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HYPERLINK "" \o "@thegrade_ chapman - Twitter Search" @thegrade_ chapman - Twitter Search.More Chapman: "Over eight years covering the city schools, I think this DOE - the one we have today - is the probably most officially secretive." ?…" ? INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET With the departure of NYDN's Ben Chapman, three of the four NYC education reporters on this 2016 panel have now moved on to other outlets and beats. Add NY1's Lyndsey Christ and it's four out of five. Eliza Shapiro (far left) is the sole survivor. RUSSOPolitico NY Reporter Tries to Thread the Needle - .Politico NY Reporter Tries to Thread the NeedleAlexander Russo?August 9, 2016One of the many folks covering NYC schools is?Eliza Shapiro?(top left), education reporter for Politico New York, who’s been on the job nearly three years now.Roughly four years out of college, Shapiro previously covered national politics and crime for The Daily Beast. Her?Twitter avatar?is a picture of Larry David (aka Bernie Sanders) yelling.Politico (formerly Capital New York) is in many ways attempting to replicate Politico’s national success in the media-centric New York market (including the paywall). And so one of many tricks for Shapiro is to write frequently and incisively about education politics, avoiding getting into ruts in her coverage or letting advocates pull her into stories. There’s got to be urgency, pushing stories and breaking news, but also some ability to sift out what’s not important. It’s no easy task to do it well.So how’s Shapiro doing, according to Shapiro’s self-assessment and what others say about her work? Let’s take a look.On the education beat since her first day at Politico (covering Mayor Bill de Blasio talking about education), Shapiro explains that she’d always been interested in education. The product of five different public and private schools (and the offspring of journalists and granddaughter of a 50-year NYC teacher), she thought she brought a diverse NYC education background to the job.“Deep into the beat” now, Shapiro says that much of her coverage is driven by her own sources and instincts. She feels like she can tell when changes are coming, “I can tell when a small change is happening and it’s a big deal.”She doesn’t know or see everything, however.?There’s a weekly face-to-face education meeting with the Mayor and the Chancellor. “That’s the room I’d like most like to be in every single week.”For most education reporters, former teachers who’ve been told that the classroom is the most important place to be, this would be a heresy. But not Shapiro.?“What happens in the classroom is impacted so much by what happens at City Hall,” she says.WNYC’s Fertig thinks it’s entirely appropriate and helpful Shapiro “focuses on the politics of this stuff.”Some recent examples of her work:?Improving test scores likely to ease political pressure on City Hall,?So far, Upper West Side rezoning debate much calmer than controversy in Brooklyn,? HYPERLINK "" Fari?a pays visit to Success Academy, settling one aspect of ongoing dispute.By her own account, she’s known for charter school coverage, including a two-part series about the Success Academy network based on hundreds of pages of private internal documents. The Success Academy story, with its legislative angle, big-money implications and Clash of the Titans aspects, hit a lot of sweet spots for the Politico reporter. “It was?a reporter’s dream,” she says.Engaging as it is to cover charters and district schools, and the conflicts between the two, Shapiro knows that there’s the danger of narrowing down coverage too far. She recently wrote about Community Schools, an approach focused on wraparound services for students, which are actually more numerous than charters. “People need to start paying attention,” she says.?See her recent story here:?New York’s community school expansion rattles allies.Like other NYC education reporters, she professes sincere-sounding admiration for colleague/competitors like NY1’s Lyndsey Christ, the NY Daily News’ Ben Chapman and especially WNYC’s Beth Fertig, the unofficial dean of NYC education reporters.“She’s taught me a lot about how NYC education politics really work,” says Shapiro, who says she’s also a big admirer of Kate Taylor’s NYT Success Academy coverage, focused on the videotaped “rip and redo” of a student’s work.Shapiro’s?one big complaint is that she feels like her colleagues?aren’t as generous as she is about crediting others’ work. “I’m extremely generous to give credit where credit is due.” But not everyone follows the same rule. “I write a lot, and I’m followed quite frequently, and I’m consistently not credited as much as I credit other people.”