Deeply Investigating School Political Battles

Politics has always been a part of the American education system.

But, increasingly, in many parts of the country, extremism is driving battles over how kids are taught in public schools. The impact political extremism has on curriculum, policy and students’ lives cannot be ignored on the education beat.

Often, we see daily stories about community members and parents taking over school board meetings; they voice concerns about students reading library books that include mentions of LGBTQ+ issues and sexuality. We see video clips of police escorting out unruly public speakers who are angry about social-emotional learning in classrooms. Or, we read about state leaders banning lessons on race and racism in America.

Those reports may serve a purpose, but they only scratch the surface of a bigger picture.

So, how do reporters find ways to cover the effects of extremism in public education that show the full context? How do they ensure they report on the players responsibly? What are we missing when those stories aren’t more deeply investigated?

A panel of journalists who have successfully dug into school political battles shared their insights in May at EWA’s 77th National Seminar in Las Vegas.

The Reporters

• Nicole Carr, independent investigative journalist 
• Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News enterprise reporter
• Laura Pappano, independent education journalist

Nicole Carr: Don’t Ignore Race.

Many stories about the so-called “parental rights movement” leave out one glaring detail: race.

Carr, who published an investigation of what happened to people arrested in nearly 90 incidents between 2021 and 2023 at school board meetings in 30 states for ProPublica, implored reporters not to sanitize their coverage.

She recalled a story about Cecelia Lewis, a Black woman who was hired as the first diversity, equity and inclusion administrator for the Cherokee County School District in north Georgia. The extent of other media reports was that the educator quit before she started the job after a rowdy school board meeting.

Carr set out to find out what happened. 

Records requests and a recording of a secret meeting revealed an organized group of white parents and community members were worried that so-called “critical race theory” would be taught in the district. The group sent around 100 form letters demanding Lewis be fired when her hiring was announced.

“The form letter comes from somewhere, right?” Carr said.

Before Lewis moved from Maryland to Georgia, she watched a school board meeting online and saw the group form a prayer circle, bang on windows and demand her job offer be rescinded. 

Lewis saw the superintendent read a statement saying that due to the division, there would be no DEI plans. The meeting devolved into chaos, with crying students rushed out of the room and board members escorted home by police. What Lewis saw on the livestream led her to resign before she started.

The same group began complaining to the Cobb County School District that Lewis was “racist, sexist, and Marxist,” once word spread she was the new supervisor of social studies. After working eight weeks wrought with unrelenting complaints, Lewis left that job, too.

Carr’s story showed the nuances of what other reporting missed: A group of white parents chased a Black educator out of two districts after only seeing her picture online and without understanding the functions of either role.

Stories on partisan school battles often do not include basic definitions, Carr said, such as what DEI really means. And by leaving out race from the reporting, the story is not entirely accurate.

“We are adopting the language of these movements and not even challenging it through what it really is all about,” she said.

Recognizing why extremists are targeting schools also informs more meaningful reporting, Carr said.

“There’s a reason that the school board is your target,” she said. “When you get to young minds, you shape the future of this country.”

Covering these issues is democracy reporting, she said.

Carr shared tips for reporting on the nuances: 

• Go beyond the viral moment. Request police reports and body camera footage of incidents at board meetings. Ask to review emails to school officials and board members. Knock on doors of the people involved, and have conversations about what their motivations are.

• Ask the right questions. Seek to find out what is driving community members to swarm board meetings. Who are they? Do they have connections to the school district? Are they following a playbook? Are they being organized by extremists? What is their endgame?

• Be historically informed. Frame stories in a way that takes into account what we’ve already seen throughout history. For example, reporting should be based in the context of the history of racism and politics in education.
• Reflect on why race is left out of coverage. Recognize the blind spots in newsrooms and the lack of diversity in the industry. Support each other in advocating for more honest reporting.

Mike Hixenbaugh: Tell the Full Reality of the Story.

A mother said she lost her child because a teacher convinced her to “change genders” and run away. She spoke during public comment at a Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District board meeting in Texas in August 2022.

Hixenbaugh – author of “They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Schools” – was listening to the board meeting at home. He  wondered, “What the hell happened in this?”

For the next year and a half, Hixenbaugh would investigate this story.

“We did that because the story she was telling matched the political rhetoric that we were hearing, from Ron DeSantis and other politicians, that teachers are on this mission to change kids through their classrooms and through their lessons and through their libraries,” Hixenbaugh said. “And we wanted to know what the kid thought, and we wanted to hear it from that kid’s teacher.” 

NBC News told the story of a transgender teen, a teacher who was harassed for supporting the student and a mother on a crusade to ban a school library book. The narrative investigative piece showed the reality of how extremist rhetoric impacts real people.

The story had what many other reports about political battles in school are missing: voices of students and teachers.

