Tag: story

  • Cook up a news story

    Cook up a news story

    Writing is the easy part; everything that comes before that is what’s hard. 

    That’s what News Decoder founder Nelson Graves told us back in 2020. Five years later, with the prevalence of artificial intelligence, this seems more true, doesn’t it? After all, you can just tell AI to write you a story and it will comply. 

    But what’s the point of that? It is one thing if your grade depends on the completion of a paper, and your graduation depends on that grade. Or maybe you can make some money churning out AI-written copy for some website. We won’t argue ethics here. 

    The point of this article, which I am thinking up and typing up word by word with no AI involvement, is to explain why the process of writing is the point. Apple founder Steve Jobs is often quoted as saying the journey is the reward. 

    Graves told us that the best stories emerge from a process that involves doing things that many people find difficult: Introspection, questioning your assumptions and interviewing people. All that seems even more of a challenge these days when it is so easy to tune out your feelings and avoid human interactions by listening to loud music, playing video games or bingeing TV shows.

    Again, why do that when AI could spit it out for you?

    Gather your ingredients.

    Graves, who spent his career writing for the news service Reuters, reminded us that writing is easy once you have the raw goods. That made me think about cooking. 

    Why do people take cooking classes and watch cooking videos when you can buy ready-made meals at Aldi? I often spend an entire afternoon in the kitchen making soup or a stew only to have my family gobble it up in 10 minutes. 

    It is hard to put together a fancy meal at the last minute. But if you have gathered your ingredients — the chopped vegetables, marinated chicken, diced onions and minced garlic — it is easy to toss them into a frying pan where the magic happens. 

    The same goes for a news story. If you have done your research — gathered some data, a timeline of events and information and quotes from interviews — then you are all set to toss them onto a page where the magic happens. 

    Follow a recipe.

    Ask yourself: Why do people become journalists when typically they don’t make much money and often get trolled and harassed — or worse — for what they publish? Many believe in the idea of public service, but really, there is nothing that matches the feeling of having published a great story. 

    It is like the satisfaction you get when the forkful of food goes into your mouth and tastes exquisite and you know you made it. You don’t get that feeling if you bought it ready-made from Aldi.

    People who don’t cook think cooking is hard or painful or not worth the effort. The funny thing is that once someone follows a recipe and makes something really tasty, that often changes the way they think about cooking and they try another recipe another day.

    The writing process is like a recipe. There are common steps journalists often follow. They don’t just open a blank page and start writing. So here is a basic recipe you can follow for just about any news story.

    1. Decide what to cook: This is your story idea. You can start broad: I’m going to make pasta. Then narrow it down to: Maybe a lasagna? Narrow it further, maybe based on the ingredients you already have. I’m going to make a spinach lasagna. So with a story you might start with this: I’m going to do a story about climate change. Then you narrow it: Maybe a story about pollution. Then you narrow it further: How about the factories around me that pollute the air?

    2. Find your ingredients. There are statistics you can get. A law has been proposed. A community group is planning a protest. The industry is coming out with new emissions guidelines. Interviews with advocates and proponents and lawmakers. 

    3. Decide in what order the ingredients go into the pan. For a news story there’s the lead that entices the reader (when you sauté garlic in butter people come into the kitchen salivating). Then there is the meat (we actually call it that in journalism), layered with the other ingredients: quotes, data, relevant events.

    With food, the order things go in is the recipe. In journalism it is an outline. It is an important part of the process. Without a good outline you have a mess of information and you don’t know what to do with it. An outline gives you a clear path to follow. The recipe for your story. 

    4. Put the final touch on the dish. It might be parmesan cheese on top, or garlicky bread crumbs or a drizzle of olive oil or soy sauce. For an article you want to end with a “kicker”: a good quote that sums everything up, maybe. 

    Finesse the flavors.

    What if you get to the end and it isn’t as tasty as you hoped? With cooking you tinker. A little more garlic? More salt or pepper? Yikes! I forgot the mushrooms! 

    In journalism, when the story seems flat you might reach out to one more source or call back one you already interviewed to get a better quote. You might look for a better example to use by doing another news search. 

    This is the revision process. And unlike in cooking, when you revise a story you can move your ingredients around and reorganize your story. Often that makes all the difference. 

    In the end you will have created something good, from scratch. It is a great feeling, even if your family takes 10 minutes to eat that lasagna it took you an hour to make. Even if a reader spends 30 seconds reading that story it took you days to craft. 

    The satisfaction you will feel won’t go away. 

    Questions to consider:

    1. If writing is the easy part, what is the hard part of creating a news story?

    2. What does it mean that the journey is the reward?

    3. Can you think of something you have done from scratch that you could have bought ready-made?

     

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  • Can you picture your story on a big screen?

    Can you picture your story on a big screen?

    Some people would rather watch movies than read news articles.

    The thing is, an awful lot of movies came out of news articles. Consider the entire Fast & Furious movie franchise, starring Vin Diesel and my personal movie favorite Michelle Rodriguez (shout out!). It revolves around people who race souped up cars on city streets.

    The idea of the first movie started with an article by journalist Ken Li, after he saw someone steal a car in New York and that spurred him to investigate the underground world of street racing. Someone at Universal Studios saw the article and bought the rights to it. 

    Or consider the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun, about a cocky U.S. Navy pilot. The idea for that came from a story in California magazine about Navy pilots.

    How can all this help an aspiring journalist? Well, thinking about your news story as the movie that might be commissioned from it is a way of seeing the story. So how do you go about doing that?

    Visualize your story

    First, think of the characters in your story. Who are the central actors involved? Who is the Vin Diesel or Tom Cruise in your story? 

    Who does the problem you are exploring affect? Who is causing it or standing in the way of solutions? Who are the people trying to solve or mitigate the problem? In journalism, the basic story structure is Who, What, Where, When and Why. The characters are the Who of the story. 

    The most compelling movies (and news stories) revolve around conflict: What are the stakes? In Fast & Furious, one of the main conflicts is the role of Brian O’Connor, who starts out as an FBI agent investigating the car racers and then becomes loyal to them. 