“I would encourage [other reporters] to think about this,” she says,?without?giving any names.According to NY Daily News’ Ben Chapman, it’s her counterparts who should be admiring her: “Eliza produces a high volume of stories with a high level of detail and strong attention to context,” according to Chapman — though much of it is published behind Politico’s paywall. “She’s an extremely sophisticated reporter and is always thinking about the political implications of any education news that happens in the city.”“Her toughest competition comes from the Times and the Wall Street Journal,” says Shapiro. But smaller outlets also keep her on her toes. “Patrick Wall [from ChalkbeatNY] is one of the most exceptional education reporters,” says Shapiro. “He has such a keen eye for politics.”Like many other education reporters these days, she’s cautiously fascinated about school segregation issues. But she thinks that she and others still have lots to learn. “It’s about history and housing segregation and politics. It’s such a deep issue. Everyone needs to educate themselves on it.” Asked if she thinks that the integration coverage has been falling short, she says “I don’t think that there’s been sloppy reporting.”Asked about the related issue of white education reporters covering communities of color, Shapiro says “Most of the New York City education reporters are white, but I feel confident that myself and my fellow reporters have done the serious work of going into the schools that aren’t the ones we went to — understanding what that experience is like.”This is a common sentiment from most education reporters, though not everyone would agree that it’s so easily accomplished or represented in education coverage.Over the past three years, Shapiro?feels like she’s learned the difference between a story that’s got advocates riled up and a story that’s important more widely. “The people who make the most noise are not the ones you should spend the most time,” she says, giving opting out of standardized testing as an example.“I think that education reporters have to make sure that their coverage is not overly driven by advocacy. Advocates are great at creating noise – online and in the street – but their issues aren’t necessarily the most important ones for readers to know about, according to Shapiro. “I don’t want to write a story that goes ‘Activists say this, and advocates say that.’”Indeed, during the frenzy to report opt-out numbers during a recent administration of the New York state tests, Shapiro demurred. “It’s an incomplete picture that feeds into advocacy = not my job,“ she wrote on Twitter. “the numbers are spun so much by both sides that I find them unreliable – along with being very incomplete. Wait ‘til August!”According to Shapiro, central office policies and initiatives that impact lots of kids get lost in the shuffle. “There’s probably not enough focus on wonky policy and how the DOE functions.”At least one observer takes issue with that assessment — and some of Shapiro’s coverage. “The media is helping both sides — the charter advocates and the teachers unions — push their agendas,” according to Mona Davids, a NYC parent and head of the NYC Parents Union, who describes herself as independent from either camp. “They [Politico and the New York Times in particular] are ignoring black and brown parents.”“I?talk to plenty of parents,” responds Shapiro. “But remember, I write about policy primarily, so that involves me talking much more to elected officials and policymakers.”Related posts:WNYC’s Beth Fertig Thinks Differently About Education Reporting — & It ShowsLow-Key NYDN Reporter Ben Chapman Thrives In High-Pressure NYC Environment[White] NYC Education Reporters Talk NYC SchoolsLow-Key Reporter Thrives In High-Pressure NYC Environment - .Low-Key Reporter Thrives In High-Pressure NYC EnvironmentAlexander Russo?July 13, 2016NY Daily News education reporter Ben Chapman (above second from the right) is disconcertingly pleasant and seems awfully well-adjusted compared to?the stereotypical NYC journalist.Maybe it’s the background in travel writing that keeps him calm, or coming from the West Coast. (His Twitter bio reads in part “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.“) ?Perhaps he was just having a good day when we spoke last week.Either way, he’s been covering NYC education for more than six years now — a pretty long time for the fast-paced NYC journalism world — penning 5-7 pieces a week.?According to his Daily News biography,?Chapman?has written more than 2,000 articles about NYC schools since 2009.The Daily News is “other” NYC tabloid (the one that’s not owned by Rupert Murdoch), competing with bigger and more established outlets to cover the city’s 1800-school system.?According to Chapman, the Daily News is “the paper of the working people in NYC,” taking a more liberal perspective than the Post, and fewer negative stories.“We are commonly confused with each other because we’re both tabloids,” said Chapman. “Both present stories in a flashy, splashy manner.”Certainly, covering NYC’s $24 billion a year, 1.1 million-kid school system is not for the faint-hearted.?“There are a lot of tough issues,” said Chapman during a recent phone interview. “It’s intense to jump into that.”