Spotlight, P.R., & the State of the Schools

Generally speaking, I am not a movie person.

It's rather ironic, then, that I am talking about movies twice in one week!

[The first time was last Friday, where I gave the Welcome at the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice fundraising breakfast, and talked about how Sandra Bullock's character in Miss Congeniality wants world peace, and how we know we can't just want world peace, we have to act on it. Check out ICPJ here.]

Probably my favorite movie of last year was the movie Spotlight. That's the movie about the Boston Globe reporters who uncovered the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. I was fascinated by the work the reporters did to uncover the story, to build the case. If you were watching, though, there was a part that horrified me. (And no, it's not what you think--of course the scandal itself is horrifying--this is more subtle.) There's a part in the movie when 9/11 happens. (And yes, that too is horrifying--but again, this is more subtle.)

What happens to the reporters working on Spotlight when 9/11 happens? They get pulled off their project. Every one of them. [In the process, they upset many of the survivors/witnesses they had interviewed.] The project, uncovering the abuse scandal, languished.

And if that was the case in 2001, that is even more the case now.

Look at what happened in Flint! If not for the dedication of an investigative reporter hired by the ACLU (not the usual path for investigative journalism, to be hired by a nonprofit), who knows when this story would have seen the light of day! After it broke, some Flint MLive reporters and Detroit Free Press and Detroit News reporters have turned their attention to the story in Flint (and they've done an excellent job)--but I imagine that in doing so, they have been pulled off some equally important story, that in turn may never see the light of day.

We need to do a better job supporting investigative journalism. The model we have is not working, and investigative journalism is critical to our democracy.

Right now we have a single, new to town, education reporter for MLive in Ann Arbor. (Welcome, Lauren Slagter.) And yet in Washtenaw County we have over 46,000 K-12 students in our county, and thousands of school teachers/staff.

Meanwhile, Monet Tiedemann has been live blogging as many of the Ann Arbor school board meetings as she can at annarbivore.com.

But that's it.

The situation is similar, or worse, in Dexter, Chelsea (they have Chelsea Update, at least), Saline, Ypsilanti...

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So if you've been paying attention, you will notice that Ann Arbor school administration--and to a lesser but notable extent, Chelsea, Dexter, Saline, and Ypsilanti school administration--have been putting a lot of effort into their own P.R. machines. You can see evidence of this on twitter, and facebook;  in emailed newsletters; and on their school web sites. Each of them, in their own way, are trying to promote their districts, share the good news about their districts, draw attention to their districts. And who can blame them? Journalists are few and far between.

So last week, Jeanice Swift organized a "State of the Ann Arbor Schools" event. She had the Community High band Tempus Fugit play, she had Rep. Jeff Irwin and County Commissioner Andy LaBarre speak, and she herself spoke.

Tempus Fugit playing at the State of the Schools.
L to R: Aidan Wada-Dawson, Jonathan Lynn, Aaron Willette,
Seamus Lynch, Danny Freiband, Avery Farmer.

Rep. Jeff Irwin speaking. He had my favorite line:
"Education is economic development."

And I think that organizing this event, from the point of view of promoting the school district, was a good idea. I do hope that next year the event will be held in one of our schools, and not on the second floor of a hotel with no easy parking. I do hope that next year the event will be widely promoted to parents, PTOs, etc. In other words, I'd like to see 200 citizens in addition to the 50 or so administrators and blue ribbon panel members that were there.

In full disclosure, I left before Jeanice Swift spoke, so I'm not sure what she said exactly. But based on the handouts, I imagine she talked about happy things, like the fact that graduation rates are improving, and that she discussed some of the new district initiatives.

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In case you are wondering, I don't expect Jeanice Swift, in a State of the Schools event, to dwell on issues that are significant problems, and even if she does or did, I would expect her to give a PR perspective on it, because essentially, this is a PR event.

It's reasonable to expect that not everything is hunky-dory, and that it might require someone from the outside to look in and see what's not working. 

For instance: I think it's worth mentioning that the teachers I have spoken to are still quite upset about the time consuming and (in their opinion) ridiculous evaluation process they are now required to go through; still upset about the way the school board treated them last year during contract negotiations; worried about the way contract negotiations are going this year. And--many of them are afraid to speak out, feeling they have been implicitly threatened.

The point is this: there are a lot of great things going on in the Ann Arbor schools (and in the other local districts, too). But there are also things that don't fit the narrative of a PR machine, and they don't show up in a State of the Schools event. 

We expect that we will learn about them through the media--and at this point, I'm not really sure that's possible.

So who knows what we are missing?!

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News and Dismay, Now More Than Ever

I was rather dismayed to learn that the latest education reporter for the Ann Arbor News, Amy Biolchini, is moving to the west side of the state and September 12th is her last day.

Since I started blogging in 2009, the Ann Arbor News has lost several reporters off the education beat.

David Jesse went to the Detroit Free Press, where he's doing a nice job as a higher education reporter.
Kyle Feldscher chose to switch into reporting on courts and criminals. (I have a hard time believing that is more fun or interesting, but it definitely gets more page views and front page stories.)
Danielle Arndt moved to the west side of the stae.
Sense a pattern?

The point is--

the point is--

the point is 

that all of these reporters were fine, and could have been excellent education reporters. (Exception here: David Jesse had been, for a long time, and still is, but in a different venue.)

If only--

IF ONLY they had stuck around.

It takes time to develop sources. One reporter, in fact, is not nearly enough to cover the education beat in Washtenaw County.

Schools need the bright light of reporters digging.

