The breakdown of education articles
I recently wrote about the sad state of education journalism, noting that, among other problems, most articles seem focused on anything but the actual classroom. Turns out, that's more than just anecdote. I did a little research and came across this report done by "Society's Watchdogs" of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. The authors of the report examined 403 education-related newspaper articles from four major Virginia papers over an eight-month period and found that:
Assuming these results are reasonably generalizable, it's a striking picture. How can we expect parents, and moreover citizens who don't have kids, to become informed and engaged actors in the debate over education if they're getting their information from a source that two-thirds of the time doesn't write about anything directly meaningful? It's not that administravia isn't important or worthy of public notice; it's just that too few people seem to be noticing what's going on inside the schools, and I'd hazard the proposition that conveying information about the actual state and practice of education should be a higher priority.
65% of published articles related to topics of foremost interest to the public school industry, namely, public school funding, public school staffing, and public school wage and benefit proposals (261 of 403 articles).
Other topics of public interest received substantially less attention:
• 22% addressed student achievement/state Standards of Learning performance (88 articles);
• 7% discussed the federal No Child Left Behind Act (28 articles);
• 3% were related to miscellaneous matters such as school boundary proposals (14 articles);
and
• 3% addressed public education reforms and innovations such as charter schools, home
schooling, vouchers, and tuition tax credits (12 articles).
Assuming these results are reasonably generalizable, it's a striking picture. How can we expect parents, and moreover citizens who don't have kids, to become informed and engaged actors in the debate over education if they're getting their information from a source that two-thirds of the time doesn't write about anything directly meaningful? It's not that administravia isn't important or worthy of public notice; it's just that too few people seem to be noticing what's going on inside the schools, and I'd hazard the proposition that conveying information about the actual state and practice of education should be a higher priority.
This entry was posted
on Friday, December 16, 2005 at 2:43 PM.
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