🏆  The New York Times’ Inside One N.Y.C. School That Reopened During the Pandemic, released this morning, is pretty amazing. The 15-minute NYT mini-documentary by Juliane Dressner and Alexandra Garcia takes you inside one Bronx elementary school as it struggles to reopen and stay open despite surging COVID cases. Among many moments that may move you is the brief conversation in which a teacher expresses his fear of infecting his dad, then apologizes for bringing his home drama into the school.   

🏆 The Hechinger Report's ‘Backpacks full of boulders’: How one district is addressing the trauma undocumented children bring to school by Kavitha Cardoza is another standout. There is a lot of reporting about unaccompanied minors and undocumented children, but there is a lot less about where those kids end up, which could be in school — or not. Cardoza provides lots of details that humanize these kids who are so often reported as statistics. ProPublica and others have done some great reporting about them, too, but I like how this Hechinger story focuses on how one district has found some ways to help them.

🏆 Slate's just-published feature, How the School Reopening Debate Is Tearing One of America’s Most Elite Suburbs Apart, tells a story that's becoming increasingly familiar to parents and educators in affluent suburbs around the country. Focused on Brookline, Mass., the Noreen Malone feature delves into the swirling tensions among parents, administrators, and teachers over school reopening. Similar debates are taking in other places, including Austin, Portland, and Seattle. 

🏆 WNYC’s Educators Struggle To Keep Track Of Kids During The Pandemic from last Friday is a great piece of journalism. I can't tell you how much I appreciated hearing all the different kids' and educators' voices in the piece from WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould, reporting on efforts to engage kids in remote learning. Gould also received high praise from competitor Reema Amin, of Chalkbeat NY, who confessed that hearing an audio story like this "does sometimes just hit different." 

BIG STORY OF THE WEEK: IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC BEYOND REMOTE LEARNING

🏆 Covid is having a devastating impact on children — and the vaccine won't fix everything (NBC News)
🏆 This high school senior plans to be the first in her family to attend college. She has to finish virtual school first. (Texas Tribune)
🏆 As Families Face Evictions & Closed Classrooms, Data Shows ‘Dramatic’ Spike in Mid-Year School Moves (The 74)
🏆 New Homes, New Schools, Endless Delays. For Students in Foster Care, Pandemic Only Adds to the Chaos (The 74)
🏆 Remote Learning Isn’t the Only Problem With School (The Atlantic)
🏆 Free meal or attend class? School schedules force some low-income families to choose (Boston Globe)
🏆 One more challenge for California teachers in distance learning: All new science curriculum (EdSource)

We’re off for the next two Fridays, so the next Best of the Week newsletter will be Friday, Jan. 8. Check for updates on Twitter if you feel yourself going through withdrawal?

The Grade's list of the 14 most memorable pieces of education journalism of 2020 is out! Divided into COVID and non-COVID sections, these are the pieces that in the years ahead will come to mind for their excellence or their impact. Who made the list? Any surprises? Anything you'd add? 

We also spotted one education story in Ed Yong’s list of must-read stories of the pandemic and several in Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2020 Jealousy List. In other year-end roundups, The 74 published 16 charts that “changed the way we thought about America’s schools” this year and 50CAN published a roundup of education articles, interviews, and resources that made a difference this year. Thanks, Marc Porter Magee, for including us!

Want education news and commentary all day, every day? Follow @thegrade_ for daily news clips and @alexanderrusso for commentary. 

MEDIA TIDBITS

Above: MSNBC's Chris Hayes asked Education Secretary contender Lily Eskelsen García some tough questions, but he failed to follow up or fact-check her responses as I think he should have, which is a lesson to reporter and perhaps a preview of what's to come.

📰 QUESTIONING THE TEACHER PRIORITY: Some might not consider it an education story, but the notion that teachers should have priority in receiving the vaccine has received much less scrutiny than it would seem to warrant. We live in a world in which Black and Latino communities have been hit the hardest, and nearly 8 million people have become poor since the summer. A recent edition of the Times Coronavirus Schools Briefing newsletter observed that public health experts “disagree as to whether teachers should get early vaccine access.” As the Times notes elsewhere, prioritizing teachers may not necessarily speed up school reopening. Journalist Matt Yglesias has argued against using job categories to prioritize the vaccine. I know everyone’s tired, but this is a topic that’s ripe for additional reporting.