?And it wasn’t easy from the start.?“It was a difficult assignment at first,” admitted Chapman. ”Schools are very technical [as a beat], and it’s a very complicated system.”Winning trust and access from kids and parents, in addition to teachers and administrators, is no easy feat. But there’s no other way, according to Chapman. “My job is to bring attention on the areas of school system that need most attention.”Chapman claims to take the middle road when covering NYC schools. “In my own reporting, of course I always strive to be unbiased and give full fair treatment to whomever I’m covering,” he said. But he admits he’s “a big fan” of effective charter schools, and finds plenty of positive and negative stories to cover about all kinds of schools. “I’m not on a crusade.”Anyway, the charter/traditional school debate is missing the point, according to Chapman. “The reality for life in the city is more complicated than a simple charter school bad district school good or vice versa. Families just want good options.”By his own account, he’s known for a recent series on the costs and challenges of teachers who’ve been?removed from their classrooms. ?He won a New York State Associated Press Association award for beat reporter in 2014, based in part on his coverage of Chancellor Farina’s plan to remove more than a dozen district superintendents, the phasing out of the Bloomberg-era cell phone ban, and the demise of the computerized tracking system.Last year, he worked on an inequality series that ran to 36 pages in six installments, culminating in two town hall meetings with the Chancellor and community leaders — following other news outlets experimenting with events of various kinds.?Chapman and others at the Daily News created an awards program for teachers that’s now in its fourth year. Roughly 30 profiles are run during the year, and there’s an annual breakfast event. Last year, the Mayor attended.Working in tight quarters with journalists from competing newsrooms like WNYC, NY1, the NYT, WSJ, and Politico New York isn’t particularly Darwinian, according to Chapman.?“I personally feel competitive with them in a friendly way,” he said. “There’s a great sort of group of reporters who cover the schools here. All of us feel that way, all focused on doing the best journalism we can.”There is occasional confusion or disagreement among?the education corps covering NYC schools, noted Chapman, such as recent coverage of the departure of the principal at Boys and Girls High School. ?The NYT, WSJ, DNA Info, and the NY Post all covered it. ?“Maybe that’s an instance where some of the coverage of the story wasn’t helpful,” said Chapman. “As education reporters, we’re covering families and communities, so we have to be as careful as possible in our coverage.”Asked about allegations of bias by education reporters, Chapman said “I don’t feel like the reporters are particularly biased one way or the other.” However, it’s enormously challenging to find observers and experts to talk to who aren’t biased in some way. “Everybody is getting paid by the unions or the charter schools, so it feels like it’s really hard to find somebody who’s straight down the middle.”By and large, his work has seemed solid and I haven’t received any complaints. Chapman is one of too few education reporters who’s covered both union spending in addition to reform group spending on political campaigns (Unions Have Lobbyists, Law Firms, & PACs Too). (Covering just one side’s spending is a common occurrence in education reporting – and a big peeve of mine.) But he was also there when the Daily News joined other NYC outlets in publishing teachers’ performance scores, which was extremely objectionable to many teachers. And the Daily News editorial page is known for being strong in its support for charter schools, another contentious issue.Chapman seems unaffected by the criticism he’s received, and even more appreciative of the nuances and subtleties involved in education?now that he and his wife are parents. That’s Chapman below, with son Dion. Credit Brooke?Vermillion.Related postsNYC Education Reporters Talk NYC SchoolsFertig Thinks Differently About Education ReportingAll Eyes On Bed-StuyThe Best of the Week newsletter is “a?terrifically informative & fun weekly roundup?of the best ed writing nationwide,” according?to New York Daily News education reporter Ben Chapman.?Just recently, Chapman’s work on school bus contracts was recognized in the NYS AP awards. GONE #FakeNews – Reporting on Education Has Never Been Better - ExcelinEd.was a newspaper reporter for 17 years and I loved it. But Ben Chapman of the New York Daily News summed up the profession in a simple tweet last month: “The pay sucks and the hours are long. But at the end of the day, everybody hates you.” But as the number of newspaper reporters has collapsed, something unusual has happened. This is the golden age of education reporting. No other topic is covered with the depth and zest of education – from sweeping stories about