John Merrow is the senior statesman of education journalism. He recently wrote an open letter to the Education Writers Association and declared that this was “the golden age of education reporting.”
Years ago, very few reporters on the education beat wanted to be there. It was a stepping stone to a better assignment. Fred Hechinger was an exception. He was education editor of the New York Times, and he stayed. (Personal note: He was the commencement speaker at my college graduation in 1960, and I subsequently became friends with him and his wife Grace.)
Merrow suggests some under-reported stories: one is the relationship between the Gates Foundation and the U. S. Department of Education.
I would suggest an addition: the ethics of the financial contributions of the Gates Foundation to the media.
Paul Thomas has been writing critically about the flaws of education journalism. It would be interesting to get his take on Merrow’s comments.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
All That’s Gilded Is Not Golden …
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Merrow is part of the problem with bad edujournalism and I wouldn’t have expected any other take than the delusional one he has given.
His talk is awful, clueless, proves my points … journalism is essentially flawed and edujournalism remains trapped inside a lack of historical context and no critical awareness of the field of education.
His list “looks” smart only to the journalists …
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He’s kidding, right?
When the overwhelming majority of reporters – with a few noble exceptions – are little more than stenographers/loudspeakers for so-called reform?
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The Star-Ledger, for example, prints news stories and editorials based solely on press releases from charter schools and other reform organizations as if they were gospel. If this is the “golden age,” we should not know from trouble.
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Local coverage of education is what matters, and local coverage is lacking. Not through any fault of the reporters but because media outlets find it cheaper to offer “analysis” and reprint national news/pundits rather than pay for actual reporting.
“The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, an online-only school which has nearly 15,000 students, has been at the center of Ohio’s debate over charter school quality over the last few years. It has repeatedly received F grades for how much academic progress its students make in a year. It has long argued that those ratings are unfair, because its students tend to be more transient and more troubled.
This week, out of public view, Republican legislative leaders debated a proposal backed by ECOT and some other charters to change how the state rates schools. The proposal has not been made public, but presumably would be helpful to ECOT and the other charters, reducing the chances of their performance endangering their sponsor’s ability to participate in Ohio’s charter program.”
No one in the state would know that ed reformers are pushing a proposal to adopt a special rating system for Ohio charter schools without this reporter, and local reporters really get paid peanuts compared to the big names in cable.
It’s like everything else in this country- all the resources flow to the tippy-top. I bet the younger local reporters have trouble making rent and their student loan payments on what they make.
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Your comments about local reporting resources are true but the issue goes far beyond that. School privatization shills own much of the local media. I used to live in Philadelphia where the owners of the city’s two newspapers each have a charter school named after their respective families. Their default editorial position is charter cheer leading and public school, teachers especially, bashing.
They ran an editorial yesterday in which they again called teachers intransigent for not agreeing to take a pay cut despite being in year four of a pay freeze. They didn’t want to sound too harsh so they did offer this gem toward the end.
“In the same vein, if negotiations do resume, the city’s School Reform Commission must acknowledge that there is a point at which cutting pay and benefits stunts Philadelphia’s ability to compete with suburban systems for good educators.”
So a district that currently can’t fill all of its open positions and has an insanely high attrition rate should cut pay, but make sure it’s a magical Goldilocks pay cut. Honestly, these jokers put Kafka to shame.
I travel all over the US for my job. I see the same editorial position in city after city in which the media company is owned by school privatization shills.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160519_Inquirer_editorial__Schools_suffer_amid_political_standoff.html#BwAKuzptFyJPCBIk.99
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Nice PJL! I am one of those senior teachers considered underperforming. My non tenured colleague is also underperforming. Together, however, we have more than twenty bilingual learners speaking, reading and writing English. Fairness, unfortunately, is not a large portion of the administrative agenda.
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“I bet the younger local reporters have trouble making rent and their student loan payments on what they make.”
