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VAX 🔜 REOPENING?
The big education story of the week
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BUILDING TRUST
The best education journalism of the week
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🏆 BEST: This week’s best story is about the importance of trust, from Perry Stein in the Washington Post: ‘They got back to us’: How one school built trust and got reluctant parents to return. In it, Stein looks at one school with a predominantly Black student population in a part of D.C. “where parents are the most reticent to return to school … where trust in schools and government institutions is low and health outcomes are poor.” She shows us the lengths that teachers and administrators went to talk to families, listen to their concerns, and respond to their questions. She also points out an issue we haven’t seen much coverage of yet: youth vaccinations have decreased during the pandemic, but kids need them to get back into school buildings.
See also: How 2 D.C. Principals Restored Black Parents’ Trust in Returning Kids to the Classroom by Taylor Swaak in The 74.
🏆 RUNNER-UP: The runner-up this week is Bekah McNeel’s Texas Teachers Go Door to Door as Kids Disappear From Remote Classes in The 74 and the Texas Tribune. Like Stein, McNeel does a great job showing what schools are doing on the ground to reach students and families and spotlighting how big the issue of chronic absenteeism has become, particularly for non-white students. McNeel also said she experienced one of her best reporting moments ever while working on this story: “After teacher Brandee Brandt had been knocking on the door for several minutes straight, a teenage boy finally answered, fighting back a smile, ‘You really aren’t going away are you?’ ”
See also: 40 percent of Boston high school juniors and seniors are chronically absent, raising concerns about their futures by Naomi Martin in the Boston Globe.
🏆 HONORABLE MENTION: Ariz. 3rd graders, already behind in reading, could see more setbacks by Lily Altavena in the Arizona Republic. Part of a yearlong series, this piece tells the story of 3rd graders at Catalina Ventura elementary school who experience death, sickness, remote learning, and more.
To get daily education headlines and education news events, follow @thegrade_
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DEBUNKING DESEG IN L'VILLE
New from The Grade
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In this week’s Q and A, Louisville Courier-Journal reporters Olivia Krauth and Mandy McLaren talked with me about the steps they took to make sure the Louisville busing story represented the diversity of the families involved — and how their reporting changed their understanding of what school integration efforts can really accomplish.
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BOTCHED BERKELEY COVERAGE
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A video of a Berkeley union leader taking his child to a private school went viral. I evaluate how two California outlets covered the controversy in strikingly different, somewhat puzzling ways. One outlet covered the video, but then removed it from their story. The other decided that it wasn’t a newsworthy story — and wrote a long post about why. Neither decision was helpful.
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MEDIA TIDBITS
Thought-provoking commentary on the latest coverage.
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📰 CALLING B.S. AS NEEDED: The SF Chronicle’s Jill Tucker is holding everyone's feet to the fire in San Francisco more than anyone else I can think of on the West Coast. She describes one recent piece about teacher vaccinations and reopening as “The story where I call b.s. on the district and teachers union.” And that’s what she’s doing. Kudos also to the New York Times’ Dana Goldstein, who bravely debunked a common notion about reopening efforts in her story about the diverse range of parents pressing for school reopenings. “I spoke to a hairstylist and a homemaker. A lawyer and a pharmaceutical executive. They are black, white, mixed race, and Asian American. They all want their children back in classrooms.”
📰 ALL THE FEAR THAT’S FIT TO PRINT: As several folks have noted, the Times’ recent coverage of the CDC reopening guidance veered wildly, from the occasional moments of optimism to the much more common pattern of extreme cautiousness. In the most recent education newsletter, Times reporters Kate Taylor and Anemona Hartocollis admitted that the tenor of two recent pieces differed. But that’s an understatement. The cautionary story, Should Your School Be Fully Open?, featured a color-coded COVID case rate map of the U.S. showing few counties safe for full in-person learning — a presentation that suggests that thousands of already reopened districts are doing something dangerous (and that the CDC objects to). “All the fear that’s fit to print,” quipped one Twitter user.