national trends to the tragedies of school violence to thoughtful analysis of the new world of educational reform. HYPERLINK "" \o "Email" \t "_blank" EmailYou don’t regularly get a chance to hear and see education reporters talk about their work and what they’re seeing, so it was great to see this NY1 local cable news segment featuring NYC education reporters talking with host Errol Louis. Click?here?for the video – it doesn’t seem embeddableIncluded in the Mid-June panel are?Eliza Shapiro of Politico New York, Kate Taylor of the New York Times, Ben Chapman of the NY Daily News and Beth Fertig of WNYC Radio. The segment includes discussion of mayoral control and the NYC Department of Education’s efforts to turn around low-performing schools.It’s hard not to notice that the host is the only person on the panel who appears to be a person of color. The apparent lack of diversity among education reporters and editors is increasingly discussed. Most education reporters are white and female, according to a recent survey from the Education Writers Association. White reporters attempt to report on communities of color with as much sensitivity as possible, but inevitably miss or misunderstand things they see or hear that are new or unfamiliar to them.At least one of the panelists — NYDN’s Ben Chapman — is also part of the gentrification/segregation discussion that’s been going on in recent months. He and his wife, both of them new parents, were profiled in a recent award-winning New York Magazine series on?gentrification in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Another education writer, Nikole Hannah-Jones, recently wrote about being a reporter and a parent, and why she chose a low-performing segregated school for her child.One other observation is that the reporters, except perhaps Fertig, seem inclined to judge De Blasio’s much-discussed school turnaround efforts as a failure. Fertig points out that short timeframes are unfair to most turnaround efforts, though politically and financially (and journalistically) convenient. Fertig has not only been covering education for a long time now, but also comes to the beat from covering politics. (For more about her background, see? HYPERLINK "" \o "Washington Monthly | Public Radio’s Fertig Thinks Differently About Education Reporting — & It Shows" Fertig Thinks Differently About Education Reporting.) Host Lewis points out that children don’t have time to wait.The discussion illustrates the reality that reporters struggle to deal with anecdotal examples — often extreme or dramatic in nature — compared to mixed, sometimes even contradictory information from a broader set of schools or data points. The anecdotal extremes often win out, for understandable reasons, but the result can be misleading or simplistic for readers.The disconnect between anecdotes and broader kinds of data available to reporters came up not too long ago in Taylor’s NYT piece on diversity in the opt-out movement:?NYT Race & Testing Piece Ignores?Polling Data From Parents Of Color.?See also?A Nagging Disconnect?Between Vivid Anecdotes & Underlying Data?for further reading on this dynamic.The trio of?Eliza Shapiro?(NYT),?Ben Chapman?(NY Daily News), and?Madina Toure?(PoliticoNY) was on Inside City Hall?talking about the new school year.Bronx Science school officials should be punished for fight club, not the student who threatened NewserBy?BEN CHAPMAN|?NEW YORK DAILY NEWS?|OCT 31, 2016?|?10:00 PM?? INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET A Bronx Science student crossed the line by threatening a Newser involved in the fight club stories, but he shouldn't have to go to jail.As the longtime education reporter for the Daily News and as a new father, I care deeply about New York's public schools and, more specifically, the 1.1 million students they serve.I believe that the city's 1,800 schools are among America's strongest engines for helping the young reach their potential, including lifting many out of poverty.Two weeks ago, I entered uncharted territory for my family as well as for students who had engaged in illegal activity — one of whom, a 16-year-old, faces potential jail time after having been hauled into the criminal justice system as an adult.When I reported that some students at the elite Bronx High School of Science had organized a fight club, complete with videos, those students and their friends furiously turned on my family and me.My article had been posted on only a couple of hours when the source who had alerted me to the fight club messaged me that cyberbullying had broken out at the world-famous school. INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET Newser Ben Chapman says the Brooklyn DA should let the Bronx Science student off with a clean record. (Julia Xanthos/New York Daily News)"They've made you their target," the source wrote. "They've posted your phone number online."It was true. My number appeared on the fight club's 1,500-member private cyberbullying Facebook page. Still