Re: Fw: Here's the email for distribution and posting

["Horn, James" <jhorn@monmouth.edu>]

Can someone send me an attached Word version and I will post it, too.  Thanks.

jhorn@monmouth.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org on behalf of GERALD BRACEY
Sent: Wed 2/27/2008 2:54 AM
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: [arn-l] Fw: Here's the email for distribution and posting
 
I don't think I've seen this come over the ARN network, so I supply it here.  I'll send the respnses so far, as well.


Jerry
----- Original Message ----- 
From: David Marshak 
To: Philip Kovacs ; Jerry Bracey ; Deborah Meier ; William Spady ; Susan Ohanion 
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 10:29 PM
Subject: Here's the email for distribution and posting


On February 25, David Marshak, Philip Kovacs, Susan Ohanian, Jerry Bracey, William Spady, and Deborah Meier sent the letter below to the editors of Education Week, calling on them to adhere to basic ethical standards of journalism in future publications.

The letter calls on Virginia Edwards, Ed Week?s editor and publisher, and her colleagues to cease publication of Quality Counts, which is advocacy, not reporting. It is unethical for reporters to engage in policy advocacy, which is a central element in Quality Counts. Or, at the least, if Ed Week insists on acting as an advocate, it must separate its reporting staff from its advocacy staff the way all American newspapers do.

Please read the letter, and if you share this concern, please send your own email of complaint to Virginia Edwards and each of her colleagues (names and email addresses below). We know that many thousands of educators share our concern about Ed Week?s inappropriate advocacy, and we hope that an outpouring of email in this vein will have an impact on Ed Week?s editors. (Please copy your email to dmarshak@seattleu.edu so we can keep track of what?s happening with this effort.) And if you intend to join us in this campaign, please send your email ASAP?and before March 4!

________________________________________________________________

Virginia Edwards, Editor and Publisher??????????? ??????????? gined@epe.org

Gregory Chronister, Executive Editor??????????? ??????????? gchron@epe.org

Lynn Olson, Project Editor for Quality Counts??????????? lolson@epe.org

Karen Diegmueller, Managing Editor??????????? ??????????? kdieg@epe.org

Mark W. Bomster, Asst. Managing Editor??????????? mbomster@epe.org

________________________________________________________________

IT?S TIME FOR EDUCATION WEEK TO CEASE ITS VIOLATION OF BASIC JOURNALISTIC ETHICS

?

The editors of Education Week claim to be objective journalists, but with their Quality Counts publication, they abandon objectivity and promote the standards-and-testing industrial school paradigm of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this context, they are no longer reporters; they have chosen to act as advocates.

The editors of Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), the nonprofit that publishes Education Week, say that their mission is to ?help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education. We cover local, state, and national news and issues from preschool through the 12th grade.? Education Week does not publish its own editorials, and it claims not to advocate for particular ideological or policy positions.

Yet for more than a decade EPE has published its Quality Counts? (QC) annual volume, purporting to assess the condition of American public schooling from a neutral and fair-minded vantage. Education Week has presented Quality Counts? (QC) as if it were any other piece of journalism, that is, a piece of reporting. But a quick inspection of the 2008 volume reveals the dishonesty in this presentation. Quality Counts is not reporting in any normal sense of the word. Rather it is advocacy. Its assertions and conclusions often support particular policy positions. A few examples reveal these characteristics.

??????? QC embraces the position that state academic standards are a positive force in schooling (p. 45). This is an ideological position. QC offers no evidence to support this position. While most corporate and political leaders and many school leaders embrace this position, many educators and parents believe that standards constrain learning more than they enable it, that standardization of learning is an antiquated artifact of the 20th century that hinders creativity and the personalization of learning.

??????? QC accepts the criteria of an unpublished review of state standards conducted by the American Federation of Teachers, dated October-November 2007 (p. 45). This review judges state standards in terms of the following attributes: ?clear, specific, and grounded in content.? Here QC is embracing an advocacy position of the AFT. To employ an unpublished document that cannot be reviewed is also bizarre for a publication that calls itself journalistic.

??????? QC awards positive scores to states that ?assign ratings to all schools?? and ?sanction low-performing schools. (p. 47). ?These are additional advocacy stances. There is no evidence that, for example, Florida?s crude A-F rating system does anything for children other than intensify test preparation. Nor does QC offer evidence that sanctioning ?low-performing schools? does anyone any good.

