A study released on Friday found that U.S. newspapers fail to pay attention to issues surrounding early childhood education.
Commissioned by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, a team of researchers at the University of Maryland journalism school set out to analyze how 25 newspapers covered topics on pre-kindergarten and early childhood education during 2000 and 2003. They conducted content analysis of over 1,000 news stories, case studies of newspapers in five select cities, and interviews with 25 reporters who had covered pre-K.
What they found: “a pervasive pattern of coverage that is shallow, routine, and only occasionally concerned with teaching and learning processes.”
For starters, coverage is sparse.
The study reports that “a Lexis-Nexis search of the New York Times for the year 2000, a year of significant research findings about early education, yielded 51 stories focused on early education. This number compared to 286 stories in the same year on mortgage innovations and more than 1,500 about new technologies.”
Why the disparity? Do Americans actually care more about the latest camcorder innovation than we do about educating our youngsters? It’s not like this isn’t important. Let’s break this one down for a second. Right now more than 40 percent of 3-year-olds and 66 percent of 4-year-olds are already in pre-K, and 20 governors around the country are pushing for more funding for these programs.
Then we’ve got mothers increasingly joining the workforce, research showing the benefits of early childhood education, and a nationwide preoccupation with getting a competitive educational edge both for our own kids and for the country.
In response to all of that, politicians (President Bush included) are turning their attention to early childhood education, now viewed as a way not just to take kids off their parents’ hands, but also to get them thinking and learning at a ripe young age.
What we have here is an issue that concerns parents, kids, teachers, and taxpayers footing much of the bill.
So why aren’t newspapers covering it?
One possible explanation put forward by the report is that since pre-K is still a relatively new phenomenon, no one is on the beat. That fact surfaced when the researchers sought out interviews with the reporters behind the various pre-K stories in the analysis. Of the reporters contacted, “most were quick to say ‘that’s not my job’ or ‘I don’t do that.'” Although they had penned pieces about early childhood education, it apparently wasn’t something they felt comfortable talking about — only writing about in respected newspapers.
According to the interviews, “often early education stories are picked up by general assignment reporters or those who cover the statehouse, social service agencies and even the police department … other journalists found themselves covering pre-K as part of a beat that focuses on housing, African-American affairs and health.”
Given that many of the reporters writing about pre-K aren’t even on the education beat, the next finding shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: Of the few stories that are written about pre-K, even fewer actually cover stuff like, well, like teaching and learning.
Instead, newspapers focus on what they love the most: politics and money. According to the study, 19 percent of the sampled articles dealt with funding and nearly 18 percent with politics, while only 3 percent covered standards and about 8 percent discussed surrounding social issues.
It’s not that there are no interesting and important pieces to be written about pre-K standards. Lord knows there are a lot of editorials out there weighing in on the issue. In fact, we just had one on June 5 in the Los Angeles Times by Karin Klein, complaining about Rob Reiner’s initiative to raise enough money for a “voluntary half-day preschool system for all 4-year-olds in California” that would be staffed exclusively with teachers holding a bachelor’s degree.
Klein thought the BA requirement was over the top, and asserted that pre-K “would not raise test scores.” Of course, she failed to cite anything backing that up, or to interview any expert sources. (Klein also managed to mangle the title of the classic children’s book Pat the Bunny.)
According to the Hechinger Institute study, such poorly researched pieces on pre-K are not uncommon. Only 54 percent of the sampled stories contained expert sources. The use of books, academic research, and surveys and data sets was even more disheartening — 2 percent referred to books, about 9 percent to academic research or journals, and roughly 8 percent to surveys and data sets. In short, when newspapers do give pre-K some attention, they fail to integrate any real research into the pieces.
Although Klein’s piece is teeming with unsupported hypotheticals, at least it does show that there’s more to be discussed about pre-K than just which politicians are supporting it and how much money they are pledging. There are substantial educational issues to be explored here: How much training does a pre-K teacher need? Is a BA necessary? And how much should pre-K teachers be paid in comparison to high school or middle school teachers? How much should the curriculum focus on play versus learning? What would an actual preschool utopia look like? And how much public funding would it take to get there?
There are no clear answers to these questions, but there are nuanced arguments to be made, research to be presented, experts to be interviewed, and voters to be informed. That’s where newspapers come in. Or rather, where they should come in.
Instead, what the papers jump on is the sort of scare-drama reminiscent of TV news.
Last month, Yale researchers found that pre-kindergarteners are expelled at almost three times the rate of K-12 students. And you can bet the media picked up on that bad boy! (Here’s one of many articles on that. And here’s another.)
A press overlooking a complicated issue that merits coverage but perking right up once a flashy headline comes its way? Why are we not surprised?
–Samantha Henig
Samantha Henig was a CJR Daily intern.