📰 LA TIMES’ REOPENING COVERAGE FOUND LACKING: I can’t vouch for the methodology, but it’s interesting to note that an advocacy group associated with the UTLA teachers union studied LA Times’ reopening news, editorials, and op-eds and determined that the output has been biased toward the views of the wealthy and white and away from parents concerned about reopening. According to a write-up in the LA Times (yes, ironic), the review examined 304 quotes in 105 articles published between June and January and found that wealthier and more educated people were overrepresented, and parents concerned about reopening were underrepresented. Side note: At least one parent thought that the UTLA call she received asking her about the quote she gave to the LA Times was racial profiling.
📰 ALL OUT OF FREE PASSES: AFT teachers union head Randi Weingarten is media friendly and frequently appears in education stories and segments like this recent CNN appearance. But she is not often pressed about bold assertions she makes, such as “My union has been trying to reopen school since last April." Keep quoting and booking her, but nobody who appears so frequently should get a free pass.
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JOBS, KUDOS, & BOOKS
Who's going where & doing what?
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Above: “Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal,” a film arriving March 17, uses real conversations recreated from FBI wiretaps and delves deep into the 2019 nationwide scandal.
🔥 Kudos to Sacramento Bee education reporter Sawsan Morrar and her colleague Jason Pohl, whose story California schools official promoted extremist 9/11 and Holocaust conspiracies led to swift change: the state official has been placed on leave.
🔥 Media appearances: Courier-Journal reporters Olivia Krauth and Mandy McLaren who wrote the series on busing in Louisville were on EWA Radio. Jill Tucker was on The Chronicle's Fifth and Mission podcast again talking about California's multi-billion dollar reopening plan this time.
🔥 In case you hadn’t heard, Washington Post reporter Laura Meckler is writing a book! “It's about my hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and its long-term relationship with race,” she tweeted. It all began with her story about a highly public teacher-student conflict at the local high school, which Joe Williams reviewed for The Grade in 2019.
🔥 Congrats to reporters Lorraine Longhi, Rachel Leingang, and Lily Altavena for their work on the Arizona Republic’s ambitious “3, 9, 12” series looking at the long-lasting effects of the last year on students.
🔥 Jobs: KPCC/LAist plans to hire a new education editor, according to former section editor Tony Marcano, who is now the station’s managing editor. No news yet on whether it’ll be an outside hire, but keep an eye out for an announcement.
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EVENTS
What just happened & what's coming next?
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⏰ Next week’s SXSW EDU has a handful of education journalism-related events in its Media track, including one on Thursday on how COVID has disrupted education journalism featuring journalists from Forbes, USA Today, and The Hechinger Report.
⏰ The Texas Tribune's Aliyya Swaby will moderate an EWA panel next Tuesday on hybrid learning following her November story about a San Antonio hybrid classroom where the teacher simultaneously taught in-person and remotely. And in case you missed Swaby talking about the intersection of mental health care and education earlier this week for the Ida B. Wells Society, you can watch here if you’re a member.
⏰ Don’t miss the first episode of “Odessa,” the four-part documentary podcast series on The Daily about a Texas high school opening during the pandemic. And for more on the town of Odessa, check out ‘Friday Night Lights’ turns 30: Revisiting race relations in Odessa from The Sunday Long Read.
⏰ Resources: A new school reopening tracker is live, the Return 2 Learn tracker from AEI Education. Check it out! Also: A new report on the health of the local news ecosystems from the Knight Foundation includes case studies from nine communities: Boulder County, Colo.; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Detroit; Macon-Bibb County, Ga.; New Mexico; Oakland, Calif.; Philadelphia; and Youngstown, Ohio.
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Band practice 2021, courtesy of The Wenatchee World.
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By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Michele Jacques and Colleen Connolly.
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That's all, folks. Thanks for reading!
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