard things are going for teachers, and some glimpses of reporters back in schools. But I haven't seen many school-based stories — yet.

📰 THE SHORTAGE NARRATIVE WON’T DIE: Some narratives like the teacher shortage spread like invasive weeds, though they’re often based on evidence that, when examined, turns out to be less than convincing. This week’s example is a piece in The Conversation that cites research showing teachers considering leaving the profession last spring. It was picked up (and dumbed down) by Quartz, then — argh! — shared in the weekly New York Times Education Briefing newsletter. Edunomics Lab policy director Chad Aldeman cited the process as an example of “how the media twists research to push a narrative.” He’s not wrong.

📰 THREE EXAMPLES OF HOW TO JOURNALIST: Kudos to New York Times reporter Emily Anthes for acknowledging how her story's description of test and quarantine recommendations could mislead readers: "OK, this seems to be causing enough confusion that I'm going to clarify it. Apologies for the confusion!" Also: Have you noticed that the New York Times’ Erica Green regularly praises the work of other journalists she admires (in this case, The Tennessean’s Meghan Mangrum)? She’s got nobody to impress, but she does it anyway. Lastly: EdWeek’s Eesha Pendharkar wrote a candid and insightful piece about race and privilege in her reporting and in her own experience. “Here, in America, I’m a brown woman and an immigrant," she wrote. "But in my private high school in India, I was part of the privileged group.” 
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PEOPLE, JOBS, KUDOS
Who's going where & doing what?

Above: With Jacey Fortin (left) and Sarah Mervosh (right), the New York Times is (finally) beefing up its national education coverage. For some of the backstory, read here and here. (The Times does not provide demographic information about its education team for The Grade's annual diversity survey.) 

🔥 Welcome back to Mallory Falk, who’s returning to the education beat. Most recently, Falk covered the border and immigration issues in El Paso for KERA. But before that, she reported on education for New Orleans’ NPR-affiliate WWNO and was a producer of the What My Students Taught Me podcast. She’s taking over for Avi Wolfman-Arent as the education reporter at WHYY Philadelphia.

🔥 Job openings: The Atlanta Journal Constitution is hiring an education reporter to replace Kristal Dixon, who left to become one of the co-authors of the new Axios Atlanta newsletter. The Seattle Times Ed Lab is hiring a reporter now that Hannah Furfaro has moved over to the new mental health reporting team. WBUR, Boston’s public radio, is hiring a new education editor to replace Kathleen McNerney, who recently left to start freelancing. EdSource in California is hiring a managing editor and a web design manager. Bridge Michigan is hiring a statewide education reporter. Idaho Education News is hiring a reporter to cover K-12 education. Any new job opening out there that folks might want to know about? Let us know.

🔥 New follows: I’m always looking for new people to follow. Here are some of my latest: David Goodhue, who’s been doing some schools coverage for Florida Keys News; Jennifer Palmer, who covers education for Oklahoma Watch; Molly Bohannon, who covers education for the Coloradoan; Jewel Wicker, who talked to students, parents, and administrators about how to grapple with the past and future of their school system for Canopy Atlanta; and Melissa Frick, a K-12 and higher ed reporter for MLive. Who am I missing?

APPEARANCES, EVENTS
What just happened & what's coming next?

Above: Check out Education Week’s new collection of essays on Big Ideas for Education’s Urgent Challenges. In it, writers ask the questions, what is the purpose of school? Are we leaning on districts too much? What will it take to upend racism in our education communities?

⏰ ICYMI: Former LA Times education reporter Sonali Kohli spoke on Sept. 19 at the Peace Studio Summit about “how to center people’s humanity and agency in journalism.” Recorded portions of the summit will be uploaded here. Texas Tribune education reporter Brian Lopez interviewed NBC News’ Antonia Hylton and Mike Hixenbaugh on Sept. 20 about their podcast “Southlake,” which dives into racial unrest in a North Texas town and its connection to “critical race theory” debates in schools. And Casey Parks, who just started her new gig covering gender and family for the Washington Post, was on EWA Radio on Sept. 21 to talk about her recent New York Times Magazine feature on how rural schools get left behind.

⏰ Coming soon: "In 'The ABCs of Big Oil,' we’ll take you inside the campaigns to shape children’s view of the world, introduce you to the characters behind these efforts, and cut through the barrage of misinformation." The links between climate change and schools keep getting clearer. Two useful examples include the Hechinger Report’s  Climate change is sabotaging education and The 74’s recent When Climate Change Forces Schools to Close.

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THE KICKER

Philadelphia Inquirer education reporter Kristen Graham brightened our Twitter feeds this week with “13 seconds of unbridled #phled happiness.” Kids from Penn Alexander School celebrated their school’s National Blue Ribbon win and danced to the Rocky theme song as confetti swirled around them. “It’s the first time the school has been together since COVID hit,” Graham tweeted.

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 Colleen Connolly.

Copyright © *2020* Alexander Russo's The Grade, All rights reserved.

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