How Not To Be An Education Reporter
Soon after New York City’s Department of Education released its teacher evaluation reports, many teachers on the list faced public scrutiny. Instead of assessing the quality of the data in the reports, the New York Post decided to go after individual teachers according to Edwize. Without reviewing the reports for mistakes, the Post publicly lambasted one teacher in particular, Pascale Mauclair, because she was listed at one of the city’s worst teachers.
Critics of the reports believe that the data is too flawed and, therefore, unfairly evaluates New York City’s public school teachers. The Post reporters, however, failed to fulfil their responsibility to critically determine the accuracy of the data before they published it.
As education reporters, we often rely on statistics to find and tell stories. But we should always analyze and report to make sure that we have correct information for public consumption.
— Rose D’souza @thewaywardrose
(Rose previously wrote a version of this post on her personal blog)
