Classroom Drama

This recent AP story is typical of a problematic style of reporting when it comes to urban schools, their follies, and occasional triumphs.

In "100 percent of school's first class college-bound," the writer, Sharon Cohen, took the opportunity to flex her literary muscles, and in the process created a journalistic abomination. Instead of using the success of Chicago's Urban Prep charter school as a launch point for discussion of education reform and what lessons Urban Prep does and doesn't hold for that seemingly endless enterprise, she merely riffs on the personal-interest tales of three students.

This kind of criticism could be lofted at a lot of literary journalism, but in the case of education—particularly of poor black kids—it is especially troubling. That's because this type of story isn't merely cheap inspiration, but is actually counterproductive.

Writing about urban-education success stories too-often focuses on the characters of instructors and administrators—their rock-like stoicism or their dynamic personalities. Either they are effective disciplinarians who turn around the lives of wayward students, or visionaries who convince bored, behind-the-curve kids that learning is to their benefit. The classic of the genre is Deborah Meier's The Power of Their Ideas; Paul Tough's Whatever It Takes is a more recent example.

Celebrations of singular schools make good stories not because the schools provide useful lessons for reform, but precisely because they are unique—as in, not easily reproducible. They are products of circumstance and the labors of a few tenacious people.

But what the education system needs is ideas that can be implemented by mediocre educators—who make up the balance of the teaching corps—and policies that will attract better ones.

It also needs policies that make it possible for students to do better in the context of the public system that trains, and should train, most of them. That means a disavowal of destructive standardized-testing regimes and investment in quality teachers: teachers who are excited about their subjects and aren't just looking for an attractive reference for graduate school applications. Students shouldn't be filling in bubbles, but reading books. Teachers should be committed professionals. Policy could make this happen, but stories likes Cohen's suggest only that personal heroics can achieve these goals.

Her story, and many others, have also given up on a third important aim: integration, which is typically nowhere in sight. I can understand this impulse. Some education is better than none, and if integration has to be taken off the table in order to get students into the classroom, perhaps it's for the best.

At least, that's how the theory goes. But this is deeply flawed. Education is supposed to have social value. We invest in it publicly because it yields benefits for the whole polity. Among these benefits should be a less racist future, one in which trivial differences such as skin color are not vehicles for judging people. Students who learn in an integrated environment are more likely to become adults without prejudice.

The abandonment of integration goes hand in hand with the inordinate attention paid to personal-achievement narratives. In both cases, the wider social purpose of and investment in education are ignored. When we reject integration in favor of individual goals, we pass up a significant public good that education could foster, thereby making education seem less and less publicly valuable. Likewise, when we reject public policy in favor of individual efforts, we undercut the system's ability to improve as a whole, thereby further weakening the public-interest argument for education.

Do these currents reflect the American obsession with individualism? Maybe, but that obsession appears oversold, as any principled individualist could tell you. More likely the twin strands of personal achievement and integration-omission represent cognitive dissonance in the face of the realities of institutionalized poverty and racism. These tales of individual success tell us not to worry about inequality. In these stories, the United States works: everyone has the opportunity to thrive, look, here's the proof.

The result is further nourishment for the delusions that racism does not exist and that poverty is always a function of irresponsibility or laziness. And so race and class privilege are buttressed with the sentimentality that is the companion of contempt.

A fable for the day after

Today I woke to a world transformed in a terrifying way.

I first noticed it when I turned on the radio. "I never thought I'd see the day," said the news commentator—former news commentator, I would soon realize—practically on the verge of tears. What the devil is she talking about, I wondered. But there was no time to listen further, for I was late to work.

I left the house, prepared to find my neighbor who never smiles walking her equally sullen dog as it dropped turds that she pretended to ignore. Yet not only did she beam at me and loft an energetic "hello!" she had even managed to find a colored sweatshirt for the morning.

"Hello," I replied nervously. "Beautiful day," she said, peering at the clouds overhead.

"Er, yes." I continued to my office, deeply perplexed.

The road through the industrial park offered a moment to regroup. The stacks of compressed cars still leaned against each other in the junk yard. The piles of unused pallets rested unperturbed in the lot. Row upon row of disassembled scaffolding languished behind the recently erected ten-foot fence—a necessary precaution, I suppose, against the legions of prowling delinquents stealing heavy construction equipment.

But my calm was shattered when I got to my building.

In the elevator, I came upon two men on their way to the third floor. They joked and chatted. "Man, aren't you excited?" one of them asked. "It's a new day," the other said. Third floor, I thought, that's the training center. What kind of scoundrel approaches a Monday session of "professional development" with such delight?

When I got to my office, I headed straight for my desk. I couldn't bear to interact with anyone. But it was no use. I turned my computer on and found thirteen emails awaiting. "VICTORY!" shouted one subject line. "Yes We Did," went another. "Congratulations!" "I never thought I'd see the day," opined a colleague who had been listening to the same radio program. "We can all breathe easier—literally." And, simply, "YES."

I sought my footing in reason. I had to think logically, in spite of the seeming absurdity of all that I was witnessing. If we are celebrating, then there must be something we've won. So what is this victory? Who gained it?

And that's when it hit me. In retrospect it seems so obvious.

Everyone around me has been replaced by an insurance agent.

How ambivalence becomes "momentum"

When The New York Times first posted this article, the headline ran, "US Job Losses in February Obscure View of Recovery," and the lede was, "Just as unemployment in the United States seemed to be abating, the government said Friday that the economy was hit with another round of job losses last month."

Now the headline reads, "Jobless Rate Holds Steady, Raising Hopes of Recovery," and the lede: "The economy lost fewer jobs than expected in February, the government reported Friday, bolstering hopes that a still-sputtering recovery was beginning to gain momentum."

So in one case, the loss of 36,000 jobs is presented as an indicator of an economy in flux, potentially experiencing continued, or renewed, decline. In the other, the emphasis shifts to the unemployment rate, a delicately massaged collection of metrics that showed no change over the course of the month and is therefore a beacon of better days to come.

From what I can tell, the remainder of the article and the link are unchanged, and there is no notice indicating that it has been altered.

Readers who finish the story are not likely to experience the feelings of hope that the new lede and headline suggest. The article is at best ambivalent about jobs, focusing on "doubts about the recovery" and struggling individuals and businesses. A couple of economists say that the labor market is poised for a turnaround. The Labor Department's "report did not offer a clear snapshot of the economy’s underlying health," according to Javier C. Hernandez, who wrote the story (but probably not the headline or lede).

This is an object lesson in just how much interpretation is involved in reporting news and how critical the framing of a story can be. The content of the article is irrelevant to its presentation, which reflects either ambivalence or "momentum" according to the whim of an editor.

No new facts were required to inspire the change in tone, only the commitment to spin the numbers differently. Whether this commitment is ideological or the product of mere sycophancy—carrying water for the White House, regardless of who inhabits it, is a revered pastime among the mainstream media—is beside the point.

That framing is an essential element of news reporting is not exactly a revelation, nor should we be shocked to find that objectivity continues to be a myth.

But this case is interesting because it shows this framing in process. Updating earlier editions of articles is common practice, but when the changes reflect an alternative interpretation of the same facts, an interpretation with obvious political ramifications, we gain an unusually clear window on the cynical procedures of newsrooms.