Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Brooklyn Journalists Offer Smart Education Coverage


In an encouraging trend, two Brooklyn publications are covering public education with smart, well-researched articles that go well beyond what's provided by the mainstream media.

At the popular blog and newsletter Brooklyn Based, editor Nicole Davis has launched her education coverage with both an update on the PS9 situation and an in-depth primer on co-locations. Let's hope Davis continues to focus her considerable skills on education.

Writing the Report Card column at the Brooklyn Rail, Liza Featherstone has become a must-read for parents and policy-makers alike. See her articles on technology in education here and the surprisingly poor reviews DOE has given charters here.

For the latter article, Featherstone unearthed a DOE document that dropped some bombshells about Democracy Prep's review, including the finding that “few lessons required higher-order thinking skills or deep analysis of concepts.” When I asked Chancellor Walcott and Deputy Chancellor Sternberg at the PEP why we were clearing Board of Ed space to expand a school that can't teach critical thinking they were speechless. Eventually Sternberg responded with an offer to visit Democracy Prep.

Visit Brooklyn Rail and Brooklyn Based.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is great to see the truth being written,rather then the bias reporting being done by the Bloomberg controlled media in our city. Excessive testing and charter mania is helping to destroy our public schools.