Over the past year, I have gotten several invitations to events by Education Week. All were promoting technology in the classroom and were sponsored by technology companies hawking their wares. I found this upsetting, even offensive. How can a newspaper report on companies while collaborating to sell their products? Why not just let these corporations buy advertising? Why have conferences to promote them?
Now Education Week is holding a conference selling the Common Core standards, featuring two prominent advocates. (Tony Bennett was supposed to speak in Indianapolis but he has been scrubbed since his electoral defeat; by March, he is likely to be State Commissioner in Florida and he could rejoin the panel).
Wouldn’t it be more fitting for a respected journal to have a conference debating the pluses and minuses of the standards, rather than a one-sided presentation (“the train has left the station, don’t ask where it’s going or who is driving it”)?
Why no acknowledgment of the issues and controversies around Common Core? Why no critical thinking? Why is the day devoted to “how,” with no discussion of “why”?
I blogged at Education Week for five years and have great respect for the editorial staff, who were scrupulous in their willingness to allow me complete editorial freedom. Similarly, every reporter from Edweek who has ever interviewed me was impartial and adhered to the highest journalistic standards.
But I wonder how long a journal can maintain its high journalistic standards when its very existence depends on the largesse of the big corporations that are selling stuff to the schools? And I don’t mean by accepting their advertising–that’s a given–but becoming an outlet to promote their vision.
Here is the latest invitation:
I hope you and your team will join me at Road Maps to Common Core Success. This Education Week Leadership Forum is taking place in Indianapolis, IN on March 11, 2013 and in White Plains, NY on March 21, 2013. At this day-long event, you will hear from state and district leaders, education experts, and other colleagues on their common core implementations, and discover and share new ideas on curricula, teacher training, and assessment.
Please register by January 9, 2013 to save $150 on your registration.
Not only is attending Road Maps to Common Core Success a great way to expand your network of contacts, but you’ll also take back to your district advice and guidance to help you conquer the challenges of implementing new curricula, effective approaches for the new literacy and math standards, finding PD strategies that work, and more. See the full agendas for Indianapolis and White Plains.
Speakers include John B. King, Jr., Commissioner of Education, New York State Education Department and Wesley Bruce, Chief Assessment Officer, Indiana Department of Education. These speakers will be joined by several other special guests as well as over 100 of your fellow education leaders, administrators, and curriculum experts. Join me at Road Maps to Common Core Success, but hurry! Space is limited, so register now.
See you at the Leadership Forum,
Virginia B. Edwards
Editor-in-Chief, Education Week
President, Editorial Projects in Education
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
I lost all respect for Ed Week some time ago. So far as I can tell, they’re just another reformer shill. What I’ve read lately is very poor.
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I no longer subscribe to EdWeek as it ceased to be relevant.
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I have mixed feelings about this issue. Ed Week professes to provide no editorial viewpoint and when I had my subscription, I felt this was true. Teachers also need to know what new materials are available and seeing them hands-on is the best way and often the only way they can get information. In fact I think that is how Dragon Speak, the voice input software, originally got into special education. We were at a CEC conference and immediately saw great value in both that and touch windows. Soon both crossed the line and became one of our more useful tools.
At the same time I can see that there needs to be debate on the implementation of Common Core as well as on corporatization. Maybe Ed Week would be the ideal forum for such debate and would be the group to get out the message that there are a lot of us who are continuing to oppose it and why.
Ed Week is a valuable paper however and once, in a short article gave me ammunition I have used many times—–that, according to ACE the purpose of inner city parochial schools is EVANGELISM.
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The answer is simple. MONEY
Here is the justification. We try to do some good. We can’t do any good if we cease to exist due to financial conditions.
What came first? AARP or the insurance company? The insurance company came first and created AARP as what is perceived as an unbiased third party to promote the insurance.
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Corporate Owned Is As Corporate Owned Does
$$$cratching the back of whoever gives us the most $$$cratch
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I have been concerned with what makes the front page of EdWeek for awhile now. They always seem to have a loud megaphone for the “reformers”, while giving dissenting views the back pages of their print paper. I suspect they are selling out, slowly but surely. The tragedy here of course is that EdWeek has been a great source of articles of real educational research and analysis, and once it goes the way of the great Dollar…it just discourages me.
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I exchanged emails with one of the reporters at Edweek regarding common core implementation. We set a time for a phone interview and he never called.
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Over a year ago I noted a particularly pro-reform article and emailed to ask why it was so one-sided. I was told that different groups pay to sponsor regular articles, many of which are written by an employee of the group. In other words, a Gates-funded “pr firm” will have one its employees write a marketing piece and Ed Week runs itm with the tiny print note at the bottom.
The editor emailed and said Ed Week was following PBS which also has sponsors for specific shows.
Seems like there is a world of difference to me, and I didn’t bother to go into it. But when I told journalists that Ed Week coverage is sponsored and by whom, they were surprised.
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That is a problem with some of the annual Quality Counts, which reflect the assumptions of the funders.
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So Ed Week is a sort of intellectual bordello.
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Too funny!
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While I appreciate thoughtful debate on this issue, I must point out that this comment is a completely inaccurate representation of Education Week’s editorial policies and its relationship with funders or advertisers.
While several foundations provide financial support for particular areas of coverage, Education Week editors and reporters are solely responsible for our editorial coverage. Funders or advertisers do not write or dictate any content for our news stories or features. The editors here are very careful to explain this to readers or others who inquire about our grant-funded coverage, and we are all committed to providing the highest-quality, comprehensive, and independent news and information possible.
Kathleen Kennedy Manzo
Managing Editor
Education Week
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I explained my admiration for Edweek’s reporters, who uphold high journalistic standards.
I reiterate my bafflement at Edweek’s many events touting online learning, when your events should debate the value of online learning, as well as the events cheerleading for the Common Core, when you should instead host thoughtful debates about the promise and peril of the Common Core.
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So, not only does a teacher have to pay to attend, they have to give up a day of leave.
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Wow, real educators like John King and Wesley Bruce! And hundreds more like him? Oh boy, sign me up. You mean I have to pay?
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I have tried no fewer than 10 times to “unsubscribe” from these invitations from EdWeek (as well as from ALL emails from this formerly respectable publication), but continue to receive their shameless propaganda in my inbox.
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Thanks for all the comments.Thought similarly that it slanted way rephormy when I saw a copy of Ed Week last week for first time in ages. I was chagrined to see a list of story “sponsors” on the first page, including Bill & Melinda, the Waltons, and other usual suspects. Love all the charter/privatized staff/administrator position ads that state “if you’re ready to work hard” — as opposed to all those slug real teachers lounging about, eating peeled grapes while being fanned by their students.
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You can even add Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation data service to that list. I do enjoy, however, Ed Week’s commenting section. They post almost anything immediately and the thumbs up and thumbs down options are fun. Way better than the NY Times which carefully screens comments, only posts what they want, the lag time is usually three hours, and most articles don’t even allow comments. The thought police.
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While Educational Leadership (last time I checked) continued to put out articles relevant and useful to educators, similar to what is being said about EdWeek I lost respect for that publication — it was not difficult to spot an editorial trend of surrounding articles, say, about differentiated instruction with ads pushing products specific to — big surprise — differentiated instruction. One may argue that it is simply good business. As a journalist-turned educator, I’d instead argue that it’s a matter of surrendering one’s integrity for the bottom line.
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I still read EL but often find my BP on the rise. They still have some useful and insightful articles, but I have been uncomfortably aware of a big brother approach that is interested in controlling instruction rather than informing it.
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