🏆 BEST: The best story this week is To Boston parents, treatment of most vulnerable students underscores district’s poor planning, communication by the Boston Globe’s Bianca Vázquez Toness. Boston has experienced a long and frustrating back-and-forth on school reopenings, and this story highlights the impact on the students and families who most bear the consequences. “When it comes to disability, you can’t pick and choose like that. It’s all or nothing," a parent told Vázquez Toness when she learned the district is working to bring back only a small number of special education students. Confusion, disappointment, and worry are reflected in the story, and Vázquez Toness presses for accountability from school officials. Keep it up and more of it, we say!

🏆 FIRST RUNNER-UP: Donna St. George’s excellent Washington Post story Back in school buildings: One school district’s experience in 10 weeks is this week’s first runner-up, describing how the 22-school Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, school district has managed to provide 75% of its 13,000 kids a hybrid program in a community with a positivity rate of 6.5% and rising. If you want to know what reopening is really like, this story will give you a good feel for it.

🏆 SECOND RUNNER-UP: Teghan Simonton’s engaging piece for The 74, ‘My Biggest Challenge and My Biggest Fear:’ Teaching Kids How to Read Remotely During the Pandemic, is this week’s second runner-up. It presents the challenges educators face in teaching literacy via computer screen, the dangers of failing, and the discovery of some silver linings in teachers having to think creatively, prioritize, collaborate, and use new tools to teach such a complex skill. In its focus on the importance of reading, it reminds us of Colette Coleman’s recent column about the underreporting of black illiteracy in education news.

The week’s big story is the districts returning to remote, narrowing down in-person offerings, or further delaying reopening. Here's some of the best we’ve seen: 

• Are reopenings over? (NYT Schools Briefing)
• The Pendulum Was Swinging Toward Reopening Schools Then Came the Surge (Stateline) See also the Wall Street Journal
• N.Y.C. Schools May Close Again (NYT) See also Chalkbeat
• KC Numbers Are So Bad Schools Will Probably Have To Close Again (KCUR)
• Jeffco could switch older students to remote learning (Chalkbeat CO)
• Wary N. Virginia superintendents eye reopening — but note rising cases (Washington Post)
• Data Provides 'No Indication' COVID-19 Is Spreading In K-12 Schools (WWNO)
• Pupils forget how to spell after months out of school (The Times UK)
• Making a School Reopening Decision and Taking the Heat (Education Week)

Earlier this week, I wrote a column about the long, somewhat lamentable extreme education coverage produced during recent transitions. “I don’t remember any negative coverage,” recalled former Obama administration staffer Peter Cunningham, who worked for Arne Duncan.  “I don’t recall anything but hostile coverage from the day she was nominated,” a former Trump education department official told me about EdSec Betsy DeVos. Thanks to ASCD for including this column in their SmartBrief newsletter!

A new column from "A Fine Line" book author Tim DeRoche (image above) argues that the inequitable effects of neighborhood school attendance zones warrant more coverage than they have received. “Invisible and ubiquitous, district school attendance zones define what a neighborhood school is supposed to be,” DeRoche writes. “They are baked into the system. And they do as much or more damage as district boundaries.” But there are some proven ways to expose their effects.

MEDIA TIDBITS

Above: Here are the percentages of parents reporting a school disruption from May through early October, according to the Household Pulse Survey (courtesy of Ernie Tedeschi). As you can see in the grey column, several states including Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Utah are showing October upticks or reversals.

📰 THE REOPENING SURGE THAT NEVER REALLY HAPPENED: For a few days at the beginning of October, it seemed like school reopening was going to become widespread. The early reports were promising. The news coverage was shifting. But as is obvious now, that never happened. Fear and inertia won out over cautious action. In a new piece in Forbes, I explore reasons why reopening never turned the corner this fall, some of which are obvious and others may be new to you. Or read some reflections from reopening advocates in the long thread here.

📰 TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: The New York Times editorial page showed up the other day, arguing against an end to in-person learning for NYC school kids. It was nice to see, along with the Washington Post editorial in favor of reopening DC public schools. But it was much too little, too late, in my opinion. After a strong push on remote learning last spring, the NYT editorial page has been MIA on school issues like reopening for way too long. And the Times newsroom coverage just hasn't been as good as it needs to be either, despite all the effort and people I admire who work there. It isn't just that the paper failed to correct the viral South Korea story more vigorously. The staffing resources are inadequate, given multiple education reporters out on leave. The story selection and coverage overemphasize infection risks and downplay vulnerable childrens’ needs. There has been a notable lack of vision or coordination.

