Your official newsletter of the Education Writers Association

<<On the Blackboard>>

Podcasts, Reports and Other Goodies from EWA’s D.C. Meeting
EWA’s 62nd annual meeting in D.C. brimmed with ed rock stars like American Federation Teachers president Randi Weingarten, D.C. Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Other ed movers and shakers joined the trio and shared their perspective on how American schools can raise achievement levels.  If you weren’t able to attend EWA’s meeting, we have a ton of resources available on our website. Despite the hectic pace of our three-day meeting, we were still able to present reporting awards with the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize being given to Blake Morrison and Brad Heath of USA Today for the “Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America Schools.” We’ll do it again on the West Coast next year. Keep up to date with EWA by visiting our website to see new webinars and seminars planned for the summer.
 

The Power of One Student's Story
By Linda Perlstein, EWA public editor

In my “Stories That Work” columns, I like to feature an article I feel that other reporters, no matter how taxing their beats, can—and should—emulate. Pretty early in my conversation with Diette Courrege, I realized that this wasn't going to be that sort of column.

If journalism were ranked by an index that measured effort expended per column inch, “Failing Our Students,” Diette's May 3 article about how one boy made it from kindergarten to age 17 without learning to read, surely would rank toward the top. Most of what Diette, who covers Charleston, S.C., schools for the Post and Courier, had to go through to make these 100 inches a reality isn't obvious on the page. Maybe you don't have the time, or interest, to pursue a similar project. Still, there's a lot to learn from the piece, and a lot to admire.

Last spring, Diette was swimming in “hyperlocal” stories about downtown Charleston school board friction and magnet school admissions. At the time, she was the paper's only education reporter and, as always, was publishing about five stories a week. Diette's reporting has always relied on conversations in the community, far from school buildings: with presidents of neighborhood associations, board members, church leaders. During one of these chats, the talk turned from local politics to a grittier reality. “I know there are kids in high schools who can't read,” the source said. Not long after, the source introduced Diette to Ridge Smith.

This seems obvious when you see it on paper: When you're writing about people who are disconnected from institutions, you can't rely on the institutions to provide you with your subjects. You've got to go to churches, to soup kitchens, to court-mandated parenting classes. You've got to pound the pavement of the projects.

Diette first met Ridge and his mother, Daphney, at their house in April 2008. He was 16 and had recently been suspended from his second year in ninth grade. When Diette said, “as delicately as I could,” that she wanted to tell the story of Ridge's literacy problems, he protested that he could read. “Okay, well, I need you to show me then,” Diette said. A newspaper was lying around—Daphney would bring them home from her job cleaning hotel rooms—and Diette asked Ridge to read an article aloud.

“It blew my mind,” she said. “Every couple of words he just stopped.” Diette highlighted all the words Ridge didn't know: August, local, politics. After several grafs she stopped and asked him about what he had read. It was clear he hadn't understood a thing. She would later find out he was reading at a third-grade level.

Diette set out to write a comprehensive narrative about how one student can pass grade after grade without reading. In the fall, with Daphney's permission and a letter written by an attorney with the South Carolina Press Association, Diette requested Ridge's records. The massive file was incredibly helpful, especially because Ridge was in special education and thus had detailed IEPs. But Diette had a sense that things were missing. For example, by doing the math she had concluded that Ridge had been held back in first grade, but all she could find in the file was a one-line mention on a sheet of paper discussing an unrelated issue.

She would only learn this for sure months later, when in a defensive move, district officials gave her their own chronology of Ridge's education, which included many facts omitted from the original file. When Diette began calling Ridge's former teachers, the district told her that the original affadavit had expired so no longer applied to these conversations. Tracking down Daphney to sign a new affadavit was not easy; at one point Diette found herself chasing down a city bus, with a notary public in her passenger seat.

“The file was absolutely critical,” Diette says—without it, she wouldn't have had a story. She was able to track Ridge's interventions, find his teachers and fact-check his recollections, which were spotty and sometimes inaccurate. For example, he said ninth grade was the first time he had been held back, which wasn't true.

Obviously you are not always going to have a formal record to go on, but it's never a bad idea to check your subject's assertions, to truth-squad a teenager's memory lapses and equivocations. When Ridge said he could read, a quick exercise showed otherwise. After he said he was going to GED class, Diette would wait for him at class and watch as he never showed up.

