"Americans want more coverage of teacher performance and student achievement," says a Brookings Institution report. The public opinion poll which is its underpinning reveals that Americans have an appetite for more information on K-12 issues and in particular, on the issues real education reformers care about the most -- academic performance, teacher quality, curricula and more.
Despite our digitally obsessed age, the most common source Americans use for their education info -- after family and friends -- is the traditional news media. We're not surprised. Long before the Brookings findings were released, we had our fingers on the pulse of the education media. We launched The Media Bullpen this year, after a two-year long examination of how the media influences the public and consequently, public policy. The Bullpen, the first-of-its-kind virtual newsroom, is designed to respond, react and critique the media in real time, providing not just a service to reporters who often are misled or misinformed by a cadre of difficult to navigate groups, alliances and interests, but also as a service to the public, which has uneven access to meaningful reporting on education.
While the reasons for that may vary, the result does not: Our citizens are under-informed about the pressing issues of education, and they know it. Brookings found that while most Americans still rely on traditional media, they know they are missing stories about critical issues. From student achievement to news about reform, they want more than the typical school board budget hearing reported, or why a principal is leaving X elementary school.
Indeed when The Bullpen opened its doors this year on February 14, we were struck by how many news outlets covered the common, the mundane, the academically irrelevant stories. Clearly the changes in media economics means fewer fully focused beat reporters, and that was borne out by veteran education writer Caroline Hendrie at the Brookings media report release. Not only are education stories often lacking context, they take whatever is said at face value, never digging below the surface. Class size being raised and teachers protest? Must mean awful education for kids! Budget cuts lurking? No doubt the school will slash the arts. Asking why this would occur and where the evidence is to back up the conclusions of the local school person on-record rarely occurs.
Readers want more news about teacher quality, as they should. Yet in story after story across the nation this March as legislators challenged conventional union rules and pension benefits that were bankrupting their state, few reporters stopped to even ask if quality was a factor in how teachers were hired, compensated, or if they were ever able to be dismissed for lagging student achievement.
The role of the media in education is not to prioritize what we read, but to give us news to read that encompasses the whole of the debate -- the depth, complexity, controversy and honest concerns that plague our policymaking. And it's to give us access to people with whom we may not normally be in contact, from parents wanting more options to teachers wanting more pay, to policymakers wanting more change, to employers needing better workers.
Having reviewed more than 2,000 articles to date, state level reporting on education issues is coming though with an average reliability rating of only 41 percent. On major national coverage, the reliability is slightly better, hovering around 50 percent.
The issue is no longer whether we have a crisis. Though a few people in their association offices persist in saying things have never been better, the reality is we've never been worse. We just didn't know the repercussions on our nation and on our world until we had more data. The media can take the lion's share of credit for helping over the last several years to deliver a steady stream of "reality checks" to the public. Top notch, veteran education reporters exist at some of the leading papers and broadcast news outlets. But they share the education space with the reporter who is also covering the birth of the baby seal at the local zoo. We need more and better coverage, and today we have more and better access to information than ever before. There's no excuse for not hitting a home run every time.
The public needs to demand it; the media need to embrace it. And The Media Bullpen will keep scoring until everyone is batting 1.000.
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Sec. Arne Duncan, Angel GurrÃa and Fred van Leeuwen: Uncommon Wisdom on Teaching
Brookings - Quality. Independence. Impact.
The truth is . . . they assume they know and they won't put forth the energy required to really check it out.
Then in my 11th grade English class, our horrible teacher would mock people for their answers. My friend complained to the principal, and there was a conference where the teacher promised to be more professional. The next day, my friend had to stay after class and hear the teacher tell her how embarrassing it was for her to sit there and be yelled at in front of one of her students and that she didn't appreciate it. And how would she (my friend) like it if she (the teacher) had revealed to her parents how stupid she was and how lazy she was in class. So many people tried to get that woman fired, but it never went anywhere. She's retired now, but as a student, I know how hard it is to have the adults take you seriously when you want a teacher gone. Adults just assume that the student is whining or doesn't like authority. No, the truth is I love learning, and I would love to have teachers who actually TAUGHT me something instead of writing stuff on the board from a manual.
the news about the state of our kids public educations is generally bad and continues to get worse..
the powerful teachers Unions don't like the bad news getting out, especially anthing that would make the public question their job for life - "tenure".
The media doesn't have time to do the research to report accurately. If they did, we'd get more accurate information on the economy, defence, all of the wars, and most of all, candidates running for political office.
The vetting of Sarah Palin was a joke.
Do you also blame unions for water being dry and the sun rising in the west? Is it, perhaps, the unions' fault that the moon is made of green cheese? Are the unions the ones who made the Earth flat instead of round?
Popular demand as opposed to rational thought will shape important policy. If you media people really wish to contribute, just report the news...don't make it (up).