And, as a result,they end up being careful about reporting about controversial issues. In Memphis, you barely see anything controversial reported on education in the main daily newspaper. There was a brief period when it happened, but “strangely” the journalist who started the whole thing moved away, the one following in her footsteps got reassigned. This is why Chalkbeat could move in with its fake-fair reporting.
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Let’s remember that the EWA has banished both Mercedes Schneider and Anthony Cody on the grounds that they are not journalists. That alone means Merrow’s appreciation is unwarranted.
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I guess they forgot to pay their membership fees!
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I think what we have less and less is investigative journalism. Journalism which really is trying to take time and effort to dig deep, to find out what google searches won’t reveal.
For such journalism, how about investigating some bigger issues that are then reflected in education?
1) Our country’s obsession with race, competition.
Why do we want to measure, rank, evaluate, grade even when it makes no sense at all?
This is reflected in everyday language as well: we talk about “best dad”, “best wife”, “best teacher”, “I was in the top 10 of my class”, “top 10 high schools in Tennessee”. This is why people believe in test scores’ reflecting anything significant related to student’ learning and teachers’ teaching. Is there research supporting this belief, or we are just sticking to the tradition of SAT and standardized tests?
Is competition really good, beneficial outside of sport? If yes, where is it really beneficial and what’s the evidence for it?
2) Our country’s obsession with time, speed.
Is it really to our advantage to do things fast and efficiently? Don’t we miss out on crucial stuff if we hurry? Why do we want our kids to start learning in kindergarten? What’s wrong with play there instead? What’s the hurry? Does it help later if we skip play early for the sake of math and reading? Why are tests in school are almost always speed tests? Is whipping out answers quickly the most important thing a kid needs to learn? Can these tests detect whether a kid can think at all? Isn’t thinking more important than quick regurgitating of data? Why do we think, kids need to learn as if they were in the ER?
3) Our country’s obsession with making changes.
Why do we want to change our world so much and so quickly? Some influential people declare that something is bad and needs to be changed and soon, the whole country may line up behind the change. Shouldn’t we be much more careful before we change anything and, instead, examine the possible impact of our actions? Isn’t it possible that what we already have around us is already pretty darn good, but we may not even notice it because we are in this mode of wanting to change everything?
No Child Left Behind proposed an enormous change in education, and people just said “it makes sense to think, we can evaluate schools objectively, and reward the good ones and punish the bad ones. This view works in the economy hence it works everywhere.” So the change was made and we and our kids have been “enjoying” its benefits ever since.
Common core and the associated teacher evaluation based on kids’ tests scores sounded like a good a idea to some influential people (certainly to Gates), so it got implemented. In a country which is not used to changes, which is more careful about turning things upside down, more willing to try to enjoy what they already have, this couldn’t have happened. But we usually go along with sweeping changes saying “we’ll see how it turns out.”
Instead of tearing down, building, constructing, wouldn’t we be better off with discovering, enjoying, taking care of what we already have? Yeah, changing is important for the economy. But is it us, the common people, who are enjoying the benefits of the economy—the economy based on constant change— or the top .1%?
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MW: good subjects for cultural commentary. I love your “Why do we think, kids need to learn as if they were in the ER?”
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” Our country’s obsession with making changes.”
I think they call it innovation and how could something innovative be bad? (snark alert)
I couldn’t agree with you more, Máté. As I get older, I see less and less reason to race anywhere. I find myself enjoying hand washing dishes that I could more efficiently handle by throwing in the dishwasher. I will never be the best at anything and really don’t care if am. Thank goodness I no longer feel compelled to measure myself by grades!
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Yeah, much of what engineers, architects create for us is questionable, isn’t it? If there’s money for it, it gets done. I don’t want to appear as a rigid enemy of so called “progress”, but I think it has become clear, we have to exercise great caution whenever we try to build or manufacture something to make sure, we won’t make a change we’ll regret.
Such caution is required when technology is introduced in education—technology, which is the result of advances in engineering and of course businesses. Here is what Terence Tao, probably the most famous living mathematician (and possibly with the same brain power as Archimedes, Newton or Einstein), says on his blog
When teaching mathematics, the traditional method of lecturing in front of a blackboard is still hard to improve upon, despite all the advances in modern technology.