Diette couldn't find some of Ridge's teachers. Some weren't willing to talk. But enough did, and these are the strongest parts of the piece: the third-grade teacher  discussing in tears how her personal efforts failed to help Ridge, the fourth-grade teacher explaining the boy's strengths and weaknesses, the eighth-grade teacher describing Ridge's descent that year. The reader doesn't get much detail on what exactly was attempted with Ridge academically, but I'm probably overly geeky about such things, and anyway who wants this to turn into a technical primer on reading interventions? 

Also, you don't get a great sense of Ridge's personality or hear many of his own thoughts. For months, Diette sneaked out of the office to hang out with Ridge. She'd watch Ridge sit on the couch. She'd drive him around to the projects where he used to live, take him to eat. She'd watch him watch his girlfriend watch their baby.

Ridge was not reflective, or articulate, or particularly engaging, and believe me, I know how difficult it can be to make someone like that come alive on the page. While Diette and her editor ultimately decided the details she collected during these visits weren't germane to the story—and, frankly, were boring—she still thinks the time spent was crucial. “It helped me get to know him better,” she said. “It gave me the authority to write about him.”

As any reporter who covers people in poverty knows, even making contact is no simple thing. “You can't just set a time and they're there,” Diette said. Daphney's phone number changed at least three times during the course of reporting, and she never returned one message. Ridge had a phone for only one month. After a year of contact, the first time Daphney phoned Diette was when she saw Ridge's photo in the paper.

Meanwhile, she was basically reporting under the radar. “If you're smart and you're a good reporter, that's how you do it,” she said. The best stories are rarely reported on the clock. Diette's regular editor knew the project existed but was unaware of the details; she was working with a special projects editor. The only time she was loosed from her daily grind was a week before the story ran, when she needed to fact-check and tie up loose ends.

The piece was followed by a forceful editorial. In  letters to the editor and online comments, some people faulted Daphney; some faulted the schools. There's no one clear bad guy, no one fatal mistake, and that's part of what makes the piece strong. Reality rarely comes in black and white.

In what I think was a strange move, on the same day the piece ran, the superintendent was offered about 20 inches on the op-ed page to make the district's case. (She had not seen Diette's story at the time.) Diette liked that she didn't have to muck up her narrative with the superintendent's response. But to me that sets a bad precedent.

Still, it doesn't take away from a tremendous effort. The piece, when you think about it, is fairly bare-boned: no quotes from literacy experts , no “across the nation” context. But the skeleton Diette built, on a year's worth of hard work, could not be stronger.

Linda Perlstein is available to help you. Contact her at 410-539-2464 or lperlstein@ewa.org. 

Reports to Watch
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will release its annual report, "The 2009 Condition of Education." The report will examine issues ranging from student achievement and school environment to early childhood through postsecondary education. The report also will contain 46 indicators that provide a progress report on education in America. A press conference is scheduled for Thursday, May 28 at 10 a.m.  the Sumner School at 1201 17th Street, N.W. in Washington, D.C. If you would like to attend the event or get embargoed copies of the report, contact Raquel Maya at rmaya@hagersharp.com or (202) 842-3600, ext. 212.

A wide-ranging new study from The New Teacher Project (TNTP) finds that America’s public education system fails to acknowledge differences in teacher effectiveness and instead treats teachers as interchangeable parts. TNTP’s “The Widget Effect” will be released 9 a.m. June 1 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. For those who can’t attend, a virtual presentation/conference call will take place at 2:30-4 p.m. For additional information, visit http://www.widgeteffect.org/ or contact David Keeling, Director of Communications, at dkeeling@tntp.org.

Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center will release its annual Diplomas Count 2009, a report on public high school graduation and reform Tuesday, June 9. A press conference will be held at the National Press Club starting at 9 a.m.Tuesday. For more information, contact clouvouezo@communicationworks.com.

Reports: SREB, States fail and narrowing the achievement gap

Adolescent Literacy
A new report by the Southern Regional Education Board is calling on states to develop comprehensive adolescent literacy policies to improve middle grades and high school reading and writing. SREB released its latest report at EWA’s national seminar in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.  Virginia governor Tim Kaine chair of SREB’s board discussed several recommendations to increase student achievement. You can go here to  read the report and the committee’s recommendations. You can read coverage of the report in this Education Week piece and in this Richmond Times Dispatch piece. 
 