You can't fix what you can't see!
*For the next thirty days everyone, including management, teachers, custodians should write down everything detail of their job as they go through their day.
Study and provide an outline of Dr. Deming's (father of “Total Quality Management);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_deming
Fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness.
(3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.)
Seven Deadly Diseases
(3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance)
8 Lesser Categories of Obstacles
(7. Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where the system desired by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences)
At the end of 30 days students will help write Practice and Procedure Manuals.
*Schools and Unions Leaders must provide a full forensic audit of financial records.
In God we trust; all others must bring data!
There is a problem you have not stated ... people lie and conceal data. We have regulated banks and public companies, and yet the fraud in sub-prime mortgages nearly destroyed our economy, and took the World with it. What makes you think that a system that doesn't have a fraction of the auditors and reviewers of the financial sector, and that comes from a government agency not equipped to be on the lookout for this kind of data manipulation, would be able to produce meaningful data?
Seriously! We have the story of erasures in the D.C. Do you think this is isolated? Do you think that it is as easy as stating that, "conventional union rules and pension benefits that were bankrupting their state," and that this is the whole story? Do you for one minute think that there is not an equally fervent opposition trying to distort the numbers? Seriously?
Teacher quality data is fundamentally flawed! Any conclusions you draw from it border on irrelevant. If you want a system to evaluate teachers, principals, schools, school boards, states, and the school system as a whole, this has to be systemic, wide-spread, and it has to start over.
Even your own statement is flawed. You wrote, "the reality is we've never been worse." What data do you have from the early 1900s that could compare this to today, to allow you to make this statement. I can answer that for you. You have none.
It is like asking doctors to regulate themselves, or any other profession to regulate itself. They will do so, but only to the point of sacrificing the most egregious cases of malpractice or misconduct. On the whole, groups tend to "circle the wagons" and stick together. Detractors love to point out that teachers do not police themselves well enough, but this, I believe, is a human nature issue, rather than an artifact of the profession.
This is one of the reasons why our mining industry is a joke. Mining company CEOs do not spend the resources to maintain safety standards, subjecting mine workers to the risk of tragic accidents that are, oftentimes, totally preventable.
The other factor that has enabled this has been the demise of unions. Once upon a time the United Mine Workers spent more of their time and resources policing safety issues than they did any other single issue. CEOs are not interested in expending the resources because their only allegiance is to the bottom line, not the safety of their workers. Regulation is a mixed bag.
You are correct. C-level executives are loyal to their stakeholders, primarily shareholders. They are responsible for profits (the bottom line). In the world of risk management, they make decisions like this.
Scenario: It costs X to prevent mine safety issues per year. There is a 10% chance of a mine accident. If that happens, it will cost us Y (which is less than X or less than the 10% chance over several years). So, it is cheaper to allow mine accidents, and then pay the consequences.
This is not isolated to mine safety. It happens everywhere within business. There are specialist in risk management that look at these scenarios all day, every day.
And why would they want to cover education in a fair way?
No reason.
It means less tax cuts for the Corporation if the people actually have to fund education.
Corporate Profits is much more important than Middle Class America.
And Corporations have sent their Media Minions to ignore the REAL troubles of schools.
Here.
Let me give you the Corporate Message:
Corporations that make $billions and pay their executive $millions are barely making it.
Teachers making $50K a year are living large, and are barely even working.
In the present era we have far greater concerns bankrupting us. At the federal level, for example, we have companies like Exxon-Mobil making billions of dollars in profits, not paying a dime of federal income tax, WHILE they receive about $3.5 billion in tax rebates. This practice is taking place extensively as large corporations make record profits, pay no taxes and receive large checks from the federal treasury.
We don't hear much about this. Instead we hear the argument that middle, lower-middle class and low income folks are bankrupting us through programs. I read recently that at the federal level the portion of the budget that we are arguing about only amounts to 16% of the total. The other 84% is business as usual. This country GIVES away billions and billions of dollars every year to corporations and so-called allies.
I am waiting for the Republican governors, legislators and Congresspersons to vote themselves pay cuts and pension cuts. I believe they are bankrupting us.
How can we give Corporations huge tax breaks for doing nothing?
We cannot.
We have to get public employee money to do it.
BTW.
Try to find some information about how giving Corporations tax breaks actually helps the economy.
There is not much out there.
And most of what I can find says there is no correlation.
That is, tax breaks or no breaks to corporations does not really affect their business. Just their proftis.
Given what they're given to work with, teachers have generally done an excellent job. Though unionized teachers, in general, tend to do a better one.
There is, definitely, at least as much of a crisis in education reporting as there is in education. Probably more. But given the way you're framing the questions, it seems likely that you're contributing to the crisis, not alleviating it.