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March was…. busy. Some would say hectic. But there was lots of strong education coverage, and a surprising amount of good news on the hiring/jobs front.

Let’s take a look back at some of the best — and worst — education journalism of the month, along with hirings and layoffs/buyouts:

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PART 1: STRONG STORIES

🏆 GOLDSTEIN’S RETURN: New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein is back from maternity leave and that’s a good thing for fans of her education reporting. Her big piece on the West Virginia teachers strike and the history behind teacher labor actions, Fighting Poverty, Drugs, and Even Violence, All on a Teacher’s Salary, came out a few weeks ago. Her piece on teacher activism in Kentucky and Oklahoma came out on Monday.

🏆 SCHOOL DISCIPLINE CROSS-CURRENTS: Goldstein’s DC-based counterpart Erica Green has also been writing strong education stories, including this one about disparate school discipline in Minnesota. The topic is of obvious importance. And the underlying dynamics — Minnesota teachers can’t agree about how to revamp school discipline without undercutting school safety — are fascinating. (The national teachers unions are officially against the proposed repeal of the Obama discipline guidance but haven’t spent much energy on the issue.)

🏆 REPUBLICAN REVERSAL: One of the best stories of March was Michael Scherer’s Washington Post article about Republican lawmakers changing course and now supporting higher education spending levels: Why Republicans are now bragging about their investments in education. Superintendents and board members, too, are supporting the strikers, which they usually don’t. (For more about that, check out this LA Times story.)

🏆 ESSA IMPLEMENTATION UPDATE: Six months ago, insiders, advocates, and educators complained that #ESSA coverage was skimpy, superficial, and overly bureaucratic. But in the months since, coverage has improved greatly. As you’ll see from a recent column, there’s a slew of praise for reporters like Jessica Bakeman, Joy Resmovits, Erica Green, Jeff Solocheck, Jessica Calefati, Mark Kerlieber, John Fensterwald, Matt Barnum, Lauren Camera, and Tara Garcia Mathewson for the work they’re doing.

🏆 HOUSING AFFECTS EDUCATION: Few education reporters have tackled the intersection between education and housing instability more thoroughly over the past two years than The Oregonian’s Bethany Barnes does in Reading, Writing, Evicted. Whatever you might want – policy, data, stories – this series has it: a look at efforts in Austin to reduce these obstacles, and several in-depth profiles of kids and classrooms. My favorite part is the map showing each school’s level of mid-year “churn.” For more about the intersection of housing and education, you might find this interview with Matt Desmond, author of “Evicted,” helpful.

PART 2: NEW HIRES/NEW JOBS

🏆 CHICAGO PUBLIC RADIO EXPANSION: While Chalkbeat Chicago is getting off the ground, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio hired two more education reporters: Adriana Cardona-Maguigad, currently an investigative reporter at Univision, will be a CPS/”Chicago kids” reporter. Kate McGee, currently an education reporter at WAMU, will cover higher education.The outlet now has five education journalists, making it “the largest and most accomplished education reporting team in Chicago,” according to an announcement from education editor Kate Grossman. (Actually, WBEZ Education might now be among the largest education reporting teams in the nation.)

🏆 SPENCER FELLOWS ANNOUNCED: Big congrats to the newly-announced Spencer Education Reporting Fellows, Emmanuel Felton (Hechinger Report), Kalyn Belsha (Chicago Reporter), Eliza Shapiro (PoliticoNY), and Alexandra Fuenmayor Starr (freelance), pictured above. Here’s what they’ll be doing next year. Here’s the case against the program. The current fellows are still at it, madly getting as much as possible done before graduation day.

🏆 THE ATLANTIC RAMPS UP: Buoyed by an influx of Laurene Powell Jobs money, The Atlantic is ramping up its newsroom. Here’s a snippet from the memo announcing the hiring of Chronicle of Higher Education education reporter Adam Harris. His last story for the Chronicle came out on Friday, about black colleges in Mississippi who reluctantly agreed to a $500 million settlement that’s about to run out. More about The Atlantic expansion and the Emerson Collective in tomorrow’s column.