    Movie scripts revolve around turning points: What could change the course? What steps are being taken to solve or mitigate the problem you are exploring? What are people or corporations or governments or organizations doing that could worsen the situation? This is the What of the story. 

    Then think about the setting: Where is the crisis playing out? The original Fast & Furious took place in Los Angeles. Top Gun took place at a naval base in San Diego, California. This is the Where of the story. 

    Finally, what drives your story is the motivation of the characters: Why do they take the actions they do? 

    In Top Gun, Tom Cruise’s character is motivated by the death of his friend Goose to be the best pilot he can be. In Fast & Furious, Vin Diesel is motivated by the death of Michelle Rodriguez’s character to seek justice. 

    Actions and motivations

    Death is a common motivation in movies — the killing of John Wick’s dog triggered one of the most successful movie franchises out there. But for non-fiction news stories, there can be all kinds of motivations: parents wanting to get their kids into good schools, communities wanting to fight crime in their neighborhoods, governments wanting to end homelessness. 

    In news stories this is the Why of the story. Why does some corporation build a plant in your community? Why does some NGO oppose a development proposal? What’s their reason and motivation?

    So now try this: Think of a problem around you that you want to explore. It could be about anything from climate change, to mental health or inequities in sports or education. Start by noting down the Who (actors), What (what’s at stake), When, Where (setting) and Why (the motivations of the characters). Then turn this into a few paragraphs as if you’re writing for a news site. 

    Start with a hook: It should be something interesting or important. Why is this a big story? Why should people care? Then summarize in one paragraph the whole story. What’s the overall problem? Where is it happening and when, how did it start, what is causing it and who is it affecting? 

    Next, slowly work through each of those elements — the who, what, where, when, how and why. There is the meat of your story. Finally, talk about what’s next. What are the solutions or mitigations happening or proposed?

    Who knows? You might get your story published and down the line a Hollywood or Bollywood producer calls you up. Now, isn’t that motivation to write a news story? Just make sure you have a good agent.

    Questions to consider:

    1. How can seeing your story as a movie help you report and write it?

    2. If your life played out as a movie, what would be the central theme?

    3. Think about the most important thing you are doing these days. What motivates you to do it?

     

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  • Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

    Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    About one in four teachers say their schools don’t give students zeroes. And nearly all of them hate it.

    The collection of practices known as equitable grading, which includes not giving students zeroes, not taking off points for lateness, and letting students retake tests, has spread in the aftermath of the pandemic. But it wasn’t known how widespread the practices were.

    A new nationally representative survey released Wednesday finds equitable grading practices are fairly common, though nowhere near universal. More than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district used at least one equitable grading practice.

    The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy.

    Around 3 in 10 teachers said their school or district allowed students to retake tests without penalty, and a similar share said they did not deduct points when students turned in work late. About 1 in 10 teachers said they were not permitted to factor class participation or homework into students’ final grades.

    Only 6% of teachers said their school used four or more equitable grading practices.

    That was surprising to Adam Tyner, who co-authored the new report for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, in partnership with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. He expected more schools would be following a “whole package” of grading reforms supported by advocates like former teacher and education consultant Joe Feldman, who wrote the influential book “Grading for Equity.”

    “It’s not like this has swept the country,” said Tyner, who has studied grading practices. He argues that some policies meant to create equity lead to grade inflation and don’t benefit students.

    The findings come as many schools are rethinking what students should have to do to get a high school diploma, and how much emphasis should be put on grades. At the same time, many schools continue to struggle with student disengagement and historically high rates of absenteeism following the pandemic. As a result, they’re trying to hold students accountable for their work without making it impossible to catch up on missed assignments.

    Though ideas about how to grade students more fairly predate the pandemic, several large districts started rethinking their grading practices following that disruption, as more students struggled to meet strict deadlines or do their homework.

    Proponents of equitable grading say it’s important for students to be able to show what they know over time, and that just a few zeroes averaged into a grade can make it difficult for students to ever catch up. When students don’t see a path to passing a class, it can make them less motivated or stop trying altogether.

    Still, some teachers have pushed back, arguing that no-zeroes policies can hurt student motivation, too.

    That showed up in the recent survey.

    Eight in 10 teachers said giving students partial credit for assignments they didn’t turn in was harmful to student engagement. Opposition to no-zeroes policies came from teachers of various racial backgrounds, experience levels, and who worked with different demographics of students.

    No-zeroes policies can take various forms but often mean that the lowest possible grade is a 50 on a 100-point scale. Some schools use software that will automatically convert lower grades to a 50, one teacher wrote on the survey.

    Schools that enrolled mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies, the survey found. And middle schools were more likely than high schools and elementary schools to have no-zeroes policies, no-late-penalty policies, and retake policies.

    Researchers weren’t sure why those policies popped up more in middle schools.

    But Katherine Holden, a former middle school principal in Oregon’s Ashland School District who trains school districts on equitable grading practices, has some guesses.

    High schools may be more worried that changing their grading practices will make it harder for students to get into college, Holden said — a misconception in her eyes. And districts may see middle schoolers as especially likely to benefit from things like clear grading rubrics and multiple chances to show what they know, as they are still developing their organization and time-management skills.

    In the open-ended section of the survey, several teachers expressed concerns that no-zeroes policies were unfair and contributed to low student motivation.

    “Students are now doing below-average work or no work at all and are walking out with a C or B,” one teacher told researchers.

    “Most teachers can’t stand the ‘gifty fifty,’” said another.

    More than half of teachers said letting students turn in work late without any penalty was harmful to student engagement.

    “[The policy] removes the incentive for students to ever turn work in on time, and then it becomes difficult to pass back graded work because of cheating,” one teacher said.

    But teachers were more evenly divided on whether allowing students to retake tests was harmful or not.

    “Allowing retakes without penalty encourages a growth mindset, but it also promotes avoidance and procrastination,” one teacher said.

    Another said teachers end up grading almost every assignment more than once because students have no reason to give their best effort the first time.

    The report’s authors recommend getting rid of blanket policies in favor of letting individual teachers make those calls. Research has shown that other grading reforms, such as grading written assignments anonymously or using grading rubrics, can reduce bias.