Tao is also an important example for why kids should wait with formal education—the speed and time factor. Tao was a prodigy and here is a 1986 article about him
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10116.aspx
Two quotes
The Tao parents feel that the single most important event in Terry’s education was, ironically, the ‘failure’ of his attempt at early entrance into formal schooling:
and
.. to design a highly individualized program which has been tied in to Terry’s levels of ability in all subject areas, not only in maths and the sciences but also in the humanities.
Almost all the changes reformists have made in education affect kids adversely. The increased pressure to produce correct answers and high test scores, and the focus on speed and on few subjects decrease the most important thing kids can have: their enthusiasm.
As, once again, Tao begins an entry on his blog
If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
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I am wondering, why Merrow brought up Chalkbeat as a positive example for education reporting. He cannot be serious. or, perhaps, he is confused. For example, in
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-merrow/a-thanks-and-a-plea_b_2303764.html
I read
In the seven years since the devastation, the city’s public schools have been transformed — from a failing system where not even one-third of 8th graders in New Orleans could pass a state reading test, to a school district composed mostly of charter schools that outpaces every other district in Louisiana.
Such cheerleading of a big change, affecting a whole city, by a journalist is simply weird. It’s true, we can already detect his suspicion of harsh discipline,
Will Bobby Calvin, an engaging high school junior, be able to adapt to his charter school’s incredibly rigid discipline code , or will the young principal adjust his own world view?
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Part 1
John Merrow says that “Education reporting has never been better…”
He’s wrong.
To take but one example, here’s a piece by Emily Richmond, “the public editor of the Education Writers Association.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/05/data-girls-stem/483255/#article-comments
This was my comment about that article:
_____________________________________________
According to Emily Richmond of the Education Writers Association, “just 43 percent of U.S. eighth graders tested met or exceeded the benchmark for proficiency” on the newest NAEP test, the Technology and Engineering Literacy assessment. This is important, Richmond asserts, because “it’s one of the few means of comparing student achievement among states.”
Then Richmond poses this question, answer, and explanation:
“Why does this matter? These are skills that experts say Americans must have if they are to compete in a global marketplace. U.S. students typically have middling performance on international assessments gauging math and science ability.”
The implications are far-ranging. Emily Richmond, a national education reporter, is telling, or at the very least, strongly suggesting to readers that Americans students just can’t cut it – they aren’t “proficient” – and American economic competitiveness in the “global marketplace” is threatened.
This claim is the very same as that made for the necessity of the Common Core State Standards, which were funded by Bill Gates. Interestingly, the Education Writers Association is also funded by Bill Gates, along with conservative groups like the Kern, Dell and Walton Foundations.
But the claim is demonstrably false. America is already competitive in the global marketplace (it’s #3 in the World Economic Forum’s latest competitiveness rankings), and when it loses its competitive edge it’s not because of student test scores but because of stupid economic policies and decisions.
But Emily Richmond says nary a word about this.
Nor does she make any mention at all that there’s a glut of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) jobs in the U.S.
A 2004 RAND study “found no consistent and convincing evidence that the federal government faces current or impending shortages of STEM workers…there is little evidence of such shortages in the past decade or on the horizon.”
A 2007 study by Lowell and Salzman found no STEM shortage (see: http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html ). Indeed, Lowell and Salzman found that “the supply of S&E-qualified graduates is large and ranks among the best internationally. Further, the number of undergraduates completing S&E studies has grown, and the number of S&E graduates remains high by historical standards.” The “education system produces qualified graduates far in excess of demand.”
Beryl Lieff Benderly wrote this stunning statement recently in the Columbia Journalism Review (see: http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all ):
“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students. In fact, according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”
So why the STEM emphasis?
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“So why the STEM emphasis?”
Because we don’t have the culture of being cautious about new stuff. In fact, we are likely called closed minded who are against progress if we ask questions about a new proposal on anything.