📰 COMPARE NYC TO CHICAGO OR LA, NOT EUROPE: Looked at from the perspective of Western Europe, NYC’s hybrid learning program has been weak and watered down. That’s the perspective in a new NPR story and from today’s New York Times as well. Western Europe is a helpful perspective, no doubt. But I don’t think that it should be used to single out New York City, whose hybrid program has been the most aggressive, successful, and safe big-city reopening program in the nation, serving 300,000 kids (until Monday, at least). I am opposed to the 3% standard that NYC unwisely promised teachers as part of the reopening deal. But pretty much every other big city school system in the nation is still shut down. 

📰 ABOUT THOSE TEACHER RESIGNATIONS: “News headlines over the summer raised a fearful specter: teachers resigning or retiring en masse, terrified they’d get COVID-19 if they returned to the classroom,” opens an EdWeek story by Madeline Will, Catherine Gewertz, and Sarah Schwartz. “But an Education Week analysis shows that the predicted wave of leavers has not materialized.” The 74’s analysis of teacher retirements in selected states shows no surge. Remember this the next time you’re told that teachers are going to resign, the possibility of which has been floated to jinx no small number of efforts to improve schools over the years.

Missed some previous editions? You can see the archive of past newsletters here. 

PEOPLE, AWARDS, EVENTS 
Who's going where & doing what?

Above: Congrats! Chalkbeat, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and PRX won an award for best news feature at the Third Coast Audio Festival for their stellar audio story, Diary of a Homeschooler. The reporting team asked 16-year-old Sarah Alli-Brown to record her daily life as she tries to focus on remote school and care for her younger siblings while her mom goes to work. The story was based on reporting by Chalkbeat’s Kalyn Belsha.

🔥 Wall Street Journal education editor Chastity Pratt is working on a weekly newsletter. It’s not out yet, but you can sign up here. We can’t wait to see it! Meantime, Burbio’s K-12 weekly school reopening trends newsletter is proving invaluable, full of tidbits showing in-person reopenings, delays, and shutdowns. Burbio’s tracker is one of the 3 ways to measure school reopening trends that The Grade has recommended.

🔥 Jobs: To replace Jane Norman, Politico is hiring an editor to oversee its education policy coverage. Details here. And The Hechinger Report is still looking for someone to cover education in the South. Also: Applications are open for the next round of the Spencer Education Reporting Fellowships. “As someone doing this in the middle of a pandemic, I can say that it's an amazing opportunity and experience,” says Linda K. Wertheimer. 

🔥 Sad news: Enterprise education reporter Melissa B. Taboada is leaving the Austin American-Statesman. Click the link to wish her well. And the Berkshire Eagle of Massachusetts does not plan to replace former education reporter Jenn Smith, executive editor Kevin Moran told us. Smith recently started at the Seattle Times Ed Lab as an engagement editor.

🔥 Before remote learning, WBEZ education reporter Adriana Cardona says she "wasn’t the most creative parent when it came to helping my kids with their schoolwork … But this fall when my 4-year-old, along with many #CPS students, started preK remotely, I was forced to jump into school like never before."

🔥 We told you last week about NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz’s upcoming book, “The Lost Year.” In her latest newsletter, she explains that the book is going to focus on “our collective failure to shield our children from the impacts of this virus.” And she took to heart a conversation with NYT education reporter Erica L. Green, saying Green’s “watchword is ‘no invisible children.’ And that is going on my bulletin board."

🔥 Media appearances: Chalkbeat cofounder Elizabeth Green was on Andrew Yang’s podcast Yang Speaks to talk about nonprofit journalism. Journalist and Davidson College professor Isaac J. Bailey was on NPR to discuss his new book, Why Didn't We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland. He’s written a couple of great pieces for The Grade: Why education reporters need antibias training and It’s not about the bus.

Did someone forward you this newsletter? You can sign up here. 

Just 2% of journalists are veterans, so this week, we’re honoring the Wall Street Journal’s Tawnell Hobbs not just for her great work in education journalism, but also for her service to our country. Thank you, Tawnell!

We also learned what kind of writer she is and that she writes her stories on her cell phone, which is amazing.

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.