more, they posted photos of my family and my house, along with my address.Moments later my phone began ringing with threats and name calling. Those who had posted my address online, encouraged their fellow bullies to go to my house and attack my family.All told, I received hundreds of insulting and threatening text messages from more than 100 different phone numbers and dozens of Facebook users, most of them Bronx Science students and alums. Many were upset by a headline, not of my making, that called the school's brainy students dorks. INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET Tuesday's front page of the New York Daily News. (New York Daily News)To my great frustration, Education Department officials were powerless to stop the heartbreaking and frightening threats as they escalated over the next couple of days.Bronx Science principal Jean Donahue was worse than ineffective. She had reported the fight club to police in May, yet she had taken no disciplinary steps against students who were duking it out in a field across the street from the school and who were communicating about it on Facebook.Additionally, Donahue appears never to have alerted higher-ups. The school safety chief for the entire Education Department told me that he had no knowledge of a bullying ring that had posted at least 11 bloody fight videos online.As the threats worsened and my wife grew increasingly concerned for the safety of our 10-month-old son, I went to the police as a last option. INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET The city should drop the hammer on Bronx Science Principal Jean Donahue for never alerting higher-ups about the fight club. (Jeremy Bales/for New York Daily News)The NYPD posted a squad car with lights flashing overnight in front of my house on my quiet, close-knit street. My neighbors were very concerned. We all had trouble sleeping.A few days later, the police identified one of our tormentors. Soon, 16 year-old?Bronx Science junior Wataru Takada turned himself in?at the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant where I live. He was accompanied by a lawyer.The Brooklyn district attorney's office arraigned Takada, who has never been arrested before, on a charge of aggravated harassment in the second degree, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months in jail.His alleged crime was sending me a message that was not even close to the most frightening I had received. He wrote: "I really liked your article for the Daily News about nerds who fight. I think you should drop by for an interview at Bronx Science. Bring your mouthguard, bulletproof vest and great life insurance." INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET Bronx Science student Wataru Takada faces criminal charges for this online post. (Chapman, Ben)Takada also admitted to calling me twice late at night and leaving threatening and obscene messages on my personal voice mail, police told me.The teenager and his parents have declined to speak with me. Given that he had won admission to Bronx Science, I can only assume that he had hopes of attending a prestigious college and had worked hard to achieve his dreams.Those dreams are probably dashed, now that the Daily News and the New York Times have published his name and the charges he faces.What Takada did was wrong. The bullying and harassment that he participated in with classmates and Bronx Science alums are immoral and poisonous. INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET Officials at Bronx High School of Science have failed to act on bullying and harassment. (Howard Simmons/New York Daily News)Obviously, something has gone bad at Bronx Science, where for the past several years administrators have failed to act on, and even covered up, bullying and harassment that resulted in the arrest of students in 2013 and again in my case.The 78-year-old school's previous principal, Valerie Reidy, resigned amid a scandal that saw three student athletes charged with forcible touching, hazing and endangering an incompetent person in a locker room.As for accountability now, the Education Department has so far failed to discipline Donahue or any other adult at the school — even though those adults were notified about the huge online bullying ring and may have prevented teenagers from going off the rails with potentially life-altering consequences.Takada is the only person facing serious consequences - and they are very severe. Because I am told that his record was previously unblemished, I say enough is enough. In threatening me and my family, he made a terrible mistake, just as many teens do. Sending him to jail would be an overzealous use of the criminal law.Instead, I say to Chancellor Carmen Farina: punish the adults of Bronx Science and central headquarters who let this mess fester. And I say to the Brooklyn DA: Let Takada off with a clean record.What he did to his own future is punishment enough. ................
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