??????? QC advocates for the ideological position that ?all high school students?(should) take a college-preparatory curriculum to earn a diploma?? (p. 48) This is yet another value-based position, not reportage. While some politicians and educators support this goal, others note that a more differentiated high school curriculum is likely to better serve the very diverse high school population, particularly since a large percentage of new jobs in the decades to come will not require a college degree.

??????? QC awards points to states where ?teacher evaluation is tied to student achievement? (p. 51).? Such a policy is extremely controversial, given that many educators and analysts agree that efforts at this sort of simplistic cause-and-effect delineation both distort the complexity of causation in the schooling process and increase pressure for schools to become test preparation factories.

These examples and others in Quality Counts display the profound ideological bias in this document. In this volume the EPE editors?Virginia Edwards, the editor and publisher; Gregory Chronister, the executive editor; Lynn Olson, the executive project editor; Karen Diegmueller, the managing editor; and Mark W. Bomster, the assistant managing editor?are not journalists engaged in good faith, objective reporting. They are powerful advocates for a particular school ideology: state standards, the simplistic labeling of schools based on narrow indicators and the ?sanctioning of low-performing schools,? ?teacher evaluation tied to student achievement,? and so on?seemingly the whole industrial paradigm of schooling, from Ellwood Cubberly to George W. Bush.

If these EPE editors are not willing to publicly acknowledge their work as advocates in their yearly publication of Quality Counts, how can we trust the fairness of what they present each week in Education Week?

We call on Ms. Edwards and her colleagues to rectify this situation in which Education Week pretends to be a neutral reporter but actually engages in advocacy. Two obvious remedies come to mind.

1. EPE could cease to act as an advocate and thus cease to publish advocacy pieces such as Quality Counts.

2. EPE could play by the rules just as every other newspaper does and establish an identified editorial function. Then it would need to separate its reporters from its editorialists. Even the Wall Street Journal and the New Hampshire Union-Leader meet this standard.

It?s certainly long past time for Ms. Edwards and her colleagues to give up this charade of objectivity and play by the same journalistic rules as everyone else.

David Marshak

Philip Kovacs

Susan Ohanian

Jerry Bracey

William Spady

Deborah Meier



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hi everyone,



On February 25, David Marshak, Philip Kovacs, Susan Ohanian, Jerry  
Bracey, William Spady, and Deborah Meier sent the letter below to the  
editors of Education Week, calling on them to adhere to basic ethical  
standards of journalism in future publications.

The letter calls on Virginia Edwards, Ed Week's editor and  
publisher, and her colleagues to cease publication of Quality Counts,  
which is advocacy, not reporting. It is unethical for reporters to  
engage in policy advocacy, which is a central element in Quality  
Counts. Or, at the least, if Ed Week insists on acting as an  
advocate, it must separate its reporting staff from its advocacy  
staff the way all American newspapers do.

Please read the letter, and if you share this concern, please send  
your own email of complaint to Virginia Edwards and each of her  
colleagues (names and email addresses below). We know that many  
thousands of educators share our concern about Ed Week's  
inappropriate advocacy, and we hope that an outpouring of email in  
this vein will have an impact on Ed Week's editors. (Please copy  
your email to dmarshak@seattleu.edu so we can keep track of what's  
happening with this effort.) And if you intend to join us in this  
campaign, please send your email ASAP-and before March 4!

________________________________________________________________

Virginia Edwards, Editor and Publisher                         
gined@epe.org

Gregory Chronister, Executive Editor                         
gchron@epe.org

Lynn Olson, Project Editor for Quality Counts            lolson@epe.org

Karen Diegmueller, Managing Editor                        kdieg@epe.org

Mark W. Bomster, Asst. Managing Editor            mbomster@epe.org

________________________________________________________________

IT'S TIME FOR EDUCATION WEEK TO CEASE ITS VIOLATION OF BASIC  
JOURNALISTIC ETHICS



The editors of Education Week claim to be objective journalists, but  
with their Quality Counts publication, they abandon objectivity and  
promote the standards-and-testing industrial school paradigm of No  
Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this context, they are no longer  
reporters; they have chosen to act as advocates.