    Still, teachers don’t agree on the best approach to grading. In the survey, 58% of teachers said it was more important to have clear schoolwide policies to ensure fair student grading — though the question didn’t indicate what that policy should look like — while the rest preferred using their professional judgment.

    “There are ways to combat bias, there are ways to make grading more fair, and we’re not against any of that,” Tyner said. “What we’re really concerned about is when we’re lowering standards, or lowering expectations. … Accountability is always a balancing act.”

    Nicole Paxton, the principal of Mountain Vista Community School, a K-8 school in Colorado’s Harrison School District 2, has seen that balancing act in action.

    Her district adopted a policy a few years ago that requires teachers to grade students on a 50-100 scale. Students get at least a 50% if they turn in work, but they get a “missing” grade if they don’t do the assignment. Middle and high schoolers are allowed to make up missing or incomplete assignments. But it has to be done within the same quarter, and teachers can deduct up to 10% for late assignments.

    Paxton thinks the policy was the right move for her district. She says she’s seen it motivate kids who are struggling to keep trying, when before they stopped doing their work because they didn’t think they could ever bounce back from a few zeroes.

    “As adults, in the real world, we get to show what we know and learn in our careers,” Paxton said. “And I think that kids are able to do that in our building, too.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on classroom trends, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub.

    Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)

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  • The people you interview will bring your story to life

    The people you interview will bring your story to life

    They can be a useful sources when you’re trying to find out what needs to happen or why something is happening. When your story relates to solutions to development or climate change in a specific country or region, find experts from that country or region, as they have a better understanding of the situation on the ground. 

    Don’t grab just anyone.

    Journalists often find themselves short on time and under tight deadlines. They can easily fall into the trap of grabbing sources who will get back to them quickly, or turning to sources eager for the publicity or the attention that being quoted in a news story will get them. 

    The result is that journalists often ignore the many people with important stories to tell or information to impart: groundbreaking scientists, people experiencing the damaging effects of climate change every day, individuals and groups working on systemic and just solutions. 

    The perspectives that we find in the media are therefore limited. The problem here is that the sources can then shape the story and that many perspectives go unheard. Bear that in mind that when you go looking for your sources. 

    And remember: there is a big difference between a stakeholder and an expert. While an expert can help you identify a problem and explain its causes and effects, a stakeholder gives you the first person accounts and the emotions — anger, fear, pain, frustration — that make a story compelling and urgent. The first person accounts are what will connect with readers or listeners.

    If you only have stakeholders, you won’t give your readers a sense of scale or the context needed to understand the problem and figure out how to solve it. But if you only have experts, the story will feel cold and readers won’t connect to it. When you’re telling a story about the  climate crisis, for example, you need experts to tell your audience what is happening and what we can do and you need humans on the ground to tell your audience why it matters. 

    Where to start looking for people

    It can be tricky to find stakeholders. People who are victims of some problem might not advertise themselves as such. Here are some ways to find them: 

    Start with people you already know. They might have relatives, friends and colleagues who you can ask. Those people have relatives, friends and colleagues. Through your own personal network you have access to many, many different people. Let everyone know the story you are working on and the types of people you are looking for. 

    You will find people in surprising places: Cafes, markets, doctors offices and schools. But they won’t come to you if they don’t know you want to speak to them. And don’t forget the power of social media. Just one person you know who has 2,000 social media friends can reach a lot of people you might not know. 

    The leaders in your local church, mosque or community center know a lot of people. School organizations are great networking places. So are trade groups, environmental and social advocacy groups and labor unions. 

    Visit places where people live and gather. There is nothing as good as face to face interactions. 

    Search out the comments sections of news articles. People often post about their own experiences at the end of articles. Sometimes you might be able to contact them through those comment chats. 

    The best stories reflect multiple perspectives and include both people’s emotions and opinions and information from experts. The ability to find and talk to these people is the best part of being a journalist. 

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  • We know the detail. But what’s the story?

    We know the detail. But what’s the story?

    If you’ve heard Jacqui Smith interviewed since she became minister, you’ll know that she’s been saying that the Skills and Post-16 White Paper has been nearly ready for quite some time.

    It may well be the case that most of the contents of the paper have been pretty much locked in for a good while, with others added to the work in progress as the need became apparent.

    And it isn’t just a Department for Education thing. Every part of government will have had an input, both during the formal “write round” that has just concluded and earlier in policy development. The launch will be in the government’s grid – lines will be agreed across Number 10 and the Cabinet Office.

    And there will be a story to tell. Which is where we find our problem.

    Big P

    The most common criticism leveled against Keir Starmer, by his own party more than anyone, is his inability to sell a big picture. Starmer, like many attracted to public policy and public service, is into details, implementation, and delivery. If five to ten years ago our politics was dominated by grand narratives (Brexit, the whole Boris Johnson thing, Liz Truss’ persecution complex), Sunak and Starmer both came to power with more than a whiff of “the grown ups are back in the room”. Delivery rules, ideology drools.

    There’s any amount of polling that suggests much of the frustration among voters is due to things just not working as well or as smoothly as they should. From getting an appointment with a GP, to getting support for a child struggling at school, to getting a dangerous pothole fixed it can feel like the UK is riven with structures and processes on the point of collapsing.

    A part of this is underinvestment – since 2010 funding for local government (which is responsible for the potholes and the pupil support) has collapsed, while growing funding for the NHS (which is responsible for the GP) has not covered increases in demand and has been blunted by numerous top-down reorganisations.

    But a part of this is an inability to do the hard yards on delivery, something which Starmer and Labour are keen to fix. Admirable intentions, but it is much harder to explain to people that we are at the start of a long, complex, and difficult process of renewal than to make absurd promises, stir up xenophobia, and have people believe that these days you can get arrested and put in jail just for saying you are English.

    Even delivery needs a story. Tony Blair, for all his myriad faults as a human being, was your archetypal get-you-one-that-does-both. But that is a rare skillset. The rest of us flounder making dull but important stuff sound interesting and inspiring.

    And so the story begins

    The opportunity mission in the Labour election manifesto highlighted a focus on improving the life chances of children, right the way through from pre-school to entering the workforce. In government, the formal measure of the success for this area of work is the proportion of young people in education or employment-with-training, and the number achieving higher level qualifications.