And we only need look at the stories coming out of the Free Press' excellent charter series, or the information being uncovered about the EAA by Ellen Cogen Lipton and Eclectablog, to understand why.

Oh, and did I mentioned that the Ann Arbor Chronicle closed as well? Though their coverage of the Ann Arbor school board had ceased, at least there was the occasional piece about education.

On the Inside the EAA website, it says that the Freedom of Information Act is a "Tool for Transparency." For that to be true, somebody has to be there to use it...

All of this leads me feeling...dismayed. Now, more than ever.


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Ann Arbor Chronicle Column: Students and the Body Politic

Do you spend your time thinking about what it means to have a free press?

Then you might like my latest column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle: Student Press and the Body Politic.

And in this column, I talk a lot about the Washtenaw Community College Voice, the Dexter High Squall, the Community High School Communicator, and...my hometown high school newspaper, the Rye High Garnet & Black! (I could only find links for the latter to the 2011-2012 issues.)

Let me know what you think!


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New K-12 Education Reporter

I started a post on school security (coming soon to a blog near you!) about a week ago, with these words:

"First of all, welcome to new annarbor.com K-12 education reporter Amy Biolchini. Amy is not a new annarbor.com reporter, but she is new to the K-12 education beat."

Already you probably see the problem.

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago--when we were still expecting there to be an annarbor.com. And now there will only be mlive.com. I think Amy will continue to be the K-12 education reporter for Washtenaw County. 

I see Advance Publication's move as a cost-cutting measure that will mean less news in Ann Arbor--and already, there was a lot less than there was ten years ago! In short, I'm bummed. Sigh. I am, actually, happy to see the name annarbor.com gone--I always thought it was a dumb name and then when people would try and write it as Ann Arbor.com, with the space between Ann and Arbor but still with .com--well--even dumber. But whatever mlive wants to call their local print product, to me it will not be the Ann Arbor News. 

As for the reporting, the truth would be to call it uneven. Some of it has been excellent, some of it terrible. The copy editing has been awful. The main problem of the writers, in my opinion, is that there are too few of them and also too few editors. I don't expect that problem to be solved by going to mlive.

And now--whoopee--we get to be experimented on once again.

If you are interested, Mark Maynard has some more comprehensive thoughts. So does Ben Connor Barrie at Damn Arbor.  

Please, would somebody with lots of money like to buy the Ann Arbor News from Advance, the way the Boston Globe and Washington Post have been sold?

An Interview. . . With Myself!

I thought that I would do an interview of myself for a change of pace. You can interview me too, and if you have a question for me you can put it in the comments.

Oh. And I have removed the form from Haiku Monday, and in its place I have put in the haikus that others contributed. Take a look, they are good!

1. What do you think of the blogathon so far? 

June is winding down, and it's a good thing, because the Blogathon pace of writing a post a day is wearing me down, and has meant a lot of late nights for me! It's been a good experience, and I've liked being part of a "blogging community." Also I have enjoyed having some guest posters. 

What is amazing to me is that some of the things I thought for sure I would get to, I haven't gotten to write about yet. For instance, I have some great material for a couple of posts on the NWEA MAP test--and now I don't think I'll get to them until mid-July!

2. This is kind of a "housekeeping" question. Google Reader is going away July 1. Have you figured out what you are using in its place, and/or how people can keep getting your blog?

For the feeds that I get, I have started using feedly.com, and I really like it. There are some other alternatives as well. One of them is called The Old Reader and is like an older version of Google Reader. I haven't tried that, but you might. One other option that may be attractive to you (especially once I stop writing a post a day!)--you can sign up to get this blog emailed to you, there is a spot in the right-hand column to do that.

I think this also means that I can't get google alerts in an RSS feed anymore, and I'm not sure what I'll do about them. Suggestions are welcome! [My google alerts are set to really exciting topics, like Ann Arbor Public Schools and WISD...]

2. What was the most exciting education news in the last 24 hours?

In Michigan, it was undoubtedly the next step in the ACLU of Michigan's Highland Park "right to read" case. Nearly a year ago the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit alleging the state had failed to live up to its constitutional obligation to provide kids with an education. You might remember that Highland Park has an emergency manager now. [Said emergency manager was recently caught throwing out valuable black history books and said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Well, we're not in the business of running libraries." Yeah, because what business would schools have with school libraries??????"] Anyway--now the state was trying to say that because there was an emergency manager, the state had "broad immunity" from being sued. The judge didn't buy that, and the lawsuit will proceed. Read the ACLU press release here.

3. How do you feel about what the Ann Arbor Board of Education did yesterday?

I was very disappointed that the board turned away a lot of money ($500,000) for advertising revenue (billboards) and chose to dip even further (almost $400,000) into the fund balance, all the while keeping the ill-advised "tuition" 7th hour and having lots of staffing cuts. 

I am very very curious about who the semi-finalists for the superintendent position will be. 

And I really liked something that Christine Stead wrote on her blog: "I hope we will support reinstating domestic partner benefits as a result of the Supreme Court rulings today.  Snyder’s law banning partner benefits is unconstitutional."

4. Something that relates to your high school experience happened today. Tell us about it.

There is a new NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver. Adam and I went to high school together, and in fact had many classes together. We had a monthly newspaper at school, and at one point Adam was the boys' sports editor, and I was the girls' sports editor. So if he is the NBA Commissioner, why aren't I the WNBA Commissioner? 

Maybe it has something to do with Title IX.

That's all for now. . . You can send me your questions in the comments if you want, and I will try to answer them. [Yes, I like comments.]