 
Twist to the Student Loan Scandal
The New America Foundation’s Stephen Burd gets a big scoop on the student loan scandal that allowed student loan companies to bilk taxpayers out of more than $1 billion.  In this latest twist, Burd reports that some officials within the U.S. Department of Education encouraged lenders to overcharge the government. In addition, the Financial Partners division of the Ed Department’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office wrote reports in which they agreed to student loan companies' billing practices and in some circumstances, showed lenders how they could take advantage of subsidies. Former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings put an end to the practices when she joined the agency in 2007.

Outta’ Work and Returning to School
Looking for new angles on the recession? In February 2009, the unemployment rate for educational services dropped to 4 percent from 5.3 percent in December 2008. That's 4.1 percentage points less than the national unemployment rate of 8.1 percent, according to a CNN report. Career Builder.com and CNN say the job growth can be attributed to rising K-12 enrollment.  But with millions out of work, many people are returning to school for training. You can read the rest of the story and see what the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks as the top positions and wages in education.

Majority of states fail to provide adequate public education
The Schott Foundation has released a report finding 84 percent of states fail to provide students with a proficient public education system. Lost Opportunity: A 50-state report on the "Opportunity to Learn in America" finds minority and low-income students have only half the opportunity to learn in our public schools as their white peers. The foundation says the federal government must make access to higher quality learning a guaranteed right for all Americans by establishing an accountability system to track student access to educational resources. You can go here to read the study.

Narrowing the Gap
The Educational Testing Service has released its second edition of "Parsing the Achievement Gap: Baselines for Teaching Programs." The report updates and expands research from 2003 and focuses on whether gaps in experience and life conditions have narrowed, stayed the same or improved. Researchers looked at 16 factors related to life experiences and conditions that correlate to development and academic achievement. You can read the rest of the report here.

AFT finds disinvestment in the higher education teaching 
As college enrollment increased over the past decade so did higher education’s dependence on “contingent” instructors to lead academia including part-time faculty, full-time non-tenure track faculty and graduate employees. That’s according to a report released by the American Federation of Teachers that analyzes 10-years worth of data on higher education teaching. “American Academic: The State of the Higher Education Workforce”  finds over a ten-year period the proportion of full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members declined from approximately one-third of the instructional staff to slightly more than one-quarter. In addition, the report finds colleges increased reliance on “contingent faculty and instructors” was found in all sectors of higher education. Community colleges showed the most dramatic increase. You can read the rest of the report here.

Media Note

The U.S. Department of Education has announced nine senior staff appointments and  you can see who has come on board here.

You don’t want to miss reading this piece in Politico.com analyzing how newspaper cuts have affected the Baltimore Sun and what high profile readers like U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, (D-Md.) thinks about present coverage. Cardin has introduced a bill entitled the Newspaper Revitalization Act allowing newspapers to act as non-profit organizations. On an emotional note, long time Baltimore Sun ed reporter Sara Neufeld has left the newspaper for new opportunities. Neufeld selflessly volunteered to be laid off to help save another colleagues’ job, but things didn’t work according to plan. The reporter was let go due to his lack of seniority.

If that isn’t somber news then you should read the next piece.

Professor Robert G. Picard of Sweden's Jonkoping University, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, writes an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor about why journalists deserve low pay and how news must redefine its value.

As journalism continues to ponder its next step, will more citizens start news projects like All Things Harlem?

New America Media has announced the winners of the 2009 National Ethnic Media Awards. You can go here to see the names of winners.

EWA News and Notes
Lisa Rosenthal is leaving her managing editor post at GreatSchools to pursue part-time communications and consulting work in San Mateo, CA County Office of Education. GreatSchools recently won the 2009 Maggie award for best consumer e-newsletter. Rosenthal is also looking forward to spending more time with her husband traveling. EWA wishes her the best of luck!
 
Jobs and Upcoming Conferences
The Center for Investigative Reporting is seeking two education journalists for a new reporting initiative to produce in-depth multimedia journalism on issues of critical importance to California. The California project, with support from The James Irvine Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, will seek to be a new model for regional journalism. The center is seeking candidates with great storytelling skills and at least three years of experience covering a wide array of education stories for a major media outlet in California. He or she must have considerable knowledge of K-12, or higher education, especially community colleges; an ability to set a coverage agenda, as well as a demonstrated ability to produce compelling, creative, and original stories of broad significance. Positions will be located in different parts of the state. Please submit a cover letter as an attached Word document by May 29 explaining why you want to be part of this team, resume, 3-5 clips or urls of your work to cirjobs@cironline.org. Put Education Reporter in the subject line. Applications also can be mailed to CIR at 2927 Newbury St., Berkeley, CA, 94703.  If you have questions, please write Marcia Parker at mparker@cironline.org. For more information visit,http://www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/.