    Sounds like a set of indicators in need of a target? It doesn’t take a huge strategic leap to read across from this to the Prime Minister’s announcement at conference: a target of around 60 per cent (or two thirds, it all depends which announcement you read) of young people in higher education or a “gold standard” apprenticeship.

    That’s not a target that, if read strictly by the numbers, has much to do with “widening access” as traditionally described: there’s no sub-targets for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. For that we look at Bridget Phillipson’s preview of the decision to reintroduce targeted grants (ignoring for the moment the plan to fund them via an international student fee levy).

    But this is unlikely to be the only intervention that is aimed directly at widening access. We know now that V levels – a BTEC-esque option that will sit between very academic A levels and apprenticeship-like T levels – will add another option to the choices offered aged 16, hopefully keeping more people in education for longer.

    Even though the opportunity mission focuses on young people, we also know that the government is concerned with what we might call “adult skills”. Over in the economic growth mission is where find all the stuff about Skills England and training providers. What we don’t find – even though it by rights should be there – is the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, a Boris Johnson policy of letting adult learners access student loan style finance which ended up accidentally re-writing the entire basis of student loan finance.

    Another Johnson-era policy that plays in here are the Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs), which help local employers ensure that their prospective employees are given the opportunity to develop the skills they need. Supposedly Skills England adds the national perspective on these local plans, helping to design identified skills needs into wider initiatives like apprenticeship standards and qualification design.

    Universities and higher education don’t exactly jump off the page of either of these missions. Accordingly, policy interventions in the sector have been minimal. The inflationary fee increase was a simple matter of letting existing information work in the way it was originally intended. The changes to implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act was simply a matter of removing the actually insane components of an otherwise largely pointless piece of legislation.

    Vote reform

    But there was another early intervention – a letter from Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson that has become known as the “HE reform” agenda (not to be confused with the “HE reform” consultation from 2022, that almost established student number controls based on minimum eligibility requirements). It was a series of asks for the sector, perceived as a quid pro quo for the return of the inflationary fee increase.

    In essence this had five components. Let’s use the minister’s exact words:

    • Play a stronger role in expanding access and improving outcomes for disadvantaged students
    • Make a stronger contribution to economic growth
    • Play a greater civic role in their communities
    • Raise the bar further on teaching standards, to maintain and improve our world-leading reputation and drive out poor practice
    • Underpinning all of this needs to sit a sustained efficiency and reform programme

    What’s interesting here is the absence of targets. Phillipson wants a stronger role, a stronger contribution, a greater role, a raising of the bar – but how far and how high, and how will she know when she has what she wants? It is a fair guess that we are due some numbers on these aspirations.

    The other thing to pull out here is the relationship between the regulator and the government. In England, most of these HE reform requests involves work that sits under the Office for Students (I’m happy to accept written submissions suggesting that Research England has oversight on elements of economic growth and the civic role).

    A pattern that I’ve recently been noticing is that OfS and DfE to not appear to be moving in sync at the moment – a DfE consultation on franchise arrangements appeared shortly before a largely unconnected OfS consultation on the same topic, OfS appeared to be startled by the appearance of its own guidance letter, and the biggest thing OfS has done recently – the mega-consultation on quality – appears to have blindsided DfE.

    So achieving the HE reform objectives (however loosely specified) also involves regulatory reform. And that regulatory reform appears to be closely tied to the Behan review.

    Quality Behan-cement

    Towards the end of the last government it was open season on reviewing the Office for Students. The Department for Education conducted a (largely unhelpful) legislative review of the way HERA was working in 2022, which spurred the House of Lords Industry and Regulators committee to foreground some of the more egregious failings of the OfS. The Behan review, which built on the findings of both, was one of the periodic reviews of regulators that usually pass without notice – what was notable was that the review author proceeded to take over as interim chair after the sad loss of James Wharton from public life.

    Behan’s review was focused on making regulation work better – focusing on efficacy, accountability, governance, and efficiency. It is the source – for example – of the plans to bring together the Teaching Excellence Framework and the B3 conditions of registration into a single quality assurance system. This modified and expanded TEF will, in future, feed into the eligibility of providers to access certain funds and opportunities – in particular the ability to offer Lifelong Learning Entitlement modules.

    Much of Behan was predicated on changes to primary legislation – the contradictions and confusion within HERA was getting in the way of a streamlined regulatory approach. We’ve been over some of the possibilities of tidying up legislation on the site before – it’s niche stuff unlikely to raise pulses outside of Wonkhe’s most devoted readership. And it would be a brave government that promoted a glossy higher education and skills bill devoid entirely of policy – imagine, given the mess the sector is in, trying to front out legislative proposals that basically amount to letting the OfS board choose the chief executive rather than the secretary of state?

    The question of regulation has also hit the headlines with an onslaught of problems with franchising. Currently students can be registered at one provider and taught elsewhere, with the quality of that teaching (and the outcomes experienced by those students) falling outside of the OfS’ ambit. There are both OfS and DfE proposals designed to address this issue – a DfE consultation required that teaching partners over a certain size needing to be registered with OfS, and an OfS consultation called for new conditions of registration for registering partners.

    The frustration is palpable – with DfE recently called out by the courts for riding roughshod over due process in order to censure Oxford Business College, and the National Audit Office calling on OfS, DfE, and the Student Loans Company to get their act together in addressing instances of student loan fraud. The regulatory toolkit is simply not up to the job.

    Fun with funding

    OfS, meanwhile, has very much been thinking about funding – a quietly radical change to the collection rules for HESES (the means by which we get the student number information that underpins most of the remaining direct OfS grants), adding in some very detailed information on subjects, prefigures a forthcoming consultation on how it uses the money (just under £2bn) it still allocates for high-cost subjects and student premiums.

    Any subject based approach, when it appears, will surely be informed by the government’s own list of priority subjects – found (again) within the eligibility rules for the LLE, and ported across to the eligibility of some students from deprived backgrounds for new maintenance grants. For all the talk of a data-driven Skills England, and detailed information on precise employer demands, the list is broad. We’re broadly in STEM world, plus architecture (but not landscape gardening), nursing and allied health, and economics. And not medicine.

