Scoring High Marks on Schools

Standardized test scores rise in Baltimore. A testing gap between white and minority students narrows in Madison, WI. A much-needed school bond, given no chance of passage, wins by a landslide in Wichita.

Did civic journalism in those three cities cause such dramatic changes? It’s a tantalizing thought, one that many journalists aren’t ready to voice. In every case, the issues were too complex to comfortably make that claim.

The Wichita eagle answered questions that helped voters approve $285 million for schools.

Still, the projects shared one common characteristic – a sustained and interactive commitment on the part of the news organization – and one common result: positive change in the community. What they are perhaps most useful in illustrating is the growing awareness that a more active journalism is coming into its own.

When Baltimore education officials were trying to decide what early reading instruction texts to use, The Sun ordered copies of the books, hired reading experts to examine them and showed that a phonics-based early reading series known as Open Court was getting good results in other cities. After the The Sun published its analysis, the city switched from its top choice to Open Court.

Reading test scores have also surged. Last year, elementary school children scored remarkable gains over 1998 scores and first graders scored nearly 20 points higher than first-graders two years earlier. Improvement was seen in nearly all of the city’s 122 elementary schools, in nearly all grades.

School officials attributed the success to a number of measures: smaller class sizes but also more emphasis on reading and more teacher training, triggered in part, by the The Sun’s three-year-old “Reading by 9” initiative. Educators also cited the Open Court reading series.

The Sun doesn’t take credit for the test results, although it had a big role in getting the Open Court books into classrooms. When Maryland stiffened standards for teacher education, the newspaper did take some credit, however, because it had assigned a reporter to cover the state’s work sessions that resulted in the new standards.

“It had the effect of really causing them to be on their toes,” says Mike Bowler, education editor. “They couldn’t help but in a sense play to the reporter.”

Bowler acknowledges that the newspaper pushed the city in the direction of the phonics text and continues to be an activist for improving the schools. It’s a role that Bowler, who began his journalistic career in 1965, hasn’t always been comfortable with.

“I’m from the old school, and there’s something – even if it’s for a good cause, and there’s no better cause than reading instruction – that occasionally bothers me about being as out front as we are,” he says.

He’s not the only one. Robert Benjamin, the paper’s Maryland editor, prefers to call The Sun’s work “analytical journalism.”

“What we try to do is not just cover the Board of Education but to assess the effectiveness of what’s going on in the classrooms,” Benjamin said. “We’re really trying to get at the core issues.”

Bowler, for example, is working on a series on teacher preparation. Last year, The Sun’s “Schools that Work” series profiled elementary schools that were doing well despite poverty and other demographics that suggested they wouldn’t. In 1999, the newspaper did a “Cracking the Code” series in which a reporter followed a first-grade class through the school year as the students learned to read.

All of this is part of the award-winning “Reading by 9” program the newspaper launched in 1997. The Sun also features two education columns each week and a page in the Sunday paper devoted to reading.

“We’ve kept it up, kept at it,” Bowler says. “What we’ve really accomplished is putting reading on the front burner and making it a state-wide priority.”

Howard Libit, the education reporter who did the 1999 series, says that the newspaper’s strategy “forces us to be more creative and really think about how we can do things that affect our readers. It forces us to get into the classrooms and hold people’s feet to the fire.”

Madison: Schools of Hope Get Results

At the Wisconsin State Journal editor Frank Denton knows about holding feet to the fire. When the president of the Madison, WI school board balked at participating in the newspaper’s effort to close test score gaps between white and minority students, Denton began to stir things up.

An overwhelmingly white city with a reputation as an idyllic place to live, Madison wasn’t accustomed to the diversity of the influx of people from cities like Chicago and Milwaukee. The situation wasn’t helped by “a divisive and politicized school board, an aggressive teachers’ union and a tax-weary public,” Denton says.

“The president of the school board didn’t have any faith that this would work, but she came around. I took her to lunch and told her what I planned to do. She said she’d talk to her associates and decide whether to participate,” Denton said. In the end, both the superintendent and union leader did too.

A survey helped the paper identify the community’s major education issues: race and culture, safety and discipline, family involvement and cost. Denton formed a committee of community leaders to work on the project, which he dubbed “Schools of Hope.”

The State Journal partnered with WISC-TV, the CBS television affiliate. The paper shared the results of the newspaper’s Schools of Hope reporting pieces with the station as a way to promote the series. The newspaper promoted the television station’s Sunday program on the same subject.

The centerpiece of the committee’s work was a voluntary tutoring system for students having trouble with reading and other basic subjects.

Last fall, two reports showed that the achievement gap between white and minority students had, in fact, narrowed during the five years of the project. Black students gained ground on white students on 11 of 14 measures of academic achievements, while Hispanics improved on five of seven indicators.

Gains were substantial: among third-grade African-American students, reading scores rose from 28 percent below standard in 1995 to 16 percent below standard in 2000. Latino third-graders scored 16 percent below standard in five years ago, but only 2 percent below standard last year.

Leslie Ann Howard, president of United Way of Dane County and chairman of the leadership committee, praises Denton’s perseverance and willingness to go beyond just “covering news events and writing editorials.”

“It’s one of the most successful things I’ve done in my long career in journalism,” Denton acknowledges. “I think civic journalism in all its permutations has caused many editors and other journalists to rethink some of their assumptions, standards and practices and to find new ways to do journalism and involve their community in public affairs.”

