Lack of knowledge, lack of experience

Chalkbeat pays young journalism majors with school reform money, and uses school reform money and influence (directly or indirectly) to gain access to sources. But this just doesn’t add up to real journalism, not when there is a lack of knowledge about New York City an New York State, a lack of knowledge about education in general, a lack of knowledge about teaching, even, quite frankly, a lack of knowledge about school reform. We end up with school reform cheerleaders, (who may in the case of the ‘reporters’ not know they are cheerleading – the ‘editors’ probably know).

But the lack of knowledge, the lack of experience, the lack of historical context, they all slip through.  Here’s an example from last week – “Traditionally, students have had to pass five “Regents” exams in order to graduate. ” How do they write that? Don’t they know that traditionally there were two kinds of diplomas, and that one did not require Regents exams? That in the late 90s school reformers pushed for doing away with the “local” diploma, and that there have since been 15 years of battles over trying to reopen some non-Regents pathway?

And when they whine that these are just details, notice that a regular local newspaper easily doesn’t screw up the details.

School reformers don’t believe that experience and knowledge matters for teachers. Glass houses. They don’t seem to believe that experience or actual knowledge matter for ‘reporters’ or ‘editors’ either.