Covering the Education Wars
Covering the Education Wars
Top Story: Covering the Education Wars
With kids back in school and education coverage back on the front burner, we thought we’d turn to one of our favorite sources: Jennifer Berkshire.
Jennifer’s new book “The Education Wars” (which she co-wrote with another one of our ed favorites: U Mass prof Jack Schneider) dives deep into the history of the tensions here in the U.S. over public schools and explores why it’s always important to understand what the bigger goals are of the people you are reporting on.
We like to keep things short and simple, here at Reporting Right. But this interview was too good to shorten. So here goes.
Interview with Jennifer Berkshire
What are the top three things you think journalists need to understand about the “Education Wars?”
1) That the “Education Wars” have flared up repeatedly in this country over the decades.
2) That their continued eruption reflects deep disagreements over profound questions related to the purpose of education, who should pay for it, and who gets to call the shots about what kids learn.
3) Where there are flames, there are deep-pocketed groups doing the fanning. One of the stories we recount in our book is about a then brand new group called the Heritage Foundation rushing to the scene of a school board conflict in West Virginia in the ’70s to try to convince parents to pull their kids out of the public schools because they were being indoctrinated into atheism and cannibalism. Sound familiar?
Are there “Education War” stories that you think routinely go unreported?
We don’t hear nearly enough about how often candidates who are allied with Moms for Liberty and other extreme groups lose.
Relatedly, there isn’t enough coverage about communities where such groups have won, only to be rejected in a subsequent cycle.
Take Florida, where voters recently shellacked extremist candidates, handing Governor Ron DeSantis one of the biggest setbacks of his time in office. But just a few weeks later, we were back to the same gullible reporting from national outlets repeating the same claims about suburban moms who are going to vote for Trump because of something to do with trans athletes.
How should journalists be reporting on the “Education Wars” and the upcoming election?
I’d love to see journalists do a better job of conveying what some of these extreme policy pledges would actually mean for students and parents.
For example, I see lots of references to Project 2025 and its goal of eliminating the Department of Education. But you have to dig around to find out that that means deep cuts to school spending, especially to schools attended by poor and rural students.
Also, journalists need to recognize that education politics have shifted dramatically in the past few years, and that the GOP is now running to essentially end public education as we know it. That’s a major development with profound consequences, and yet too often, the coverage of these issues leaves out the real stakes in favor of talking points from advocacy groups.
When covering the “Education Wars,” how can journalists deal with efforts to spread misinformation?
You mean like when Trump claimed during his appearance at the Moms for Liberty summit that schools are performing gender transition surgeries? I actually think that instead of trying to debunk the latest wild complaint it would be far more productive for journalists to help us understand the “why” or the “who” behind these claims.
For example, when Texas Governor Greg Abbot warns about a “rising tide of transgenderism swamping Texas’ public schools,” it’s actually really helpful to know that 1) enacting private school vouchers is his top legislative priority and 2) the largest funders of the Texas GOP are a couple of Christian Nationalists who don’t believe in public education at all.
As folks work to protect their school districts from unconstitutional efforts to ban books or introduce religious instruction into schools, who are the key players on the side of democracy that you think reporters ought to be covering?
Pay attention to who is in the coalitions that we see forming in communities all across the country, especially when they represent groups or causes that haven’t traditionally been involved in education.
There’s a tendency to view all of these conflicts through the lens of parents vs. teachers unions. But what’s so interesting about our current moment is that you see LGBTQ groups, voting groups, business groups, and even some organizations of moderate Republicans getting involved. Seek out their voices and help us understand why they view the threats to public education as such a big deal.
Some of Jennifer’s Recent Education Favorites
Jeremy Schwartz’s story for ProPublica about a Texas school board member who pledged to root out indoctrination in the local schools, only to discover that there wasn’t any.
CNN’s story about how the American Federation of Children, which Betsy DeVos founded, has spent more than $250 million to try to enact school vouchers.
And One of Our Favorites
How to spot a Dark Money ed org: Hint - It grows at the speed of a multinational corporation.
We’re Listening To
The Voucher Scam - a 12-part podcast by the Mothers for Democracy Institute
Comic Relief
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Our Staff
Executive Editor Kyle Spencer
Managing Editor Christen Gall
Our Board of Advisors
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability
David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy
Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations
Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.
Reed Gallen, co-founder of The Lincoln Project
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
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