| 来源类型 | Report |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| How the press covers charter schools | |
| Frederick M. Hess; Jenn Hatfield; Kelsey Hamilton | |
| 发表日期 | 2016-05-19 |
| 出版年 | 2016 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | Key Points One frequently hears that media coverage of K–12 school reform is biased—although the direction of that bias is a matter of dispute. To assess these claims, we examined hundreds of articles published by major outlets on charter schooling in 2015. Charter coverage was broadly mixed and generally neutral, although there was also a sizeable amount of negative coverage. More specifically, while 49 percent of the articles were neutral or balanced in tone, the other half trended negative by a ratio of more than 2:1. Media outlets varied in the tenor of their coverage, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, outlets such as Salon and Slate were much more negative than others. Media outlets also differed in how often they mentioned race in their coverage of charter schooling. Introduction When it comes to K–12 school reform, one frequently hears that media coverage is biased—although the direction of that bias is a matter of dispute. Champions of reforms such as charter schooling complain that media outlets are hostile to such measures. At the same time, critics allege that major media outlets are favoring these policies. Reformers lament that press coverage is generally hostile or indifferent to their efforts. In February, Education Post’s Caroline Bermudez articulated these concerns at Real Clear Education: “There’s an anti-reform narrative that has taken hold, where published articles and blog posts have become so similar, they start to blur, reading like a greatest hits of talking points, an amalgamation of all the myths spewed forth against education reformers.”[1] At education news website The 74, author and former USA Today editorial writer Richard Whitmire argued that “a stunning report” on the success of New Orleans charter schools was ignored. “The national press maintained total radio silence,” he wrote. “No reports appeared in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal or USA Today. . . . The New Orleans story doesn’t fit into [the New York Times’] long-established pattern of covering charter schools, which has been to portray them as fueled by hedge funders and no-better-than-neighborhood schools.”[2] On the other side of the ledger, Pam Vogel of the progressive nonprofit Media Matters for America saw antiunion bias in newspapers. She argued, “While research shows that teachers unions benefit students, educators, and communities, state newspapers editorializing on these union activities have ignored the facts and framed unions and educators as selfishly seeking higher pay at the expense of others.”[3] At NSFW Corp in 2013, journalist Yasha Levine charged media outlets with supporting privatization: “It didn’t matter if it was Fox News, NPR, the Washington Post, LA Weekly or the local right-wing newspaper: coverage of parent trigger issues would invariably have the same pro-privatization bias, even down to their use of the same stock phrases about ‘parent empowerment’ and the need [to] give parents the ability to ‘reform’ a system that protects lazy public school teachers and . . . their union cronies.”[4] What is one to make of the competing claims? Is the media coverage of school reform obviously slanted? And, if so, in which direction does it actually slant? In the following analysis, we take up these questions for the case of charter schooling. With almost 3 million students now enrolled in more than 6,700 charter schools, charter schooling is one of the most successful and influential reforms in recent memory.[5] A quarter century after the first charter law was passed in 1991, how is charter schooling covered by major print media today? Despite the strong claims of media bias, the question of how the media covers charter schooling and school reform has received almost no systematic examination. Indeed, a careful survey turned up only a couple scattered examples of attention to this question. One such study was by Andrea Nikischer, a professor at SUNY Buffalo State. In the 2015 study “Propaganda and Policy: An Investigation into Alleged Anti-Teacher’s Union and Pro-Charter School Bias in the Buffalo News,” which is no longer publicly available, Nikischer coded 190 stories and concluded that the newspaper was very friendly to charter schools and hostile to teacher unions—with “all things in support of corporate school reform receiv[ing] positive and/or neutral coverage—and lots of it.”[6] In a 2009 paper, “Evidence of Bias in the Chicago Tribune Coverage of Organized Labor,” Robert Bruno of the University of Illinois examined the newspaper’s coverage of organized labor (including teachers unions) from 1991 to 2001.[7] Bruno found that the paper’s coverage of labor unions tended to be negative. That is about all there is to date. As a first step toward filling this vacuum, we examined hundreds of articles published by major outlets on charter schooling in 2015. While charter schooling is far from the whole of the debate over school reform, charters are a visible, bright-line divide and a useful place to start. So let’s take a look at the evidence and see what it shows. Read the full report. Notes |
| 主题 | K-12 Schooling |
| 标签 | Charter schools ; K-12 education ; US Media |
| URL | https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/how-the-press-covers-charter-schools/ |
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/206249 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Frederick M. Hess,Jenn Hatfield,Kelsey Hamilton. How the press covers charter schools. 2016. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| How-the-press-covers（335KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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