Most stories are missing those voices because they are the hardest to get, Hixenbaugh said.

“You can get parents at school board meetings; you can get board members; you can get politicians,” he said. “But teachers are afraid to talk. And how do you get to a teenager, especially one who’s been bullied or traumatized?”

Getting current teachers on the record can be difficult because they may fear retribution from their districts, or their school systems may have policies that say they can’t talk to reporters directly.

Hixenbaugh said reporters should try to reach out to teachers directly and bypass district public information officers.

“They may not be able to comment; they might not want to; they might forward your email directly to a school communication official, and that’s fine,” he said. “But there are teachers who want to tell you what’s happening.”

In some cases, educators might face real threats and attacks from the public for speaking out.

Hixenbaugh said reporters must be willing to give teachers time to build trust and to grant anonymity. If it’s not possible at an outlet to publish a story with one unnamed source, reporters might get other teachers to back up what their source tells them for a story. Teachers might also be able to provide recordings of what happened that can inform the reporting.

Student sources should also be granted anonymity if they choose; they also could face retribution or worse for speaking out about harmful school policies or being open about their gender and sexuality.

When building student sourcing, start with outspoken youth activists and advocates. Those students are prepared to talk to the media and may have training from organizations on how to do so. They can often connect reporters with other students affected by extremism in education policy.

Hixenbaugh shared tips for reporting on extremism in a meaningful way:

• Protect your sources. The people you interview may face real threats of violence, job loss or criminal prosecution. Make sure they give informed consent by telling them the risks and realities of being on the record. Do everything in your power to protect their identities, and hide potentially identifying information when they are granted anonymity.
• Fact-check political rhetoric. Are politicians’ claims that parents’ rights are being violated true? Talk to kids and teachers who are in classrooms, and get to the truth of what’s really happening in schools.

• Report on how policy is playing out. Legislators and administrators may say that laws and policies have a particular intent. Use your reporting to find the real consequences those policies are creating in schools.

Laura Pappano: Dig Into the Nuances of the Story

The story of extremist school political battles is both local and national. The story touches many communities, and while national rhetoric fuels it, how it plays out isn’t the same everywhere. Each player has their own complexities. The circumstances vary widely in different districts, and every community’s unique history shapes the narrative.

Focusing on telling meaningful singular stories and taking the time to get all of the details helps readers better understand how a national phenomenon affects real people.

Pappano, author of “School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education,” said digging into the details is one of the key tenets of her work.

“This requires very tedious reporting,” she said. 

For example, Pappano said most people would be surprised to learn all of the effort that goes into curating appropriate school library materials. 

“It requires me sitting down with librarians and saying, ‘How were you trained? What did you learn? What do you actually do?’” she said.

That’s important context when reporting on parents who accuse librarians of “grooming” children because some texts have descriptions of sex and sexuality. It’s also relevant in cases of parents trying for years to make authorities criminally prosecute school staff for stocking such books.

Local details also add complexity to national stories, Pappano said, in coverage of school board races. Beyond the national story of extremists winning races across the country, the journalist said to delve into how individual elections were won.

Hailey Scott, an Idaho parent Pappano interviewed for The Hechinger Report, lost her race to be on the West Bonner County School District board by eight votes to an extremist who had no connection to the school system and was “called by God” to run.

Scott told Pappano no one showed up to vote because everyone thought she’d win.

Voter turnout has averaged between 5% and 10% in board races across the country in recent years, according to the National School Board Association. This is a detail reporters must keep an eye on in the districts they cover, Pappano said. 

A story Pappano wrote about a parent who had become involved in a school political battle unintentionally is an example of contextualizing stories with information about people’s motivations.

“She thought she was forming a parent group because she was originally upset because the high school that her kids went to had a different rating system than other high schools in the district,” Pappano said.

After forming the parent group, the mother discovered that other parents were showing up with QAnon bumper stickers on their cars. She told Pappano, “That’s not what I signed up for.”

“When she tried to leave the group, she faced a lot of threats,” Pappano said.

Pappano shared tips for journalists to dig deeper in their reporting:

• Get boots on the ground. In-person reporting is key to building trust in communities and getting connected to more sources.

• “Both sides” reporting isn’t enough. In a time when elected officials spread misinformation, reporters should clarify when something is not true. Journalists also must get at the central question: What will this policy actually do, and what will its impact be?

• Watch school board meetings. Take the time–even if it’s five hours or more–to watch an entire meeting online. 

• Know the laws and jurisdictions. Public information laws are different in every state. Wherever you are reporting from, learn what information is owed to you as a member of the public, and take advantage of that. Understand what local campaign finance laws say candidates must disclose.
• Background people on social media – and take screenshots. You might think Facebook is dead, but it’s where a lot of parents and community members gather to discuss school policy. You can use it for sourcing and to better understand ideologies.