Linfield College is seeking an experienced communications professional to serve as the Director of Media Relations.  The director will develop a strategic and comprehensive media relations program that enhances the visibility of Linfield in international, national and regional media.  Responsibilities include: managing Linfield’s online news presence; cultivating strong, targeted relationships with print, broadcast and online journalists; researching, writing and distributing news stories across diverse media platforms; and promoting and coaching college experts.   Job requirements include a bachelor’s degree and 5+ years of experience in journalism or public relations.  Prior experience in higher ed is desired. Submit Linfield application, cover letter, résumé and three professional work samples.  Application review will begin 6/12, and will continue until position is filled. For more information, please visit http://linfieldjobs.iapplicants.com/ViewJob-30307.html.

The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism is seeking a new director . The director oversees all aspects of the center which conducts seminars for journalists on specialized topics. The center operates as a part of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. To apply send application materials to Search Chair, Knight Center Director, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, 1117 Journalism Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

The University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and the Department of Communication is offering a certificate in communication management. Courses will be held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. The program is an eight month, four course program that can apply to a master’s degree. For more information, call 301-314-2641 or email awashin1@umd.edu.
 
IRE will hold its national conference June 11-14 in Baltimore, Md. Conference headliners include: Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh and Brian Ross. Go here  to sign up for the conference today!

From the Beat

For Many Teachers, a Famously Fertile Market Dries Up Overnight
Javier C. Hernandez
The New York Times
Larissa Patel dreamed of teaching English at a Brooklyn public school this fall, motivated by a desire to help low-income children. But instead, on Friday, Ms. Patel spent the day filling out applications for 30 jobs at private schools. Ms. Patel’s abrupt change in plans was precipitated by a new citywide ban on hiring teachers from outside the school system.

Taking the $ATs
Chadwick Matlin
The Big Money.com
Before the financial crisis hit, eighth-graders across the country were scheduled to take a new test this fall, their first to get into college. The exam is called ReadiStep, and it's a new standardized test that simultaneously says it's "low-stakes" while also being a "vital step" toward getting ready to get a bachelor's degree. But the test is not provided by the federal government. Nor is it a brainchild of state and local school boards or mandated by No Child Left Behind. It's provided by the College Board, the same organization that administers the PSAT and the SAT.

Liberal arts? Think again
Joan Garrett
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Elizabeth Walker wouldn’t trade the years she spent studying Shakespeare and Keats.
She credits her liberal arts education at Austin Peay State University with teaching her the lessons of history, civic-mindedness and ethical decision-making. Trouble is, her English degree turned out to be more of a prerequisite for self-improvement than a meaningful career.

Failing our students
Diette Courrégé 
The Post and Courier
Ridge Smith hunches over a newspaper article, harnesses his concentration and focuses on the words. He wants to prove how well he can read. Ridge is 16. He spent more than 10 years in some of Charleston County's inner-city, low-performing schools. His teachers and principals learned early on that he had an average IQ and could learn to read. Ridge reads at a third-grade level. He is among thousands of Lowcountry students who make their way through schools without ever learning to read beyond an elementary-grade level.  

Easy grades equate to failing grads
Heather Vogell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some metro Atlanta public high schools that don’t grade rigorously produce more graduates lacking the basic English and math skills needed for college, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found.

Please send your best stories and member news to Mesha Williams at publications@ewa.org.

**About us**

Dale Mezzacappa, president, Public School Notebook; Tanya Schevitz, vp/actives, San Francisco Chronicle; Marie Groark, vp/associates, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Stephanie Banchero, secretary, on leave from Chicago Tribune; Richard Whitmire, immediate past president, freelancer; Kathryn Baron, Warren Institute on Race and Diversity; John Merrow, Learning Matters, Inc.; Linda Lenz, Catalyst; Rodney Ferguson, Lipman Hearne, Inc.; Cornelia Grumman, First Five Years Fund; Elizabeth Green, Gotham Schools.org; Scott Elliott, Dayton (Ohio) Daily News; Kent Fischer, GMMB.