    Meanwhile, university finances have reached the stage where the only reliable source of income is via recruiting international students. This approach took a knock with changes to dependent visas for most students, but now the government has decided that it wants a slice via a levy – which will be used (in part) to support these new maintenance grants.

    With both provider and student finances at breaking point (genuine financial hardship, attrition, job losses, course cuts), there doesn’t appear to be any appetite for a meaningful rethink of funding in either case. Despite everyone yelling about nothing else since the pandemic, it appears to be the one thing that is definitely off the table in the short to medium term.

    Pieces of paper

    A white paper is a consultation – it is a selection box of policies and plans pulled together to present the next chapter of the government’s narratives on opportunities, skills, and the economy. It will certainly contain measures designed to address the knotty technical and implementation issues described above, but it also requires an element of vision.

    On one level, there is clearly a – very broad – skills vision. The language of opportunity, and of parity of respect for academic and vocational routes, is a rich and resonant one. It is no coincidence that every UK government for the past decade as used a version of this narrative, and it has been duplicated (with a few tweaks) across the ideological spectrum precisely because it is so powerful. However, an increasingly prominent component of this story has been positioned as a critique of the current state of affairs, and the plight of our universities and wider higher education sector. Despite the diversity of the sector, it is specifically universities – and a particular, largely inaccurate popular perception of universities – that are being seen as a problem on the way to a skills-led solution rather than an underfunded and struggling keystone.

    While the policies over every party have elements of this counter-narrative too – the Labour variant is perhaps kinder than the alternatives (see, for example, Badenoch). But it is not a full-throated defence of the sector. It is not simple or straightforward to draw together the various things Labour has done in the higher education space and tell a convincing story that includes a theory of change and a desired end state.

    So, while it is fairly straightforward to parse the hints and directions of travel that the past 18 months have brought into a series of likely next steps, the fact that none of these steps do much to inspire suggests that this can’t be the whole story. If it was, we’d be looking at a series of uncontroversial pieces of secondary legislation and some changes to the regulatory framework.

    The format of a white paper demands a little more.

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  • You have a story idea. Now what?

    You have a story idea. Now what?

    If you have already eaten a lot of cake another piece will make you sick. Maybe you are trying to stay healthy and sugary foods aren’t healthy. But maybe you have eaten healthy all week and deserve a treat. Or it is a new cake recipe your friend came up with. Or it’s your birthday. All those are great reasons to have that piece of cake now.

    Identify a “news angle”

    The achievement of your healthy diet, or the new recipe or your birthday are like news angles. They are the reason you will eat cake now. They also answer the question: What’s so special about this piece of cake?

    If you think of a story topic like this cake, the angle will define which direction the topic will take.

    You could tell your editor that your angle is that the carbon tax is new and experts think it might not be as effective in cutting emissions as politicians promise. Or the carbon tax is the latest in a series of taxes imposed by the government and people are so sick of taxes, they might vote in an anti-tax political party in the next election. Or maybe next week is a big anniversary for the environmental group that pushed for the tax in the first place — it’s kind of like their birthday.

    If your pitch was basically, “I think the carbon tax would make a great story,” your editors would likely pass on it. But maybe these pitches would catch their attention: 

    • A carbon tax just passed in Denmark marks a new way of lowering carbon emissions and other governments and political parties are watching to see if it works. If it doesn’t, it could set back the push for clean energy not only in Denmark, but across Europe.
    • The carbon tax in Denmark is a gamble on the part of the country’s environmental advocates. Increasing numbers of voters believe they are already overtaxed. If it isn’t as effective as promised it could push people to vote for conservative, anti-tax politicians.
    • Next month is the twentieth anniversary of Denmark’s Green Party. But amid the celebrations is some real concern. The environmental movement has placed a big bet on the new carbon tax — which has garnered significant opposition. 

    If it’s difficult to find an angle for your topic, start telling people around you about your topic and about what you’ve discovered through your research. What kinds of questions do they ask about it? What do they seem to be interested in? Do they ask you something that makes you think, hmm, that’s a good question! If so, then you’ve found your angle. 

    Narrow your focus

    There might be so many angles you end up all over the place. Editors won’t okay a story that they think will come in as a confusing mess. So it is also important to narrow your focus. In telling stories we are often tempted to tell people everything, but listeners and readers have short attention spans and limited appetites. How much cake can you eat in one sitting? 

    So think about what you want the focus of your story to be. It’s about a carbon tax. But is your focus on the effectiveness of it in lowering emissions? In that case you want to interview climate scientists. Is the focus about the politics of the tax? Then you want to talk to political experts. Maybe the story is about the cost of the tax on the economy. Then you will want to talk to economists and everyday taxpayers. 

    Before pitching the story, consider the one thing the story will be about, how you will focus on it and why that is important or interesting or relevant to the audience of the publication or show.

    Don’t worry that your focus is too narrow. You can use something small happening in a small place to tell a big story.

    What happens in Denmark could be emblematic of what is happening elsewhere or will likely happen elsewhere. The effects of one tax in one place could help explain the challenges of funding climate solutions in general. 

    Identify the problem and who it affects.

    The smaller the story, the easier it is for people to consume it and understand it and that is what your editors will look for in a pitch. 

    It is important to identify what is at stake and who will be affected by the problem at the heart of your story – the “stakeholders”. In a story about a carbon tax, are the people most affect the companies who pollute? Is it the taxpayers? Is it the environmentalists frustrated by the lack of action on climate change? Is it the politicians who risk losing the next election or the opposition candidates who might win office?

    Finally, do some initial research so you can present to the editors some information that shows the importance of the story and come up with a plan for how you will report it. Before an editor okays a story they want to be confident you can actually do it. 

    Here is how to construct a strong pitch:

    1. State what the problem is and why this is an important story now.: Remember to narrow your focus. Editors won’t likely okay pitches that are too vague or broad. 
    2. State how you plan to find a possible solution
    3. State the main data and the important context – What it is that makes this story important or particularly interesting or relevant to the audience.
    4. Who the problem affects.
    5. The news angle: Why is it relevant now
    6. How you plan to go about reporting the story– the data or reports you will seek the people you plan to interview.
    7. The big question your story will answer.

