My Question for the Journalists

Thanks for all the comments about SHS and Science. It helps to hear from many corners on this. I'll let you know what happens.

At the stats for journalists meeting, here was a question I asked:

An editor was showing his paper's comprehensive look at two high schools--one that succeeded and one that wasn't succeeding. The several-day series interviewed students and teachers about their feelings about the school, about its organization, about relationships. There were other stories about test scores, and which was up and which was down. It was a good package of stories.

But I felt it was missing something, so I suggested to the editor an alternative hypothesis: what if the successful school had better education? Better teaching, better curriculum. What if teachers at the more successful high school knew more about content, and more importantly were better able to transmit content knowledge to students.

I suggested that if a hospital had lots of patients dying, we wouldn't necessarily look first at how the beds were arranged, or how doctors felt about their jobs. We would instead look at the work being done, the attention to detail, the follow-up, the knowledge and ability of the physicians and nurses. But often in education writing, journalists don't look at that part of education.

I'd really like to see more reporting on these ideas. I don't know how it would best be done. I'd just like to see it is all.