Education Reporter
March 3, 2008
Your official newsletter of the Education Writers Association
<<On the Blackboard>>
Scholarships for Annual Meeting: EWA will hold its 61st annual conference April 24-26 in Chicago. If you are a reporter and need a scholarship to cover costs, email Lori Crouch (lcrouch at ewa.org). This year’s theme is "Running in Place: Can We Overcome Mediocrity?" All sessions will be held at the Wyndham Chicago Hotel, 633 North St. Clair Street. Featured speakers include Steve R. James, producer of Hoop Dreams, and Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten will debate pay for performance for teachers with Sabrina Laine of the National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality, and Arne Duncan, superintendent of Chicago schools. The meeting will explore the hidden costs of college and other issues.
And the envelope please: Teacher sex abuse, admission to the Ivy League and computer pop ups 'gone wild' in a junior high classroom were education stories that grabbed headlines in the past year. See the best of education reporting in newspapers, magazines, television and radio. The grand prize winner will be announced at our annual meeting. Congratulations to winners and a special thank you to all the reporters who submitted entries to this year’s contest.
Stories That Work by Linda Perlstein, EWA’s Public Editor
Raven L. Hill and Bob Banta, “Principal flight on the rise in the age of accountability”
Austin American-Statesman, February 11, 2008
That Raven Hill conceived this interesting article about high principal turnover and its effects speaks to two of the most important ways to generate story ideas: Be curious, and read widely.
In this case, Raven was reading the competition, the alternative newsweekly Austin Chronicle, when one thing caught her eye. It was a brief mention, really, one graf in a very long story by Kimberly Reeves:
“The second factor, which few people want to acknowledge publicly, is that Austin traditionally has had a weak principal corps. For whatever reason, most AISD principals have lacked longevity, and some have lacked quality. Johnston may be the worst with 10 principals in eight years, including the infamous and arrested Al Mindiz-Melton but almost every high school in the district has suffered from regular principal turnover.”
Raven wondered: How common is this exactly? Why is this so, and what does it mean for a school?
There are scores of story ideas to be found buried in other pieces. While reading “Will Johnathan Graduate?”, Lonnae O’Neal Parker’s wonderful article about a D.C. high school, back in November, I underlined twenty sentences that each could have been fleshed out into their own article. Among them:
“They duck into stairwells layered with graffiti.”
“Around the room, cords from a dozen headphones snake up to students’ ears.”
“Burton estimated that one teacher missed nearly 40 of 90 days last year.”
“A student this late often has to spend first period, all 80 minutes, in tardy hall.”
And “Burton was the seventh principal in nine years” nearly exactly the sentence that inspired Raven.
Raven knew that principal turnover was an issue for some schools, but now she realized the problem might be more systemic. She and her colleague, Bob Banta, contacted area school districts, asking for principal turnover rates for the last five years, no matter whether the principal was promoted, retired, or resigned. “Regardless of the reason the person left, the leaving creates instability,” she told me.
From there they calculated annual turnover rates, sought data from other urban districts, and looked for human examples to speak to. Ed Fuller from the Center for Teaching Quality at the University of Texas, a longtime source of Raven’s, was helpful on the state and local numbers—in fact, local sources were more helpful than national associations for the reporting, she said—but the latter two tasks proved more difficult.
“One of the hardest things was finding former principals,” Raven said. “I thought that because these principals were no longer with the school district, they would be open to talking.” No such luck. Of the ten she called, no more than four spoke with her.
“It would have been stronger to have more of the former principals’ voices,” she said. And to have more of the voices that she did have kept intact: A quote from former principal Brenda Burrell was cut in half during the copy-editing process, removing some of the context a bit and upsetting the source. The reporters didn’t have any more luck finding veteran teachers who endured through several principals at a given school.
The story ran about a month after Raven and Bob, both education beat reporters, first began work on it. Most of the reporting spanned two and a half weeks, a time the reporters were working on other stories too. It was one of Raven’s last stories for the paper; she left at the end of February to take a job with the Education Trust in Washington, as a communications specialist.
Now, we can hope, she’s in the business of giving us story ideas.
If there’s a Story That Works you want to know more about, e-mail Linda at lperlstein at ewa.org.
New Tools and Reports: Narrowing curriculum, deans’salaries
NARROW SUBJECTS: Teachers gripe again and again that No Child Left Behind’s intense focus on reading and math leaves little time for arts and science subjects. The Center on Education Policy takes a second look at the effects of No Child Left Behind on classrooms based on a survey they released last summer. CEP finds responding school districts cut instructional time by at least 75 minutes in subjects not relating to English and Math. Also, read this Newsweek story on NCLB’s effect on student field trips.
COLLEGE SALARIES: Public health and law deans are some of the highest paid positions in higher education. That’s according to an annual survey released by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. It finds the median base salary for senior level administrative positions is up four percent this year. Public colleges enjoyed greater increases than private institutions.
LOSING TOUCH: Do you know what years the Civil War was fought?
a) 1850- 1900 b) 1861-1865 c) 1764-1769
If you guessed b, then your answer is correct. However, a report commissioned by Common Core and written by American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick M. Hess, finds fewer than half of America’s teenagers can place the Civil War in the correct half-century. What’s worse the report finds after two decades of intensive education reforms, American students struggle horribly with general history and literature questions. The obsession with high stakes testing and basic skills teaching is to blame for the students’ lack of knowledge, the report says. See what EWA member Greg Toppo wrote in USA Today.