🏆 CHALKBEAT EXPANDS WITH NEW FOCUS ON STORYTELLING: Last week, Chalkbeat announced a bunch of new hires as part of its expansion to Newark and Chicago (its sixth and seventh regional bureaus). Some of the new hires include Sara Mosle (editing Newark), Cassie Walker Burke (bureau chief for Chicago), and Sharon Noguchi (story editor for three regions). With these additions, Chalkbeat’s editorial team is now 33 percent journalists of color, up slightly from last year. But the real story may be the network’s behind-the-scenes efforts to improve its storytelling and reach more non-education readers. The single-topic, local-first network clearly isn’t satisfied with just providing high-quality coverage of education news in regions where it’s needed.

PART 3: THIS AND THAT

🏆 DAILY PODCASTS FEATURING EDUCATION: Daily news podcasts are all the rage in early 2018, and so it’s great that they occasionally address education issues. There were two episodes of the NYT’s “The Daily” about education last week, one about gun violence in Chicago, the other about the legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Vox also has a daily news podcast, and it featured the West Virginia teachers strike way back at the start of March.

🏆 BOOKS! While we’re on the topic of Spencer fellows, USA Today education reporter Greg Toppo announced he’s moving over to Inside Higher Ed. Former TIME and BussinessWeek comms guy Robert Pondiscio let slip that he’s working on a Success Academy book. And NPR’s Anya Kamenetz got a very nice review in the NYT for her book about kids and screen time.

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😒 MORE SHAMELESSNESS FROM THE POST: The Washington Post published a sprawling piece on the rise and fall of DC public schools without any acknowledgment of the paper’s own role in puffing up the district’s accomplishments and missing problems that were developing right under its reporters’ noses. Obviously, the Post wasn’t the only organization that should have done better. But still, the Post’s writing about the scandal has been pretty shameless. Do they think nobody’s noticing?

😒 ARMED TEACHERS DISTRACTION: Vox tried twice last month to persuade news outlets not to cover Trump’s “armed teachers” idea as much as it did. First attempt: MSNBC CNN took the bait on arming teachers. Second: Arming teachers is a deliberate distraction. The idea didn’t deserve much attention, but the coverage just kept coming. It was catnip for newsrooms: a simple, scary story, no matter how unlikely or unusual or unpopular the idea. I regret the time spent reading those stories. Reporters and editors should regret assigning and publishing them.

😒 FAILED EBONICS COVERAGE: Twenty-two years ago, media outlets tried — and collectively failed – to cover the controversial Oakland public schools proposal to use African-American English to teach standard American English. According to Stanford linguist John Rickford, who supported the proposal, “the media refused to focus on this massive evidence of how schools fail to teach African-American students with existing methods.” Check out this column looking back at how the media performed during a national controversy and what might happen if a big language and culture debate erupted again.

😒 WOMEN OF COLOR IN JOURNALISM: The news wasn’t good for women journalists of color. As NPR coverage of a new report noted, “women of color make up less than 8% of U.S. print newsrooms and just over 6% of local radio staff.” See more report coverage from the Nieman Lab and Poynter. This isn’t anything new, of course. But it’s beyond frustrating.

😒 At least one longtime education reporter got laid off/bought out in March. That’s Diane Rado, formerly of the Chicago Tribune, who says that it wasn’t a surprise. But others may follow soon. Layoffs loom at the Denver Post and several other major newsrooms.

🎭 That’s it for March.

Every month, The Grade publishes a roundup of the best and worst education journalism of the month. Last month’s edition can be found here

Each week, The Grade publishes a roundup of the best education journalism from which many of the above items have been taken. Here are the March editions:

📧 03/30/2018 – Republican flip-flop on ed funding, Chalkbeat doubles down, & lots of other great education reporting

📧 03/23/2018 – School discipline divides Minnesota teachers, how Ebonics coverage went wrong, & tomorrow’s #MarchForOurLives protest

📧 03/16/2018 – Covering #NationalWalkoutDay, much-improved #ESSA coverage, & the shameless Washington Post

📧 03/09/2018 – Goldstein’s winning NYT teacher strike story, rethinking graphic images and gun violence journalism, & all the best education journalism of the week!

📧 03/02/2018 – #MSDStrong students return, “armed teacher” overkill, & the amazing Carvalho

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.

Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/