The Arcade Fire – Black Mirror

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I always thought that the purpose of a newspaper was the report what events were happening in the world each day. Pure naïveté (for an exciting look at this, be sure to check out HBO’s The Wire: Season Five).

Our small town paper out here, The Los Angeles Times, exemplifies such a case. Most recently, the Times’ series on teacher effectiveness has opened a floodgate of criticism and discussion on all sides. In this case, the Times is clearly driving the education agenda, rather than merely reporting on it.

While still procrastinating on displaying my personal feelings towards this decision to publish teacher testing data, it’s important for me to note, at this early juncture, my first frustration with these events. Honestly, it’s a bit angering to note the fact that it is the local newspaper, and not the district itself, that is driving the education agenda in this town. LAUSD has consistently shown itself to be a re-active organization, rather than a pro-active one. Regardless of what one thinks about the validity, reliability, or effectiveness of value-added models, the fact is that rather than waiting around for two reporters to publish data like this, the district should have been actively acting internally to decide how to disseminate this data, be it to teachers, or even to principals. Rather than waiting for a newspaper to push this out into the open, LAUSD should have been studying teacher data, and developing internal support policies so that when the Times did decide to publish, the district could say “Yep, we’ve been all over this for years”. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, this latest fiasco is just the latest in a pattern of “Times Reports, LAUSD Reacts” events that have occurred in the past few years. I submit the following examples for those who might remember:

May 2009: Times reports about LAUSD’s inability to fire allegedly criminal teachers. July 2009: LAUSD reacts by firing one of the allegedly criminal teachers.

November 2008: Times reports that charter schools are the wave of the future. August 2009: LAUSD reacts by approving the giveaway of schools to charter organization.

November 2008: Times reports that Superintendent David Brewer isn’t very effective. December 2008: LAUSD reacts by buying out the rest of his contract.

Remember all that? If this school system is to truly serve the education needs of the community, then we are the ones that need to be the ones starting these conversations, not the newspaper. Just what that conversation is, however, will be left to a future post in this series.

In my next post, we’ll address the next big player in this discussion, the Union.