When looking for information on what’s going on in local schools and school districts, local news isn’t the only place to get the latest details — schools are doing a pretty good job keeping parents informed, especially when it came to covering the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jesse Holcomb is an assistant professor in journalism and communication at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a job he’s had for seven years after a 10-year stint at the Pew Research Center. At his core, he’s a researcher, and just before the pandemic hit, he was contracted by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to study how communities were staying informed about what was going on in their local schools and education in general.
“They were interested in where communities were getting their news about school and, furthermore, they wanted to learn more about the quality of education coverage, particularly at the local level,” Holcomb says. “They commissioned a two-part series of research and then COVID hit.”
Calvin was in the process of designing the study at the time and had to reconsider some of the questions being asked, because so many parents across the country were pivoting as well, adding “educator” to their titles and responsibilities when schools closed due to the pandemic.
The survey focused on parents of children in the K-12 education system. In partnership with the University of Chicago, a nationally representative survey was sent to parents, in both English and Spanish, on two occasions, during spring 2020 and then in August 2021, to see how things had changed.
“We definitely asked a number of questions about information priorities. It was clear both times. Parents are really concerned about the information that’s going to impact their daily lives. They’re interested in information that will help keep their kid learning and that will keep their kid safe. Pre-pandemic, that would’ve been a priority as well. But parents were also interested in safety, from bullying, but also violence in school,” Holcomb says. “Over the course of the study, it was ‘How do I keep my kid educated?’”
The survey also found that while parents are interested in curriculum, it’s not their top concern.”They’re more interested in information that will affect their day-to-day,” he says, instead of worrying about things politicians are discussing, like critical race theory.
As for the media side of the survey, “We explored coverage in 20 markets, looked at 1,500 news stories across 150 local outlets, including broadcasters, daily newspapers, digital publications and radio. … When it comes to the news agenda in local media around education, it largely mirrored or aligned with what parents were really interested in and concerned about. There was lots of local coverage focusing on teaching and learning, what’s going on in classrooms, how instruction is going to continue on during COVID. Parents were interested in whether schools were going to stay open or closed,” he says.
The survey also found that schools were doing a really good job providing parents most of that information directly, via a district or school website or other channels, in addition to civic and community organizations amplifying their messages.
That begs the question, Holcomb says: “It’s worth thinking about, collectively, who plays which of these roles in the ecosystem and who should be paying for it. I’m not saying there isn’t a role for professional verification of these facts (from journalists). Facts are slippery. But I think it’s worth taking a step back and thinking about who should be doing that work, who is best positioned to be doing it and where should journalistic labor be freed up?”
Jesse Holcomb, an assistant professor in journalism and communication at Calvin University, discusses a recent study looking at how well local news outlets are covering education. He tells It’s All Journalism host Michael O’Connell the study revealed some surprises when it came to how local newsrooms covered the pandemic.
