How the Pandemic Has Changed K-12 Coverage (Opinion)

Last Month – End education next—My research assistant Ilana Ovental and I carefully examined In the media coverage of education. We were particularly interested in how the pandemic changed the focus of coverage.

If you are interested, please read the full text. (It’s not long, but it features some simple graphs that tell a very interesting story.) But I also thought it was worth flagging some of the key points here.

After all, a decade or two ago, those in the education reform business lamented that education wasn’t getting the attention it deserved. Their belief that star turns will fuel school improvement played a big part in explaining the education reformers who made a fuss about the niche film Waiting for Superman in 2010.

Well, starting with the Common Core hype, education is finally in the spotlight. In fact, in 2022, there will be more school masking than Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and quarterback icon Tom Brady (retired, never retired, divorced, had the worst season of 2000). garnered media attention.

To see what is covered, we used Lexis Nexis’ academic search engine, Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic). This gives you access to 17,000 news, business and legal sources. We look at a variety of issues, many of which date back to the turn of the century.

Here are some points.

It’s amazing to realize that topics that are inevitable these days were nowhere to be seen just three years ago.Critical Race Theory, School Masking, and Distance Learning Combined In all of 2019, it received less than 500 media mentions, while school masking alone received far more. every week 2022.

Surprisingly, the pandemic hasn’t been a particularly high-profile time for school choice, despite the enactment of many state laws dubbing 2021 the “Year of School Choices.” For “school choice,” we have seen no meaningful change in media coverage during the pandemic since before 2020. The number of mentions actually decreased in both 2020 and his 2021, and is almost back to pre-pandemic norms in 2022. The same pattern applied to school. Voucher and tax credit scholarships and homeschooling saw a noticeable (but relatively short-lived) recovery in 2020.

More generally, those who call on schools for media attention should be careful about what they want. In particular, it’s important to keep in mind that attention tends to be focused on things that are dramatic and controversial. In our experience, those who want more coverage tend to have careful descriptions of complex school improvement strategies in mind. It looks novel or controversial.

A bigger point here may be that the issues at stake tend to be in the press when there is a sense that they directly affect everyday life. It fits the bill. Disputes over common core or critical race theories have raised real concerns among parents and educators on both sides of the controversy: Are their students or their schools politically motivated? It means that they will be harmed by strategically motivated adversaries.

It is eye-opening to realize that some topics that were ubiquitous during the pandemic were completely invisible just three years ago. This is a reminder of how quickly various high-profile reforms and issues dominated the world of education and then left. This is a warning to school leaders, funders and advocates who tend to rethink or rearrange their missions and visions to fit the latest (but often short-lived) changed reality.

Finally, aside from masking, school choice, DEI, and gender identity, the data suggest (perhaps to the surprise of some readers) that media attention to the K-12 topic will be across the board in 2022. suggesting that it has declined. As we look to 2023, the pandemic seems largely behind us and less attention has been paid to blended learning, SEL, important race theories, etc., so the new year will be more like 2019. or we enter a very different era post-pandemic. Time will tell.