We’re excited to announce an addition to the regular content here at the WaMo web page: The Grade, a blog from the well-known education writer Alexander Russo, whom some of you may know from his previous (and continuing) work at This Week in Education.
Allow me to quote from Russo’s self-introduction:
Welcome to The Grade, a new blog about education journalism.
No actual grades will be given — though praise and criticism will be offered quite regularly.
Think of it as NPR’s “On The Media” for education news, or as a public editor or ombudsman for national K-12 news coverage.
There’s a ton of education news being pumped out every day, but what’s particularly good (or bad) about the coverage that’s being provided — and what if anything can be done to make it even better?
That’s the goal: to take a steady look at how education news gets created and see how to make it as accurate, complete, and interesting as possible.
This project was urgent enough, and unique enough, to attract funding from both the American Federation of Teachers and also from Education Post, a nonprofit funded by supporters of that loaded term, “education reform.”
As Mark Walsh of Education Week reassured his own readers after referring to Russo as “the parapatetic and highly opinionated education blogger,” his old and new haunts will coexist harmoniously:
Russo, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., tells me via email that This Week in Education, his wide-ranging education blog hosted by Scholastic, will continue “full speed ahead.” But media-related items, which have been a staple there, will now likely be found at the Grade.
For those of us (I include myself in this) who often glaze over at the technical jargon and freeze up at the poorly hidden agendas of many education writers, I look forward to reading The Grade regularly to separate the wheat from the chaff.