A School Bond in Wichita

In Wichita, the issue was a $284.5 million school bond issue (the first in 25 years) to refurbish the city’s aging schools. The bond was given “zero chance of passage,” says Rick Thames, editor of The Wichita Eagle.

Many people had lost faith in the schools. Test scores had declined, and a growing Hispanic population strained the school system’s resources. Anti-tax sentiment and disillusionment had set in.

Thames decided that a liaison with the school system to promote the bond initiative (even a much-needed one) would compromise the newspaper’s ability to report impartially on school issues. Instead, the Eagle piggybacked on its acclaimed 1999 series, “Working for Better Schools,” which looked at problems in the school system and what it would take to fix them.

In the new effort, the Eagle assigned reporters to find out what repairs or renovations would occur in each of the 80 or so aging schools. The newspaper also solicited readers’ views and published question-and-answer pieces to “give people the information that would help them make their decision,” said Brian Whepley, the paper’s Learning Team leader.

The strategy worked: last spring, the city approved the $284.5 million measure by a 2-to-1 margin. In a letter supporting the Eagle’s nomination for a leadership award, Winston Brooks, the school superintendent, praised the paper’s in-depth stories, interactive web site, call-in opinion lines, focus stories and interviews.

“A record-breaking number of voters turned out for the special election and without question that was because they were informed, had questions answered and had been a part of the process through the incredible coverage provided by the Eagle,” Brooks wrote.

The Eagle’s editors believe that the paper’s 1999 schools series created a climate where a school bond issue was given strong consideration.
“Institutions like school boards are learning that with public input, they actually gain,” said Thames. “I’m seeing people in government who understand that that’s a key for reconnecting with citizens.”

Anniston: Not There Yet

In Anniston, AL, the Anniston Star is still hoping for such a moment. Editors were disappointed at the low turnout at a forum last year on the city’s hottest issue: a heavily disliked proposal to merge the Anniston and Calhoun County Schools.

“I was hoping for 400 people. We got 100,” says Laura Tutor, special projects editor.

Tutor thinks that big forums may too unwieldy for their community. What might work better are small lunches with “eight or 10 people gathered around a buffet table for a chat,” she says. “It’s a lot more intimate and less intimidating.”

Though the school merger proposal was eventually dropped, Anniston still hasn’t found a solution to problems plaguing its overwhelmingly black schools (low test scores have prompted a threatened state takeover.)

But a possible mechanism for change is in place: a city-sponsored group of community leaders has pledged to have students reading at grade level within 10 years and is amassing a group of volunteer tutors.

H. Brandt Ayers, the Star’s publisher, chairs the committee, but Geni Certain, a former managing editor who runs the paper’s web site, says the Star “distances itself from the group so that we can cover it with some objectivity.”

The newspaper is in the process of redesigning its web site in hopes of getting more citizen participation. The newspaper’s on-line reader database has grown to 250 people, but few of them participate in the on-line discussions on various community issues, says Certain.

Still, she says, “Having the site itself has been good for the community, and it certainly has made the issues and news of the local community available to our far-flung population.”

Hope in Monroe as Project Begins

In Monroe, LA, The News Star is working toward a March town hall meeting that grew out of a brainstorming session on how the newspaper could be a catalyst for improving the schools, many of which serve areas of abject poverty. About 40 percent of the students don’t graduate, says Ken Stickney, managing editor.

“We want to find out why so many of our children are failing at rates higher than elsewhere,” he said. “We’re going to coordinate a lot of public meetings and try to serve as a sounding board so that people offer some solutions.”
The paper’s civic mapping project is taking reporters into neighborhoods to learn community problems first-hand. “We’re hopeless out here if we don’t do those things,” says Stickney. “We can curse the darkness or light a candle. We’re saying: get a match.”

New Efforts Under Way in Philly, Tucson

Poverty is also an issue in Philadelphia, where the Daily News will kick off a Fall 2001 focus on the public schools. A web site will engage parents in discussion about homework, standardized test and race relations.

Debi Licklider, new initiatives editor, says the paper plans a two-part education section in March that editors hope will be a blueprint for improving city schools.

In Arizona, the The Arizona Daily Star and The Tucson Citizen, along with nine local television outlets, are following up on a town hall meeting on teen violence with an exploration of why students are failing statewide tests for graduation. Tucson has a large population of Spanish-speaking children, and there is on-going debate over bilingual education.

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Lessons Learned

In his years of practicing civic journalism, Wisconsin State Journal editor Frank Denton has learned a few things – although he confesses, “We’re all kind of inventing it as we go.”

His lessons from “Schools of Hope” may help other civic journalists:

• Appropriate civic journalism won’t undermine a news organization’s credibility but can enhance it.
• The reason journalists have remarkable power in the community and among leaders is that they use this power sparingly.
• Citizens are not apathetic about public affairs. They may be alienated, but will become involved if they are informed and motivated.
• Political leadership may be inadequate for long-term solutions to long-term issues, but committed community leadership can maintain focus.
• Civic journalism alone is not sufficient to bring about lasting change. Mechanisms and structures for active citizen participation are necessary.
• Putting a human face to a community issue can engage citizens who really want to understand how their time can be spent to make a difference.