Covering The Education Horse Race

This. This right here is the kind of education policy coverage that makes me cranky. (Okay, crankier.)

I'm looking at a piece by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat, and before I lapse into spleen ventage, let me say that Barnum often does excellent education policy journalism that avoids everything I'm about to bitch about. The following is definitely NOT meant to be a "Matt Barnum sucks" piece. But this particular article tripped many of my triggers.

"What’s next for the Laurene Powell Jobs-funded effort to rethink American high schools" has many of my least favorite features of ed reform journalism.

First, it exists. Imagine how odd it would be to open up a website and read the piece "What the guy who fixed my muffler thinks should be done about US education" or "Ed reform policy promoted by hairdresser is Pahrump." Or even, "What Mrs. McTeachalot in  Room 123 at PS 15 thinks should be done about ed policy."Laurene Powell-Jobs has no expertise in education; what she has is a giant pile of money that allows her to try to buy influence and control of a piece of the system. I get that, because she was able to buy an hour of tv packed with stars and because she was able to get schools to dance to her tune in exchange for a pile of money, she is newsworthy. But I don't have to like it, and I don't. Nor do I like that she is covered uncritically, as if her wealth is an actual qualification to try to set education policy.

Second, we get all the usual suspects in quotes. Some Maine parent gets an anonymous quote, but when you need an ed policy quote toot de suite, call Mike Petrilli or Rick Hess. In this case, Hess got the call. Skeptical voices from outside the ed reform community are not included [Update: Barnm correctly points out that Warren Simmons, who's quoted as an Annenberg guy, is now with NEPC. So this article is partially absolved.]

But mostly what trips my trigger is the horse race coverage. We talk about this during every election cycle-- it's the kind of coverage that looks at whether or not a candidate's proposed policy is gaining traction, polling well or poorly, and just generally helping or hurting. In other words, we get coverage of how the policy is affecting the race, but nothing about whether it's actually an effective policy or not. Horse race coverage tells us all about who's winning, but nothing about who we might want to actually root for.

Barnum's piece discusses Powell-Jobs's education ideas, but all the discussion is like this

Simmons said one challenge of the approach is that simply creating a handful of successful schools doesn’t mean their approaches will catch on. “That viral theory of action has failed time and time again,” he said.

When the article talks about XQ schools being "successful," it doesn't mean "successful at educating students." It means "successful at winning the horse race and giving Powell-Jobs more traction in the ed reform world." By the end of the article, the average reader has no idea whether XQ schools are on to something really great for students, or if they're just full of expensive hooey. We have a better sense of whether or not Powell-Jobs is becoming influential, but no idea at all if she should be.

This is horse race coverage-- looking at how well a policy or the policy's patron is doing, but not at whether that policy is valid, effective, or able to deliver what it promises. Horse race coverage of pharmaceuticals would cover sales figures, but not talk about whether the drug actually worked or not (unless the reporter thought that was affecting the sales).

It's doubly frustrating because, as with political races, education policy horse races have real consequences for real people. When a President makes policy choices about health care or welfare, it's not just important because it influences his poll numbers-- it's important because people are going to die if he chooses badly. When some rich person decides they wan to appoint themselves a national education tsar, their fiddling around and privatizing in search of influence doesn't just affect their personal standing-- it screws with the actual education of live human students.

When I'm emperor of the world, nobody will be allowed to write horse race coverage without including a critical evaluation of the policies being discussed and a look at the effects of those policies on real people. And if that makes the piece too long, the horse race stuff is the first thin to get cut.