    Be concise

    Here is the real challenge: You have to keep it all short. Your pitch needs to show your editor that you don’t waste words and that you won’t turn in a story that’s a long, tedious, confusing read. Try to keep it to less than 300 words. 

    Be clear. Say only what you need to say. Don’t make your pitch flowery or use exclamation points. Keep to facts and keep out assumptions or biases. Don’t try too hard to convince. If the story idea is a good one it should convince on its own. 

    Finally, let’s give you an example. Imagine you are my editor and I am pitching a story about how to pitch a story. Here is my pitch. It is 194 words. 

    Young people around the world are itching to tell stories about the problems they see around them. But they find the pitching process intimidating. They’ve got big ideas but don’t know how to come up with an idea out of those big ideas that would grab the attention of an editor. Their story pitches end up too broad, vague and with too many angles.

    The result is that important stories don’t get told. I plan to talk to editors about the pitching process and identify the elements that make a strong pitch and the common problems they see in weak pitches. I will also rely on information put together by News Decoder’s Engaging Youth in Environmental Storytelling (EYES) project. 

    The story is timely because 19 October is World Mental Health Day and reporting and telling non-fiction stories is a great way for young people to think through the big problems they face and that they see in the world around them and to talk to experts who can help them put it all into context. 

    Ultimately, my story will answer this question: Why do some stories get published but other, equally important stories don’t?

     

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  • I asked students why they go to school–this answer changed how I design campuses

    I asked students why they go to school–this answer changed how I design campuses

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    At first, the question seemed simple: “Why do we go to school?”

    I had asked it many times before, in many different districts. I’m a planner and designer specializing in K-12 school projects, and as part of a community-driven design process, we invite students to dream with us and help shape the spaces where they’ll learn, grow, and make sense of the world.

    In February of 2023, I was leading a visioning workshop with a group of middle schoolers in Southern California. Their energy was vibrant, their curiosity sharp. We began with a simple activity: Students answered a series of prompts, each one building on the last.

    “We go to school because …”

    “We need to learn because …”

    “We want to be successful because …”

    As the conversation deepened, so did their responses. One student wrote, “We want to get further in life.” Another added, “We need to help our families.” And then came the line that stopped me in my tracks: “We go to school because we want future generations to look up to us.”

    I’ve worked with a lot of middle schoolers. They’re funny, unfiltered, and often far more insightful than adults give them credit for. But this answer felt different. It wasn’t about homework, or college, or even a dream job. It was about legacy. At that moment, I realized I wasn’t just asking kids to talk about school. I was asking them to articulate their hopes for the world and their role in shaping it.

    As a designer, I came prepared to talk about flexible furniture, natural light, and outdoor learning spaces. The students approached the conversation through the lens of purpose, identity, and intergenerational impact. They reminded me that school isn’t just a place to pass through — it’s a place to imagine who you might become and how you might leave the world better than you found it.

    I’ve now led dozens of school visioning sessions, no two being alike. In most cases, adults are the ones at the table: district leaders, architects, engineers, and community members. Their perspectives are important, of course. But when we exclude students from shaping the environments they spend most days in, we send an implicit message that this place is not really theirs to shape.

    However, when we do invite them in, the difference is immediate. Students are not only willing participants, they’re often the most honest and imaginative contributors in the room. They see past the buzzwords like 21st-century learning, flexible furniture, student-centered design, and collaborative zones, and talk about what actually matters: where they feel safe, where they feel seen, where they can be themselves.

    During that workshop when the student spoke about legacy, other young participants asked for more flexible learning spaces, places to move around and collaborate, better food, outdoor classrooms, and quiet areas for mental health breaks. One asked for sign language classes to better communicate with her hard-of-hearing best friend. Another asked for furniture that can move from inside to outside. These aren’t requests that tend to show up on state-issued planning checklists, which are more likely to focus on square footage, capacity, and code compliance, but they reflect an extraordinary level of thought about access, well-being, and inclusion.

    The lesson: When we take students seriously, we get more than better design. We get better schools.

    There’s a popular saying in architecture: Form follows function. But in school design, I’d argue that form should follow voice. If we want to build learning environments that support joy, connection, and growth, we need to start by asking students what those things look and feel like to them — and then believe them.

    Listening isn’t a checkbox. It’s a practice. And it has to start early, not once construction drawings are finalized, but when goals and priorities are still being devised. That’s when student input can shift the direction of a plan, not just decorate it.

    It’s also not just about asking the right questions, but being open to answers we didn’t expect. When a student says, “Why do the adults always get the rooms with windows?” — as one did in another workshop I led — that’s not a complaint. That’s a lesson in power dynamics, spatial equity, and the unspoken messages our buildings send.

    Since that day, about a year and a half ago, when I heard, “We want future generations to look up to us,” I’ve carried that line with me into every planning session. It’s a reminder that students aren’t just users of school space. They’re stewards of something bigger than themselves.

    So if you’re a school leader, a planner, a teacher, or a policymaker, invite students in early. Make space for their voices, not just as a formality but as a source of wisdom. Ask questions that go beyond what color the walls should be. And don’t be surprised when the answers you get are deeper than you imagined. Be willing to let their vision shift yours.

    Because when we design with students, not just for them, we create schools that don’t just house learning. We create schools that help define what learning is for. And if we do it right, maybe one day, future generations will look up to today’s students not just because of what they learned, but because of the spaces they helped shape.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on district and school management, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub.

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  • NAEP scores for class of 2024 show major declines, with fewer students college ready

    NAEP scores for class of 2024 show major declines, with fewer students college ready

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

    Students from the class of 2024 had historically low scores on a major national test administered just months before they graduated.

    Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released September 9, show scores for 12th graders declined in math and reading for all but the highest performing students, as well as widening gaps between high and low performers in math. More than half of these students reported being accepted into a four-year college, but the test results indicate that many of them are not academically prepared for college, officials said.

    “This means these students are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago, and this is happening at a time when rapid advancements in technology and society demand more of future workers and citizens, not less,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. “We have seen progress before on NAEP, including greater percentages of students meeting the NAEP proficient level. We cannot lose sight of what is possible when we use valuable data like NAEP to drive change and improve learning in U.S. schools.”

