Using Data in Education Reporting

On November 17 in San Antonio, Texas, a group of about 30 education editors and supervisors from throughout the United States attended a seminar hosted by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.

At this event, Josh Barbanel, reporter for the New York Times, Dan Keating, database editor for the Washington Post, and Ted Mellnik, database editor for the Charlotte Observer offered tips for incorporating data into media coverage of education.

The three journalists stressed the need for education reporters to be comfortable working with education data, including demographics, finance, and performance information. It gives them greater power in their interactions with education sources at the school, district, and state level, they said.

	When you get data directly from a source, ask for a computer file not just a print-out. That way you can work with it, break it down, and perform your own analyses.
	Try to get the most specific data you can. If possible, get student level data with the names removed. Schools and school districts often have this but they will resist giving it to you unless they are confident they can trust you to not violate the confidentiality of those records for individual students.
	Local school officials are not the only source for education data. In many states (including California), the Internet makes it easy to get the data. Many state departments of education and the National Center for Education Statistics are online and have some data broken down to the school or school district level. Look for contextual data about school communities in other places too: When all the U.S. census data becomes available, it will provide a wealth of information. For local population information, a newspaper’s marketing department may be a treasure-trove.
	It is important to distinguish data that describes inputs (such as student demographics and funding) from data that describes outputs (such as test scores). Ask critical questions: does attendance data, for example, represent a situation a school must grapple with (an input) or a situation that reflects its own actions (an output)?
	When you report data, do the math for your readers. Rather than just copying tables of data, do the computations and highlight the important things the data reveal.
	Make data a part of your life. Strive to work with it day to day, and you’ll be more comfortable when a story comes along that calls for its large-scale use. For example, whenever you write a story about a school, make it a routine to go to your databank (whether it is on a state website or maintained by your publication) to get the basic statistics about that school. You’ll get used to using the tools and know what is there when you need it.
	Don’t let the need to understand sophisticated database software intimidate you. If you know how to use a spreadsheet, you have what you need to work with data.

See Our School Data section for a listing of data-rich websites.