🏆 FROM MYANMAR TO SULLIVAN HIGH SCHOOL 🏆

Here’s a great story out this week from The Teacher Project’s Aditi Malhotra, about a refugee from Myanmar who ends up at a Chicago high school. It was published in the Chicago Sun-Times and picked up as one of the week’s best stories by Chicago magazine’s Whet Moser: “He missed four years of school in limbo as a refugee. He dropped out of high school in America to earn money for his family. But at immigrant-heavy Sullivan High School, he’s getting some of the help he needs.”

👀 A DIFFERENT KIND OF PUBLIC EDITOR 👀

This week’s column from The Grade features an interview with EWA’s longtime public editor, Emily Richmond: A different kind of public editor. In it, Richmond talks about the rationale behind her focus on encouraging journalists, her evolving notions of how best to support education reporters over the past seven years, and even her strengths and weaknesses as a beat reporter covering Clark County, Nevada from 2002-2010. I really appreciated Richmond’s candor and self-reflection — and while I have long argued for renaming the job I’ve also DEFINITELY benefited from her help and encouragement over the years. Read the whole thing here.

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📰 MEDIA TIDBITS 📰

Eliza Shapiro’s recent Politico Magazine profile of Camden’s Paymon Rouhanifard arrived burdened with an over-the-top headline (How an Unknown Reformer Rescued One of America’s Most Troubled School Districts) and generated a bit of controversy for who it quoted — and didn’t quote. So I asked some folks who might know better than me how accurate and insightful the piece was. NJ Left Behind’s Laura Waters said she thought Shapiro did a great job overall but made a couple of factual errors and engaged in “a bit of over-glamorization.” Waters noted that Rouhanifard doesn’t literally get to pick the next superintendent — that’s a gubernatorial appointment.

🔥 PEOPLE, JOBS, & AWARDS 🔥

Congrats to EWA and everyone announced in the fifth crop of EWA Reporting Fellows. See their smiling faces above. Read all about them and their projects here. Kudos also to Liz Bowie and Erica Green for their Baltimore Sun series on school desegregation efforts, which has been named a NABJ award finalist. Other finalists include Carolina Hildago for her St. Louis Public Radio story, North St. Louis teen reflects on 11 years in the desegregation program. Check out the full list here. Winners will be announced in early August.

⏰ EVENTS, DEADLINES, ANNOUNCEMENTS ⏰

Mark your calendars for a new documentary from APM Reports coming out September 9th about reading. “We talk about tests, curricula, length of school day, poverty – but we don’t really stop to look at what teachers know about reading. If you stop to look, it’s shocking.” The new doc will build off of previous coverage like this.

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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/