    These results reflect similar trends seen in fourth and eighth grade NAEP results released in January, as well as eighth grade science results also released Tuesday.

    In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the results show that federal involvement has not improved education, and that states should take more control.

    “If America is going to remain globally competitive, students must be able to read proficiently, think critically, and graduate equipped to solve complex problems,” she said. “We owe it to them to do better.”

    The students who took this test were in eighth grade in March of 2020 and experienced a highly disrupted freshman year of high school because of the pandemic. Those who went to college would now be entering their sophomore year.

    Roughly 19,300 students took the math test and 24,300 students took the reading test between January and March of 2024.

    The math test measures students’ knowledge in four areas: number properties and operations; measurement and geometry; data analysis, statistics, and probability; and algebra. The average score was the lowest it has been since 2005, and 45% of students scored below the NAEP Basic level, even as fewer students scored at NAEP Proficient or above.

    NAEP Proficient typically represents a higher bar than grade-level proficiency as measured on state- and district-level standardized tests. A student scoring in the proficient range might be able to pick the correct algebraic formula for a particular scenario or solve a two-dimensional geometric problem. A student scoring at the basic level likely would be able to determine probability from a simple table or find the population of an area when given the population density.

    Only students in the 90th percentile — the highest achieving students — didn’t see a decline, and the gap between high- and low-performing students in math was higher than on all previous assessments.

    This gap between high and low performers appeared before the pandemic, but has widened in most grade levels and subject areas since. The causes are not entirely clear but might reflect changes in how schools approach teaching as well as challenges outside the classroom.

    Testing officials estimate that 33% of students from the class of 2024 were ready for college-level math, down from 37% in 2019, even as more students said they intended to go to college.

    In reading, students similarly posted lower average scores than on any previous assessment, with only the highest performing students not seeing a decline.

    The reading test measures students’ comprehension of both literary and informational texts and requires students to interpret texts and demonstrate critical thinking skills, as well as understand the plain meaning of the words.

    A student scoring at the basic level likely would understand the purpose of a persuasive essay, for example, or the reaction of a potential audience, while a students scoring at the proficient level would be able to describe why the author made certain rhetorical choices.

    Roughly 32% of students scored below NAEP Basic, 12 percentage points higher than students in 1992, while fewer students scored above NAEP Proficient. An estimated 35% of students were ready for college-level work, down from 37% in 2019.

    In a survey attached to the test, students in 2024 were more likely to report having missed three or more days of school in the previous month than their counterparts in 2019. Students who miss more school typically score lower on NAEP and other tests. Higher performing students were more likely to say they missed no days of school in the previous month.

    Students in 2024 were less likely to report taking pre-calculus, though the rates of students taking both calculus and algebra II were similar in 2019 and 2024. Students reported less confidence in their math abilities than their 2019 counterparts, though students in 2024 were actually less likely to say they didn’t enjoy math.

    Students also reported lower confidence in their reading abilities. At the same time, higher percentages of students than in 2024 reported that their teachers asked them to do more sophisticated tasks, such as identifying evidence in a piece of persuasive writing, and fewer students reported a low interest in reading.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

    For more news on national assessments, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub.

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  • Why have someone edit your story?

    Why have someone edit your story?

    Redundancy: Did you repeat anything unnecessarily?

    Accuracy: Did you make any factual mistakes or is anything misleading and can be read in a number of different ways?

    Sourcing: Were you able to show where your information came from and did you get the information from credible sources?

    Balance: Did you recognize multiple and opposing viewpoints or is the story one-sided and preachy?

    Organization: Did you bury the most interesting or important thing way down into your story? Did you wait too long to quote someone?

    Paragraphing: Are your paragraphs way too long? Long paragraphs are daunting to read, so try breaking them up. A paragraph can be a single sentence.

    Language: Is the story full of jargon normal people wouldn’t understand or long words only highly-educated people would know?

    Complexity: Is your story bogged down by too much information that isn’t really necessary?

    Clarity: Can a normal person understand the story on a quick read or is it confusing in any way?

    The editor’s role

    Ultimately the editor’s job is to make the story clear and readable. And both those things are hard to spot when you are the writer.

    Sometimes reporter balk at the suggestions editors make or the changes they insist must be done. When you have taken a lot of time and effort to report a story and have carefully worded and reworded your article it hurts to learn that it isn’t finished or that the editor thinks there are problems with it.

    But journalism is a collaborative process. It’s your story but it is also the editors story and the publication’s story. Your name will be on it — we call that the byline — but it will affect the publication’s reputation and that of the editor. Editors can find themselves fired or suspended if they publish a story that should not have been published. That’s the negative side of it.

    On the positive side, most editors genuinely want to make the story better — clearer, more powerful, a better overall read. And isn’t that what you want too? Over the course of my career, editors have saved me time and again by spotting mistakes I had inadvertently made. They have strengthened my writing and made me a better writer.

    Now if an editor suggests or insists on a change you really think isn’t necessary or will harm your story then fight against that. But do so respectfully and professionally.

    Ultimately the process isn’t meant to be fair. The editor has the final say. But if you can make a strong case and if you can show your editors why you care so much, chances are they will yield. Often this becomes a negotiation to find a way to word the material that satisfies both of you. But pick your battles carefully. No editor wants to work with a writer who fights every change or suggestion.

    A good partnership between a journalist and editor will help you write a great story and help ensure it stands up to the scrutiny of your audience.

     

    QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:

    1. What is one way an editor can improve your story?

    2. If an editor wants change a story in a way you don’t like, what should you do?

    3. What traits do you have that would make you a good editor?

     

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  • How to use quotes in a story

    How to use quotes in a story

    Journalists talk to people. It is an important way to get information, at a time when many people allow artificial intelligence to do that for them. Facts and figures and things you find on the internet or in documents tell only part of a story. 

    How many things have you told a friend or family member that you wouldn’t want to put down in writing? How many times have you been in a discussion with a group of people who had different takes on something that you all experienced? 

    Haven’t you ever had a surprising epiphany in the middle of a conversation?

