From part-time media watcher (and unabashed charter advocate) Neerav Kingsland:
Study on NOLA shows unheard of gains for minority students.
National media mentions: 0.
Donald Trump does X.
National media mentions: ∞
True enough, there hasn’t been much mainstream news coverage of the eye-popping results outside this Danielle Dreilinger piece in the Times-Picayune.
Why not? Three possible reasons:
One possible reason is that the results were first presented earlier this summer so they’re dramatic but not entirely new or necessarily national. This is the least plausible reason, but might be used as an excuse.
Another possible reason is that a Salon piece about New Orleans schools came out at about the same time and sucked up a lot of the air around the topic. Who wants to write up a report when someone’s just published a long feature on the topic? Also implausible, but conceivable. (More about the Salon piece in the next day or so.)
The third and most likely possible reason is that it’s August when many reporters and editors are on vacation or wish they were, a competing report — TNTP’s report on teacher professional development — came out today and attracted a lot of coverage, and by comparison anything about the highly-contested New Orleans narrative is much more complicated and fraught.
Before we all give up any hope, it’s possible that someone at the NYT, NPR, Washington Post, or AP is working on a writeup now, or that the report will be covered further down the line.
Related posts: Tulane Report Gives New Orleans High Marks; NOLA Education Coverage Diverges Sharply; A Nagging Disconnect.