MOVING ON UP: A
report released by the Brookings Institution shows family background strongly influences the income level and social mobility an individual will attain. The report concludes more can be done in the education system (especially on the higher ed level) to help disadvantaged students move up the social and economic ladder.
TALK BACK: A report finds more states are improving their policies and curriculum getting students ready for college. Achieve, a bi-partisan non-profit organization that helps states raise academic standards, says currently 18 states and the District of Columbia are reassessing academic expectations. That’s a far cry from three years ago, when only two states reported it required students to take four years of English and Math.The report finds one reason for progress is secondary and post-secondary institutions, and employers are doing a better job of communicating their needs to each other.
SCHOOL VOUCHERS: Milwaukee is home to the longest running school voucher program in the country. A new report examining the city’s system finds students who attend private schools through the program perform no better or worse than public school students from similar backgrounds, although the authors caution that findings may emerge later in the five year study. Read reporter Alan J. Borsuk, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about voucher parity in the school system.
TEACHER EVALUATION: If you are working on a story about teacher quality then read Ed Sector’s Rush to Judgment: Teacher Evaluation in Public Education, which examines a myriad of issues. The report goes in-depth analyzing the lack of school accountability in performance and the role of unions and other challenges complicating teacher quality.
Events and Opportunities- Reading First, Islam, Community College Fellowships
Want to know what caused the demise of the Reading First program? Then attend an event at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute March 10 and look for their new report “Too Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First.”
The Religion Newswriters is offering a series of free webinars on how to cover Islam starting March 12.
The Hechinger Institute is trying to beef up community college reporting and is sponsoring a fellowship program. A $7,500 stipend will be awarded to each of the six journalists and limited benefits given to nine fellows to participate in the fellowship program in New York City. Applications must be submitted by April 30.
The American Montessori Society is sponsoring its annual conference in Washington March 6-9. Environmentalist Jane Goodall will give the keynote address.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ashoka: Innovators for the Public have created a new fellowship. The fellows will receive three-year stipends while working on new approaches to journalism. At least five fellows will be chosen by Aug. 31, 2008.
The School Nutrition Association is sponsoring National School Breakfast Week March 3-7.
Award winning journalists Dana Priest and John Hockenberry will deliver keynote addresses at this year’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism March 14-16. It will be held in Boston.
The National School Boards Association is sponsoring its annual conference March 29-April 1 in Orlando. Guest speakers include former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; actor Sidney Poitier; journalist Jim Lehrer and humorist Garrison Keillor.
<<From the Beat>>
Despite IB Growth, College Credit Is Elusive
Jay Mathews
The Washington Post
Across the Washington area, International Baccalaureate is booming, with more than two dozen high schools offering the college-level program and more signing up all the time. College admissions officers say they love seeing IB courses on transcripts. Students say the IB writing instruction and five-hour, end-of-course exams prepare them well for higher education. But there's a catch: Students usually can't get college credit for one-year IB courses, even though they are similar to one-year Advanced Placement courses, which are eligible for credit.
Emaciated Student: My Hosts Starved Me
Jerry Harkavy
The Associated Press
Jonathan McCullum was in perfect health at 155 pounds when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt. But when he returned home to Maine about four months later, the 5-foot-9 teenager weighed 97 pounds and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk for a heart attack.
Parents Face Cut-Throat Competition—for Kindergarten
Stephanie Banchero
The Chicago Tribune
Karen Moran has done everything a mother can do to find a good school for her 5-year-old twin daughters. The Wicker Park mom has trolled the Chicago Public Schools Web site for test scores and class sizes. She has spent her mornings touring a half-dozen private and public schools. She has hit the playgrounds to quiz parents about the best schools. And she has had her children tested for entry into gifted programs.
Colleges Guard Soaring Endowments
Peter Schworm
The Boston Globe
Colleges and universities are sharply resisting calls to spend more of their soaring endowments to expand financial aid and curb tuition hikes that critics say are putting college beyond the reach of ordinary families.
Please send your best stories and member news to Mesha Williams at publications@ewa.org
**About us**
The Education Writers Association is the national professional organization of education reporters dedicated to improving education reporting to the public. Contact us by email at ewa@ewa.org, by phone at (202) 452-9830, by fax at (202) 452-9837 or by mail at
2122 P Street NW, Suite 201, Washington, DC, 20037
Our officers include: Richard Whitmire of USA Today, president; Kathy Baron, morning host/education reporter at northern California's KQED-FM (on leave), vice president/actives; Rodney Ferguson, executive vice president of Lipman Hearne Inc., vice president/associates; Kent Fischer, education reporter at the Dallas Morning News, secretary; Linda Lenz, publisher of Catalyst, immediate past president. Our board members include Dale Mezzacappa, former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and now a Philadelphia-based freelance writer; Marie Groark, senior policy officer and spokeswoman for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Tanya Schevitz, higher education reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle; and John Merrow of Learning Matters Inc. Find contact information
