Above is the tone of education news for the month of October. I grabbed every education-related headline from the above publications in October and categorized its language as either positive, negative or neutral. A more in-depth rationale/explanation of all this is here, and also here.
Notes and stray observations
I added four publications this month: Wall Street Journal, WBEZ Chicago, Boston Globe and LA Times.
I also decided this month to include every story Chalkbeat published — Chalkbeat Tennessee; Chalkbeat Colorado; Chalkbeat Grand Rapids (jk) — as opposed to just their national stories. This amounted to 162 stories, 151 more than last month, when I just pulled their national stories.
Lots and lots of coverage of school board elections, CRT (yawn), staff shortages, and mask/vaccine mandates.
“McDonald's to treat teachers to free breakfast starting Monday”
Stray thought: I think there's something to be said about the correlation between distance and tone. The further away from the classroom reporting is (and most seems to be from a desk), the more negative the tone is. What would coverage look like if more journalists were embedded (so to speak) in schools or districts, and didn't over-rely on data and reports and press releases? Desk reporting, it appears, is the enemy of nuance. Schools become a political battlefield. Student groups are monolithic, parents all mad, teachers overworked, no one can read, no one can add, everything is terrible. The tone simply doesn’t match my own experience in education, my students’ or the experience of other educators I know. Granted, not sure what an “embedded” ed journalist would look like, but sure there are some models out there, somewhere. (Updated 11/12/21)
What do you see? What do you notice? If you’re an educator, does the tone of education news for October align with your own experience? What are reporters missing? Reporters, what do you think? Is there another way to cover schools? Is there a difference between covering schools and covering “education?” Is this a pointless exercise? Or just naive?