The editors of Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), the nonprofit  
that publishes Education Week, say that their mission is to "help  
raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals  
and the public of important issues in American education. We cover  
local, state, and national news and issues from preschool through the  
12th grade." Education Week does not publish its own editorials, and  
it claims not to advocate for particular ideological or policy  
positions.

Yet for more than a decade EPE has published its Quality Counts  (QC)  
annual volume, purporting to assess the condition of American public  
schooling from a neutral and fair-minded vantage. Education Week has  
presented Quality Counts  (QC) as if it were any other piece of  
journalism, that is, a piece of reporting. But a quick inspection of  
the 2008 volume reveals the dishonesty in this presentation. Quality  
Counts is not reporting in any normal sense of the word. Rather it is  
advocacy. Its assertions and conclusions often support particular  
policy positions. A few examples reveal these characteristics.

§       QC embraces the position that state academic standards are a  
positive force in schooling (p. 45). This is an ideological position.  
QC offers no evidence to support this position. While most corporate  
and political leaders and many school leaders embrace this position,  
many educators and parents believe that standards constrain learning  
more than they enable it, that standardization of learning is an  
antiquated artifact of the 20th century that hinders creativity and  
the personalization of learning.

§       QC accepts the criteria of an unpublished review of state  
standards conducted by the American Federation of Teachers, dated  
October-November 2007 (p. 45). This review judges state standards in  
terms of the following attributes: "clear, specific, and grounded in  
content." Here QC is embracing an advocacy position of the AFT. To  
employ an unpublished document that cannot be reviewed is also  
bizarre for a publication that calls itself journalistic.

§       QC awards positive scores to states that "assign ratings to  
all schools." and "sanction low-performing schools. (p. 47).   
These are additional advocacy stances. There is no evidence that, for  
example, Florida's crude A-F rating system does anything for  
children other than intensify test preparation. Nor does QC offer  
evidence that sanctioning "low-performing schools" does anyone any  
good.

§       QC advocates for the ideological position that "all high  
school students.(should) take a college-preparatory curriculum to  
earn a diploma." (p. 48) This is yet another value-based position,  
not reportage. While some politicians and educators support this  
goal, others note that a more differentiated high school curriculum  
is likely to better serve the very diverse high school population,  
particularly since a large percentage of new jobs in the decades to  
come will not require a college degree.

§       QC awards points to states where "teacher evaluation is  
tied to student achievement" (p. 51).  Such a policy is extremely  
controversial, given that many educators and analysts agree that  
efforts at this sort of simplistic cause-and-effect delineation both  
distort the complexity of causation in the schooling process and  
increase pressure for schools to become test preparation factories.

These examples and others in Quality Counts display the profound  
ideological bias in this document. In this volume the EPE editors- 
Virginia Edwards, the editor and publisher; Gregory Chronister, the  
executive editor; Lynn Olson, the executive project editor; Karen  
Diegmueller, the managing editor; and Mark W. Bomster, the assistant  
managing editor-are not journalists engaged in good faith, objective  
reporting. They are powerful advocates for a particular school  
ideology: state standards, the simplistic labeling of schools based  
on narrow indicators and the "sanctioning of low-performing  
schools," "teacher evaluation tied to student achievement," and  
so on-seemingly the whole industrial paradigm of schooling, from  
Ellwood Cubberly to George W. Bush.

If these EPE editors are not willing to publicly acknowledge their  
work as advocates in their yearly publication of Quality Counts, how  
can we trust the fairness of what they present each week in Education  
Week?

We call on Ms. Edwards and her colleagues to rectify this situation  
in which Education Week pretends to be a neutral reporter but  
actually engages in advocacy. Two obvious remedies come to mind.

1. EPE could cease to act as an advocate and thus cease to publish  
advocacy pieces such as Quality Counts.

2. EPE could play by the rules just as every other newspaper does and  
establish an identified editorial function. Then it would need to  
separate its reporters from its editorialists. Even the Wall Street  
Journal and the New Hampshire Union-Leader meet this standard.

It's certainly long past time for Ms. Edwards and her colleagues to  
give up this charade of objectivity and play by the same journalistic  
rules as everyone else.

David Marshak

Philip Kovacs

Susan Ohanian

Jerry Bracey

William Spady

Deborah Meier-------------------------------------------------------
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