📰 SEARCHING FOR BETTER ED SEC COVERAGE: Reading Mike Antonucci’s The Evolution of Lily Eskelsen García, I couldn’t help but wonder why nobody else had delved into the former NEA leader’s run for Congress in Utah. You’d think that would have been done by now. The best coverage I’ve seen of the Ed Sec nomination process has come from the Washington Post, which first reported that LEG wasn’t really the front-runner and more recently named two lesser-known candidates who were in contention. But it galls me to have to read outside of education to get news of what’s going on behind the scenes, like this recent NYT explainer.

📰 REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN REOPENING: Local education reporting in the northeast, including New York City, is hyper-focused on the reopening story. But in other parts of the country, like Texas, education coverage looks more like it did before the pandemic. The Dallas Morning News Ed Lab this week, for example, covered the lack of substitute teachers during the pandemic, but also published a big story on racism, bribery, and intimidation in the leadership ranks of a school district. Is reopening coverage reflecting the debate or encouraging it? Are infection rates so different from one part of the country to the other that the coverage should be so different? 

📰 HOW TO CORRECT YOUR MISTAKES: Kudos to the folks at Chalkbeat NY for correcting their mistake in a recent story about school communities and positive COVID results. Bureau Chief Amy Zimmer tweeted that the number of newly reopened NYC school buildings that have since closed was 1 in 10, not 1 in 3, which was originally reported. The Washington Post should take note. The original version of a recent WaPo story contained an obvious mischaracterization about Teach For America that should never have made it past an editor. And the updated version of the story includes no mention of the correction. Hat tip to EdWeek’s Stephen Sawchuk for calling out the “silly mistake” in the original version.

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

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

Above: Clockwise from top left: The Washington Post's Kathryn Tolbert, the New York Times' Juliana Kim, the LA Times' Melissa Gomez, and the Dallas Morning News' Valeria Olivares.

🔥 Welcome to the beat: I'm told that Washington Post interim education editor Kathryn Tolbert, who previously worked on the metro, national, and international desks, is taking on the job permanently. The NYT's Metro education team has a new part-time member: Juliana Kim, a member of the paper's Fellowship program. So far, she’s co-bylined a story on parents who support reopening and live-tweeted a pro-remote protest. Dallas Morning News Ed Lab fellow Valeria Olivares, who previously covered immigration and border issues, had her first day on the beat this week. And the LA Times’ Melissa Gomez has moved over from the 2020 campaign team to the education team to help out with COVID coverage. Welcome, everyone!

🔥 Congrats: USA Today’s Erin Richards was on national TV — or at least her byline was! CBS This Morning included her story Students are falling behind in online school. Where's the COVID-19 'disaster plan' to catch them up? in its broadcast about failing students. And 50CAN gave well-deserved praise to the LA Times' Sonali Kohli and Howard Blume for being among the first to delve into student disengagement and nonparticipation in the pandemic. Congrats also to the NYT’s technology reporter Natasha Singer, who has inked a book deal for “CODING KIDS,” a book about the coding boom in public schools and the pushback from some educators.

🔥 In memoriam: EdWeek Market Brief writer and editor Michele Molnar passed away after a long battle with cancer. Managing editor Sean Cavanagh described her as “an insightful journalist and student of the education industry” who played a key role in launching Market Brief. She reported on everything from what was happening in the classroom to examinations of leadership at prominent education companies.

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

EVENTS
What just happened & what's coming next?

Above: Over the past 25 years, This American Life has featured tons of amazing stories, many of them about education. Among Ira Glass’ favorites are 2015’s “Two schools, three miles apart: What happens when you get to see the other side” by Chana Joffe-Walt of “Nice White Parents” fame. My own personal favorite has to be Sarah Koenig’s “Petty Tyrant,” a 2010 episode about a type that’s familiar to any educator.

⏰ Impact: Boston Globe education editor Sarah Carr tweeted that Massachusetts officials voted to require school districts to offer more live instructional time across the board partially in response to her team’s coverage. And Chalkbeat NY’s Reema Amin applauded Chalkbeat Indiana’s Dylan Peers McCoy after the state changed its policy in response to McCoy’s reporting on 1,000 students who left high school without diplomas. Congrats to all!

⏰ Upcoming: Don’t miss this Boston Globe virtual event with Great Divide reporter Bianca Vázquez Toness on Dec. 21 about supporting students with disabilities in the pandemic.

⏰ ICYMI: Freelance reporter Rachel Cohen moderated an EWA panel on schools and COVID on Dec. 17, and a video of the event will be posted here. NBC Nightly News aired a series of segments featuring teachers’ efforts to reach kids, including a science teacher working out of his kitchen, a Wisconsin teacher who built an outdoor learning space, and a Texas teacher conducting lessons from the hospital.

"Every education reporter today," tweeted U.S. News and World Report's Lauren Camera. 

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