Objective Transparency
(Media • Education)
I guess I should be surprised only that it never came up before in 20 years or so of news gathering, but here it is: I have a personal and emotional stake in the outcome of an issue on which I should be reporting.
In my FortBendNow day job, I report on a variety of topics including local school districts. More of our audience is based within the larger of the two districts, and thus my education reporting efforts are concentrated there. Occasionally, however, I have reported on issues within the other district, where my two youngest children attend school.
That district is undergoing a school re-zoning to accommodate a new junior and senior high school campus. The re-zoning is certain to have an impact on my kids, as I noted in this public comment submitted to the district’s zoning committee and board of trustees:
As the zoning committee and the LCISD Board of Trustees considers new attendance zones, I believe it would be prudent to consider the legal implications that could be at play depending on the outcome of the rezoning.The federal Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 prohibits the following practices at elementary or secondary schools:
- Deliberate segregation on the basis of race, color or national origin.
- Failure to remove vestiges of deliberate segregation or a dual school system.
- Transfer of students if the purpose and effect is to increase segregation on the basis of race, color, or national origin among the district’s schools.
As you are no doubt aware, there is a strong correlation between “economically disadvantaged” students at LCISD and non-white students at LCISD.
To the casual observer, the proposed distribution of economically disadvantaged/non-white LCISD students among the district’s four high school zones appears to strengthen what already has earmarks of a dual school system.
In nine of the 11 “options” currently under study by the zoning committee, just 23% of the new George Ranch High School student body would be from economically disadvantaged households. In the other two, the percentage would be 26 or 28.
Foster High School’s percentage of economically disadvantaged students drops from its current level of 32 in all but one of the options – to as low as 20% in three options, and 19% in a fourth.
Terry High School, on the other hand, would have no fewer than 69% economically disadvantaged students under any of the 11 options, although that percentage rises to as high as 72 under some options.
And at Lamar High School, where 47% of current students are economically disadvantaged, that percentage would increase under every one of the 11 options now being considered – to as much as 69% in three options.
Both Lamar and Terry missed their AYP (No Child Left Behind) performance standards in 2007, and Terry missed it again in 2008.
Three of the schools feeding Lamar and Terry – George Junior High School, Navarro Middle School and Wessendorff Middle School – missed their AYP performance standards in either 2007 or 2008. Navarro missed its AYP standards in both years.
Wertheimer Middle School and Briscoe Junior High, which feed Foster High School, never have missed their AYP standards. Neither has Foster.
Is it coincidence that the buildings housing the poorer performing schools also are by far the oldest?
Considering the above, I have serious concerns as the parent of two elementary-aged children, living in a largely economically disadvantaged neighborhood formerly zoned to Foster but zoned to Lamar under all 11 zoning options under consideration.
My main concern is that my children are being funneled into the least-desirable half of what’s turning into a dual system, where children from well-to-do mostly white families receive their educations in new buildings with superior performance records. While my children will receive their educations among mostly poor non-white students in old schools with inferior performance records.
I am not lobbying for special dispensation allowing my children to attend the more-desirable half of a dual system.
I am lobbying members of the zoning committee and school board to take this zoning opportunity to correct the current inequities among the district’s schools, instead of exacerbating them.
Thanks for your consideration.
In the old days when I supervised squads of newspaper reporters, I would have temporarily changed beats and traded reporters in order to maintain what I believed to be the paper’s standard for attempting to achieve objective coverage, had my education reporter found himself in my current predicament.
In the new no-frills online news/blogging world, however, I am the sole source of coverage for my employer in most of my home county. It’s clear to me that my objectivity has been impaired, at least as it relates to covering this particular issue involving this particular school district.
For some time now the ideal of “journalistic objectivity” has been under attack, mostly by reasonable people who seem to me to believe objectivity never truly is achieved and only serves to mask one or more stealth biases inherent in an individual or publication.
“Transparency” is offered as a preferable alternative. However, I think the evidence I present above indicates the danger of relying solely on transparency to bring credibility to a news organization or news reporter, whatever medium is used to distribute that report.
Even if I reproduced this blog post at the end of every story I reported on in the future involving this particular school district, I believe many readers would feel unconvinced that they could trust the veracity of my work. That’s unfortunate, but I understand why they might feel that way.
Transparency doesn’t help my news organization build credibility in this particular example. And the common shortcomings of the bare-bones online news organization are exposed as well – in a larger, more traditional news-gathering operation, sufficient staff would allow for the substitution of someone unencumbered by the unavoidable bias with which I have become infected. With that substitution, the news-gathering organization’s credibility not only could be maintained, it might even be enhanced by the readers’ recognition that, presented with a potential conflict of interest, the organization stepped in to protect the readers’ interest.
For me, living in the world of a bare-bones, flattened new media organization, my only option is to bench myself.
Unfortunately, there’s no one else to put out on the field.
→ B.Dunn, Jul 20, 2009, 01 59 pm
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