A Handy 2012 Rolodex Supplement for Edu-Reporters
by Frederick M. Hess • Oct 13, 2011 at 9:57 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareA couple weeks ago, I wrote about the ed press's disconcerting habit of relying almost entirely on professional Democrats or Democratic-leaning academics to provide commentary on Republican education proposals when it comes to the Presidential contest and federal policy. It's obviously appropriate to offer the Democratic take on such matters, but veteran Democrats are often quoted as seemingly nonpartisan "experts." Meanwhile, whole stories are penned with little or no insight from conservatives. And given that most of the familiar edu-professors and major education interest groups--from the NEA and AFT, to the NSBA and AASA, to DFER and the Education Trust--are left-leaning, it's easy for whole stories to portray nothing more than varying flavors of liberal thought.
In response, several reporters and/or bloggers who work this beat wrote to say they sympathized with the point, but that a recurring frustration-- as I'd noted-- is that the edu-universe is disproportionately Democratic. (Now, it's a different story with the handful of folks who have sometimes pooh-poohed to me the notion that relying primarily on liberals to explain conservative proposals could ever be problematic. To them, I'd just ask whether
