For Teachers and Reporters, an Uneasy Anniversary

How many people remember Sept. 11, 2001? Everyone, right?

Think again. There are fifth-graders who were born the year the World Trade Center tumbled down. There are high school sophomores for whom the terror of that day is a hazy kindergarten memory.

So it won’t be easy for every teacher who chooses to talk about Sept. 11 with their students to convey the magnitude of those events, as the Washington Post chronicled only two years ago. Resources are available, but so far, only New Jersey appears to have an official curriculum on the terrorist attack.

In fact, according to research from Diana Hess of the University of Wisconsin and Jeremy Stoddard of William and Mary College, schools often skirt the controversial aspects of 9-11, including the exploration of terrorism and its definitions. Only four of nine textbooks even described how many people were killed and who was responsible, according to a Social Education article they wrote in 2007.

That’s a critical question for reporters to ask teachers: How are they going to approach the tragedy? Dorie Turner of the Associated Press has been working on a comprehensive story that will run Sept. 3 and that’s her top recommendation: Talk to as many teachers as possible, get as many voices into your stories as you can.

Here are some groups that have developed resources that can help you get started:

• This is a terrific wrap-up by a teacher blogger of the resources on various sites, including the New York Times, PBS, the Anti-Defamation League, and the state of New Jersey curriculum.
• The Sept. 11 Education Trust, founded by Anthony Gardner, whose brother, Harvey, died in the World Trade Center, released its curriculum in 2009, and it was written about by several news organizations, including the Washington Post above and U.S. News and World Report.
• The September 11th Day of Service and Remembrance website also provides a comprehensive list of resources available as you covering teaching about 9-11.
• And New Jersey provides lesson plans, just released in July, on how to teach about Sept. 11.

College Degree: Worth More Than a Mortgage?

The payoff in extra lifetime earnings from going to college far outstrips the increasingly high cost of going, and that wage premium has grown over the past decade, according to a new report from researchers at Georgetown University.

With tuition growing faster than Americans’ income, some have questioned whether college is still worth the cost, especially if it means taking on mountains of debt. The new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce is an unabashed attempt to swat down such arguments. Read it for yourself and see if you’re persuaded.

I listened in this afternoon to a media call with Anthony Carnevale, the center’s director and an author of the report, and Jamie Merisotis, president of Lumina Foundation for Education, which helps fund the center’s work (as well as that of EWA). Lumina’s “big goal” is for 60 percent of Americans—up from around 40 percent now—to hold a degree or credential beyond high school by 2025.

In his opening remarks during the call, Merisotis said the new report “explodes the myth” that a college education is less valuable than it used to be. Especially in light of the collapse of home values, the ticket to the American dream of income security lies in education, he argued. “Today the real coin of the realm isn’t home ownership,” Merisotis said. Instead, it’s the personal and professional mobility that comes from earning a postsecondary degree or credential.

While answering questions from journalists, Merisotis said he is concerned that folks more likely to be swayed by arguments that a college degree is no longer worth the cost are those from groups at greatest risk of not going, including prospective first-generation college-goers. But those are precisely the people who need to pursue postsecondary education if the United States is going to reclaim the global edge in college attainment that it has lost, he said.

During the Q&A, EWA member George Lorenzo said the biggest obstacle to the college-completion agenda seems to be that “people simply can’t afford to go to college … If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money.”

Merisotis agreed that “the immediate challenge [of paying for college] is real.” But he said the solution is to drive down the cost of higher education. And the way to do that, he argued, is to reinvent it.

Which leaves me wondering: How long will that take? And what would we give up in the process? Of course, there are new, lower-cost alternatives emerging, including those that aim to decouple degrees from seat time and base them on competency instead. Western Governors University comes to mind. But is there enough experimentation and innovation happening to really change the cost-per-degree equation?

That question is just one of the many EWA will be exploring at our upcoming Higher Education Seminar. As we gear up for that, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the new Georgetown report and any other topics you’d like to tackle in LA.

Reporters Dig for Truth on School Cheating

Evidence that some educators are cheating on standardized tests of student achievement is attracting more and more attention in the public arena. And that's because education reporters are doing their jobs.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution education reporter Heather Vogell first uncovered unscrupulous activity in 2008, and recently a state investigation yielded a scathing report that confirmed the paper's revelations.

A team of reporters at USA Today, including education reporter and EWA member Greg Toppo, conducted a months-long investigation and found patterns of suspicious activity, including in Washington, D.C. public schools.

And now the Philadelphia Public School Notebook has exposed suspicious erasures in 89 Pennsylvania schools and run a first-person confession of cheating by an anonymous teacher.

In his July 31 column in The New York Times, Michael Winerip featured the work of EWA Immediate Past President Dale Mezzacappa and her colleagues at the Notebook. He prominently noted that the impetus for the Notebook's coverage was a session on investigating suspicious test-score patterns at EWA's 2011 National Seminar in New Orleans.

Pointing to the column, EWA President Stephanie Banchero, national education writer for The Wall Street Journal, today highlighted the reporters' work on EWA's K-12 LISTSERV for education journalists. In many cases, she pointed out, government officials had noted highly improbable numbers of erasure marks on tests but did not follow up with further investigation.

"It wasn't until our intrepid ed reporters dug in and did the hard work that these issues came to light," she wrote. "So kudos to all three of them!"

EWA's website and its new online community, EdMedia Commons, feature resources on how to cover cheating. Those resources include Vogell's Power Point presentation from her April 8 presentation in New Orleans and a video discussion between John Fremer, president of Caveon Security Inc., and Greg Toppo, the lead USA Today reporter on the paper's high-profile project.

EWA has more planned on this topic in the coming days, so check back often. And let us know your thoughts on how we can keep supporting work that makes a difference.