Yesterday, I launched a continuing feature on this page called “Rounding the Globe,” which will be my best effort to keep the Globe’s feet to the fire when it comes to editorial, op eds, and reportage about education policy. I will be looking at issues of accuracy, fairness, objectivity, and access. I plan to examine bias in a number of ways: what facts are being cited, which have been omitted, who is being interviewed and who not, and what stories are being assigned and which ones aren’t. This is all Journalism 101 stuff. But sometimes even a venerable newspaper needs to go back to basics.
Today, I want to note one story that wasn’t assigned in our region’s paper-of-record. I refer of course to Diane Ravitch’s dramatic turnaround on education reform. Ravitch is one of our most eminent education historians. For a while she was also a major policy architect in the Bush’s Department of Education and a key advocate of No Child Left Behind. She has now said good-bye to all that and, in her latest book, has come out against excessive testing, charters, and merit pay. These “reforms” don’t work, she now says.
This is a dramatic event in the national debate over education reform. Did I say, “national debate”? Make that “almost national debate.” Debate is not something that really happens in New England because the Boston Globe has lost its way as a journalistic enterprise. It will come as no surprise that the Globe had not reported on the Ravitch shift. True, in the Sunday paper there was a review of her latest book, but no news coverage. Let’s be candid: this news is very inconvenient to the Globe’s editorial position and is located way south of the paper’s comfort zone.
But perhaps I exaggerate the importance of the story. Is it really newsworthy? Does it merit the attention of top editors of the Globe?
Well, colleagues at the New York Tomes and Washington Post certainly thought it was an important story. Here are the links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03…
http://www.washingtonpost/wpdy…
I brought the Post story to the attention of the Globe’s education reporter and to columnist Scott Lehigh. I received no response from the latter, and the following terse reply from the former: “Very interesting.” End of story.
Over the years, Globe staff have assured me there was no connection between the editorial dept. and the news dept. There was no coordination. Apparently, there was only coincidence after coincidence, with a few human lapses thrown in.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Remember that great 50s hit, “When the moon hits you eye like a big pizza pie….”? That’s exactly how this story should have hit the Globe. There was no not seeing it. This was a big pizza pie right in the eye. For gosh sakes, the story is in their own parent company’s newspaper!
Boston Globe, J’Accuse!
ps: In the “Who’s Going to Guard the Guardians Dept.,” I want to correct a statement I made yesterday when discussing the consistently skewed Boston Globe news coverage of ed reform. A colleague reminds me that the Globe did have a reporter in the early 2000s, Anand Vaishnav, who really made an attempt to contact critics of official so-called reform. I am told that when he left the Globe to work for the BPS he even called up critics to thank them for their help. Let the record stand corrected. Apologies and thanks to Arnand for his fairness and professionalism.
I’ve tried over the years under my name and my Yellow Dog alias to take the Globe editors to task.
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p>The Globe, as the Reville/charter school fiasco has demonstrated, is part of an educational policy-making elite that includes our DESE, state business leaders, and “think tanks” like the Boston Foundation, (and when duty calls organizations like the National Council on Teacher Quality). It’s anti-democratic, and all too often Democratic, stinking from our President on down.
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p>You write,
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p>I often hear this issue discussed on WAMC’s The Media Project. Alan Chartock, the professor and president of the Albany station, suggests there’s a connection. Rex Smith, the editor of the Times-Union always says, no. I believe the connection is not explicit, and perhaps not even conscious, but it’s there.
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p>My guess is that it works this way: the editors write their crappy editorials, which reporters read; editors that read the editorials assign stories. Everyone learns the party line, not necessarily knowing it’s the party line. After all, most of the Democratic party buys it. Editors suggest the “right” sources to contact.
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p>The other problem is that there is not much organized opposition to ed reform. It’s taken as gospel. We have the MTA, but they don’t/can’t spend the time or money to rebut ed reform propaganda. And the MTA can be easily dismissed as self-interested. Educational research is roundly ignored. You only hear about it when it’s economists of education, who accept state test scores as a measurable output of a school. One of the grandaddies of education economics by the name of Hanushek is a fellow of the Hoover Institute. That doesn’t mean that he cooks his research, but I think it illustrates his politics pretty well.
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p>Mark
The Globe defines what the rational position on ed reform is. Reporters get the idea. Besides the Globe isn’t in the business of hiring “crazy” people in the first place. It likes to hire bright, “responsible,” “thoughtful” people. Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny.
I’m trying to think of another policy area where the policy recommendations on both sides is thoroughly de-linked from science as education. In energy, for example, most Democrats accept what needs to be done, but there’s simply a lack of political will to do it. Same in health care or foreign policy.
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p>In education, however, we have what is basically faith-based policy making.
if you read the links, Dr. Ravitch is turning away from “reforms” like charters and testing to say,
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p>In essence, the current elite opinion has pushed for more testing, and not pushed for better teaching… that’s why things aren’t improving much.
The links in my piece lead to excellent news articles about Ravitch’s change of mind.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c…
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p>It sums up the recent change of heart you are talking about.