We, by default, just go along with any new proposal (like let’s increase our graduation rate and let’s start STEM-ming our kids in kindergarten), and only when they clearly don’t work out, we may start thinking about the merits of the whole thing.
I say, think first and think hard, debate, collect evidence, and act later if at all.
We should behave like people in the security profession (any security: body guard, computer security, building security). They are extremely conservative about making changes to their procedures, policies, and they will make changes only if the changes are supported by long years of evidence.
There is no such thing as 21st century karate, for example.
We should behave like security professionals for good reason: we are protecting our kids, our environment, our world.
In most of what we do, we have thousands of years of experience, wisdom. Let’s not ignore those, let’s study the history of everything so that we can protect our future.
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Part 2
Benderly continues:
“Simply put, a desire for cheap, skilled labor, within the business world and academia, has fueled assertions—based on flimsy and distorted evidence—that American students lack the interest and ability to pursue careers in science and engineering, and has spurred policies that have flooded the market with foreign STEM workers. This has created a grim reality for the scientific and technical labor force: glutted job markets; few career jobs; low pay, long hours, and dismal job prospects for postdoctoral researchers in university labs; near indentured servitude for holders of temporary work visas.”
As Michael Teitelbaum writes in The Atlantic, “The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/)
Teitelbaum adds this: “A compelling body of research is now available, from many leading academic researchers and from respected research organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute. No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher…All have concluded that U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings—the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more.”
But Emily Richmond says nothing at all about any of this.
Richmond suggests that we should we should worried that “just 43 percent“ of 8th graders met NAEP proficiency levels, as if 8th graders hold the key – somehow – to American economic competitiveness. That supposition alone is pretty baseless. But what about those NAEP proficiency benchmarks?
Here’s how Gerald Bracey described the NAEP proficiency levels in Nov. 2009 in Ed Leadership:
“the NAEP reports the percentage of students reaching various achievement levels—Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. The achievement levels have been roundly criticized by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (1993), the National Academy of Sciences (Pellegrino, Jones, & Mitchell, 1999); and the National Academy of Education (Shepard, 1993). These critiques point out that the methods for constructing the levels are flawed, that the levels demand unreasonably high performance, and that they yield results that are not corroborated by other measures.”
Bracey added this:
“In spite of the criticisms, the U.S. Department of Education permitted the flawed levels to be used until something better was developed. Unfortunately, no one has ever worked on developing anything better—perhaps because the apparently low student performance indicated by the small percentage of test-takers reaching Proficient has proven too politically useful to school critics.”
And then this:
“education reformers and politicians have lamented that only about one-third of 8th graders read at the Proficient level. On the surface, this does seem awful. Yet, if students in other nations took the NAEP, only about one-third of them would also score Proficient—even in the nations scoring highest on international reading comparisons (Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2006).”
The National Academy of Sciences called the NAEP proficiency standards “fundamentally flawed.” NAEP’s original technical evaluation team reported that “these standards and the results obtained from them should under no circumstances be used as a baseline or benchmark.”
NAEP’s governing board fired the team.
The General Accounting Office study of NAEP assumptions and procedures and proficiency levels found them to be “invalid for the purpose of drawing inferences about content mastery.”
Yet, Emily Richmond tells readers that “These are skills that…Americans must have if they are to compete in a global marketplace. “
Richmond makes no effort whatsoever to educate the public – her readers – on how badly flawed NAEP is. Does she just not know?
One thing NAEP seems to measure fairly well is income inequality. Or, to put it a bit more precisely, research has found that between half and two-thirds of the variance in student academic performance on NAEP is explained by a cumulative family risk factor, which includes family income, the educational attainment of parents, family and neighborhood housing conditions, and the ability to speak and read English. Richmond says only that there are “gaps…between students from low-income families and their more affluent peers.”
It’s reasonable to expect that a person leading an Education Writers Association would do a better – more accurate – job of presenting testing information to the general public.
One can hope….
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John Merrow and the Delusions of Edujournalism https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/john-merrow-and-the-delusions-of-edujournalism/
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