BEST OF THE WEEK

The week’s best education journalism, all in one place:

REOPENING RUMBLE

🏆 Why Are Child Care Programs Open When Schools Are Not? (New York Times)
🏆 Just bring young students back? Some schools are trying, while others see familiar roadblocks (Chalkbeat)
🏆 Back-to-school plans fuel fear of spread in children, adults (USA Today)
🏆 How safe is your school’s reopening plan? (NPR)

TOUGH DECISIONS

🏆 Can NYC reopen schools? The whole country is watching (NYT)
🏆 Amid Covid-19, NYC Teachers Union Says City Must Do More for Safe Reopening (Wall Street Journal)
🏆 CPS backtracks and moves to all-remote learning for fall (Chicago Tribune)
🏆 Chicago Catholic schools will stick with in-person learning as CPS goes online for the fall (Chicago Sun-Times)
🏆 State recommendations for reopening Texas schools fall short of public health advice (Dallas Morning News)
🏆 Massachusetts’ second largest teachers union calls for remote-only instruction (Boston Globe)

REMOTE LEARNING WORRIES

🏆 America is about to start online learning, Round 2. For millions of students, it won’t be any better. (Washington Post)
🏆 After Deal With Teachers Union, Students Can Expect (Some) Live Lessons (KPCC) See also LA Times
🏆 Survey reveals Latino parents apprehensive about remote learning (Houston Chronicle)
🏆 LAUSD parents in distress over school opening online (LA Times)
🏆 NYC students already behind in class struggling in virtual summer school (NY Daily News)

PODS & INEQUALITY

🏆 As parents rush to form pandemic learning pods, some kids are left behind (Austin American-Statesman)
🏆 Can You Form a School Pod Without Fueling Inequality? These Groups Are Trying (Wall Street Journal)
🏆 Some RI parents plan to homeschool their kids this fall (Providence Journal)
🏆 Low-income students could get preference in DC school choice landscape (Washington Post)
🏆 Even As Diversity Grows, Massachusetts Schools Remain Segregated (WBUR)
🏆 Special education students are not just falling behind in the pandemic — they’re losing key skills, parents say (Washington Post)

For additional stories every morning, follow along on Twitter.

The Ultimate Test for the Ed Lab Model Awaits
The Dallas Morning News is the latest legacy publication to launch a foundation-funded education team, starting next month. The paper’s Education Lab will join other similarly funded education teams at the Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Fresno Bee, and USA Today — and more are in the works.

In this week’s column, I make the case for the Ed Lab model. In a perfect world, high-quality education journalism would appear daily, paid for by disinterested funders and distributed widely and free to users. In the world in which we live, foundation-funded teams operating inside established commercial newsrooms seem to be a reasonable compromise between traditional news outlets and nonprofit ones.

However, the real test will come as the model proliferates or when an outlet like the New York Times jumps in, which could possibly happen sooner than you think.

 

PEOPLE, AWARDS, JOBS
Who’s going where & doing what?
🔥 Mario Koran, a reporter for the Guardian US, will be reporting on three Wisconsin school districts as a 2020-21 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow. He’ll be digging into how the districts were upended by the pandemic and the unfolding effects. Congrats!

🔥 Jobs alert! Chalkbeat is opening a new Philadelphia bureau, and they’re looking for a bureau chief. Chalkbeat is also hiring a new Indianapolis reporter. More details on the new bureau here.

🔥 The Dallas Morning News Education Lab is hiring a reporteraudience engagement producer, and reporting fellow. More on Education Lab here.

🔥 More Chalkbeat news: Cara Fitzpatrick, a former education reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, was hired as a story editor. She’ll be working with the Chicago and Philadelphia teams.

🔥 WGBH is bringing on a few new hires, including an education reporterMegan Woolhouse, a Boston Globe alum, will cover K-12 education in Massachusetts.

🔥 And New York Times national correspondent Dana Goldstein, who writes about education, is going on parental leave. The Times’ Kate Taylor, who writes about education as well as the law and sexual politics, will fill in for her.

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EVENTS
⏰ A new episode of “Nice White Parents” came out Thursday. Called “This Is Our School, How Dare You?,” it digs into how white parents can shape a school, even when they’re not there. Listen here. And read my review of the podcast from last week.

⏰ A new episode of the Educate podcast, hosted by American Public Media’s Emily Hanford, has dropped. “What the Words Say” tackles kids struggling to read and why children of color are far less likely to get the help they need. Listen here.⏰ A new FIASCO podcast from Leon Neyfakh on the 1970s busing crisis in Boston is out Aug. 13. Neyfakh said the idea came from reading the novel “Green” about a segregated public school in the city, and it couldn’t be more relevant today. You’ll find the podcast here.

⏰ Media appearances: Mark Keirleber, who covers school safety for The 74, discussed how education reporters can better cover fast-moving policy changes on EWA Radio for an episode on “The Future of School Police.” Christina Samuels, education equity reporter at Education Week, went on The Takeaway to discuss those “pandemic pods.” Wall Street Journal higher education reporter Melissa Korn and national reporter Jennifer Levitz were on KQED to talk about their book “UNACCEPTABLE: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal.” And NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz was on Morning Edition to talk about protests against school reopenings.

⏰ Upcoming: EdSource is hosting a virtual town hall Aug. 12 to discuss what back to school will look like this year for California students, families, and educators. Register here. And ResearchEd is hosting a virtual conference all week next week. Here are the themes for each day, in order: administration/policy, evidence-supported instructional practices, educating for justice, social and emotional learning, and supporting parents and families. No registration necessary! More details here.

THE KICKER
Finally, a new twist on an old classic, featuring Zoom school.
That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!

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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/