    By talking to multiple people who have different perspectives and comparing those thoughts or comments or stories with facts and figures and reports, journalists try to get at the truth of something that happened or is happening. They are also able to instill into an article or podcast the passion and emotion missing from government or academic reports. 

    But once you are ready to write your story, how do you use the information you get from interviews and what do you do with those quotes? 

    First, do some interviews.

    Let’s understand why you even include quotes in a story. One, because it humanizes a story that would otherwise be a tedious read. 

    You could give me a whole argument of why pollution in a river is bad. But it hits me if someone says, “The last time I went swimming, I came out with hives all over my body,” or, “The river is right out our door, but I have to drive my son across the city to the public pool to swim because the river is filthy.”

    Second, including quotes from interviews you did yourself shows your readers or listeners that you didn’t just slap together the story. That gives you credibility in a world where people won’t trust much of what they read. 

    Now, you won’t get that if, instead of interviewing people yourself, you just grab quotes from articles in other publications. When you do that, the opposite happens. You give readers a reason not to trust you, because you are simply reprinting what you read elsewhere. That comes across as lazy and careless. 

    The same is true if you take quotes off press releases issued by some corporation, organization or politician. Worse, because if you don’t tell readers that the quote came from a press release you mislead them. You make it seem as if you spoke to someone when you didn’t. And often, public relations people are allowed to just make up quotes in those press releases; the CEOs or politicians never actually said them the things they are quoted as saying. 

    Bottom line: Avoid using quotes you didn’t get yourself. 

    Using quotes in a story

    So let’s say you did an interview or two. How do you use the quotes from that interview?

    First, understand that quotes are sacrosanct. Once you have quote marks around something someone says, don’t change what is inside those quote marks. You are telling your reader: This person said this exactly. 

    If the quote includes a lot of unnecessary words, what we call blah blah blah, you can’t just delete that within the quote marks. Some people use ellipses (…) to connect the important and relevant parts of the quote without bogging it down with the blah blah blah. Others just take part of the quote. We call that a partial quote. 

    Now, that’s a style preference. Personally, I hate to do that because when you do you expect your reader to trust you. They might instead think you are withholding good information because you don’t agree with it. You risk losing that important credibility you gained by doing the interview in the first place. 

    Instead, I paraphrase. That means that you take the quote marks off the quote and instead, you attribute it. That means that you tag the information with so-and-so said. 

    Not everyone has the the gift of gab.

    You might end up paraphrasing a lot in a story if the people you interviewed don’t have the gift of speech and are nervous and stumble on words or are really boring to talk to, but have good information to give you. You can get great information from boring people! 

    Remember your role. You are talking to these people because your readers or listeners don’t have access to them or wouldn’t want to talk to them. I’ve done hours long interviews where two quotes end up in the story. Those two quotes made it worthwhile but my readers would never have wanted to sit through those painful interviews. 

    And unless you can count on a readership of super-educated people who have great attention spans, keep those quotes short. Really, a quote can be three words: “I felt awful!” she said. 

    If a quote is long to the point where it becomes tedious, paraphrase. When you paraphrase, you can cut out the gobbledygook and even change words as long as you don’t change the meaning of what the person said. 

    That’s a never. 

    Never ever change the meaning of what someone says. If you must change any words from statements in an interview, you need to really understand what the person said and even more so, what the person meant to say. 

    To misquote someone word for word

    I’ve known journalists accused of misquoting someone when they had the statement word for word on a recording. The person simply couldn’t believe they would have said what they said, even though they said it. 

    Now you might think, great! The journalist caught the person. Some people call these “gotcha” moments. 

    But think about your role as a journalist. Isn’t it to get at a truth? And should you penalize people who maybe aren’t used to being interviewed and are nervous and might say things because their brains don’t really have time to work out their thoughts properly? People will feel compelled to impress you or say what they think you want them to say.

    The rule of thumb I go by is that I try to treat people the way I would want to be treated. I get nervous talking to people. I say things I wish I hadn’t said and don’t really mean. I’d be mortified if everything I said ended up in print in some widely read publication. In a class I once taught I caught a student texting on his phone and he told me he was posting what I had just said. That shut me up. 

    Meanwhile, just because someone says something, doesn’t make it true. There is no excuse for including inaccurate or misleading information in a story even if it is said by someone with a fancy title or a prestigious reputation. People can make mistakes, exaggerate and mislead. Quote marks aren’t a blank license to publish. 

    Quotes should pop out.

    Quote marks are like little neon borders around a piece of information. They should stand out. So avoid putting quote marks around basic facts like dates or times or an undisputed amount of money. Quotes should transmit emotion or opinions or ideas. Or as my friend and colleague Deidre Pike says, “Quote the memorable. Paraphrase the mundane.”

    But do you actually have to speak to someone to quote them in a story? A while back, I’d have said yes. But now so much communication is done by email or digital chats that it has become a standard form of dialogue. How many people hate talking on the phone now? Limiting yourself to only people you can talk to in person or by telephone or videoconferencing could limit the types of people you get, and the goal is to get the best information from the best people you can. 

    Transparency is important, though. Let your readers know that you interviewed the person over WhatsApp or LinkedIn or whatever form it took. (My disclosure: the quote I grabbed from Deidre Pike was from her response to a Linkedin inquiry I posted).

    But don’t do that as a default. You are less likely to get that great emotion and passion in a post than you would in person or the phone or on a Zoom call. So try for voice or in person interviews whenever you can. 

    Plus interviews are fun. That person-to-person direct communication builds a connection that you don’t get through instant messaging or email. Hearing someone burst out laughing is way better than an “LOL!” in a text. And while waiting for a message to drop you can’t tell if the person just got distracted because their dog jumped on their lap or the question troubles them and they are taking time to think. But if you are watching them, you can tell. 

    It is harder too to get those memorable anecdotes for a story that will bring it to life. And you can’t count on the uncomfortable silences that get people to open up. 

    Regardless of how you get your quotes, getting them is only the first step. Knowing how to use them in your story will make all the difference. 

    And you can quote me on that. 

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. How can a quote from an interview improve a story?

    2. Why would you paraphrase something someone says instead of quoting it directly?

    3. Why should double check information that an expert told you?

     

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