Kentucky Judges Ponder Case of School Bullying Suicide

“Stephen would not want another student to go through what he suffered. 

We cannot let our son die in vain.”

-- Sheila Patton, mother of suicide victim

 

This from ABC News:

Can schools and teachers be held responsible if a bullied student commits suicide?

The Kentucky Supreme Court took up the question on Wednesday after the family of 13-year-old Stephen Patton sued teachers and school administrators. Defense attorneys disputed whether Stephen was even bullied and said they hadn't seen any other lawsuits where a family was able to hold school officials negligent.

Stephen Patton

Stephen, a 6-foot-3, 196-pound boy, towered over classmates, but his imposing presence didn't protect the shy kid with a stutter from bullies — and ultimately his suicide, his lawyer told the justices. The eighth-grader at Allen Central Middle School in Floyd County shot himself to death in November 2007 after he was constantly bullied in the school's halls and cafeteria, said his family's attorney, Vanessa Cantley.

"The teachers knew about it and they did nothing. They violated clear directives from school procedure," Cantley said.

Attorneys for seven school officials named in the suit countered that Stephen never complained to anyone. Stephen didn't leave a note, and they said his suicide was a mystery.

"There is absolutely no proof ... to demonstrate that he committed suicide because of anything that had to do with the school or the school district," said attorney Jonathan Shaw.

Neal Smith, an attorney for four teachers, said Stephen had suffered from migraines since age 5 and told another student he would rather die than have another severe headache.

Cantley said children are unlikely to admit being bullied out of embarrassment and fear of retaliation.

The lawsuit was dismissed by a Floyd County judge, a ruling upheld by the Kentucky Court of Appeals. The Patton family is asking the Supreme Court to send the case back to Floyd County for trial.

Cantley said a jury should decide if the alleged bullying was a "substantial factor" behind the suicide.

The justices grilled attorneys from both sides.

"Bullying is a matter of judgment with the teacher, is it not?" Justice Bill Cunningham asked.

Cantley said the district's anti-bullying policy specifically delves into what constitutes bullying and what teachers should do.

Smith said it's difficult for teachers to determine the difference between bullying and horseplay.

"If every incident of horseplay must be considered bullying, then the teachers won't be teaching," he said. "They'll be filling out bullying forms all day, every day."

Justice Lisabeth Hughes Abramson noted "there's probably no more difficult time than middle school."

"I doubt anybody went through middle school without either observing or participating in or being bullied," she said.

The attempt to pin negligence on school officials for a bullied student's suicide could have broader ramifications, Abramson said. The family of a domestic violence victim who commits suicide, for example, could try to hold the perpetrator responsible for the death, Abramson said.

"It seems to me that suicide is one of those complex, human events that has so many factors," Abramson said.

Cantley said Stephen was mocked for his stutter, and had his lunch box seized by bullies who took whatever they wanted and threw the rest on the floor.

"He never fought back," she said. "He was a gentle giant."

The Patton family is seeking unspecified monetary damages in the suit. The family wants to use that money to set up a memorial foundation in Stephen's name to provide anti-bullying education and training, she said.

Here's the backstory from USA Today:

By all accounts, most of Stephen Patton's classmates liked the cheerful eighth-grader.
But a few of them at Allen Central Middle School in Eastern, Ky., repeatedly abused, taunted and bullied the 13-year-old gentle giant, who stood 6 foot 3, weighed 196 pounds and had a stutter, his family said they discovered.

On Nov. 27, 2007, Stephen placed a gun to his head and took his own life.

Now on Wednesday, eight years later, the Kentucky Supreme Court here will hear arguments on whether schools can be held liable for failing to stem bullying that causes a student's suicide.

Stephen's mother, Sheila Patton, sued on his behalf, saying that four teachers, two school superintendents and Principal Davida Bickford knew he had been bullied daily but did nothing to stop it.

Green Bay schools ban LGBT bullying

"Stephen would not want another student to go through what he suffered," Patton said, explaining why she brought the lawsuit.

"We cannot let our son die in vain."

The defendants in the school of more than 300 students in Eastern Kentucky about 125 miles from the state capital say Stephen's death was heart wrenching but deny they knew about the hazing. Even if they had, they say it would have been impossible for them to foresee that Stephen would kill himself when his death took his own mother and friends by surprise.

The teachers and administrators have prevailed in two lower courts, but the Supreme Court will decide whether to reinstate the lawsuit in a case that could have major consequences, given the prevalence of bullying and how often young people consider suicide.

 

About 16% of students in grades 9 to 12 say they thought about taking their own lives in the prior 12 months, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention while other studies have found that victims of bullying at school are two to nine times more likely to consider suicide than nonvictims.

Executive Director Wayne Young of the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, which represents 3,000 educators, said it would be frighteningly unfair to hold them accountable for something so unpredictable.

"How in the world will we be able to talk young people into becoming teachers or principals if they are held responsible for a student's suicide?" he asked.

Brad Hughes, spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association, said schools try to prevent bullying because it makes it harder for students to learn, but he said it would be unfair to hold them accountable for something they didn't know about or that happens away from school.
Stephen killed himself at home, in his own bedroom.

Back to School: Kind campaign combats female bullying

Patton's suit is thought to be the first of its kind in Kentucky, but across the USA a flood of grieving parents have filed a flood of similar complaints. In the past year alone, suits have been filed in Chicago; East St. Louis, Ill.; Las Vegas; and Snohomish, Wash., according to press accounts.
But while such litigation continues unabated, teachers and school districts have won most of the cases, said Perry Zirkel, a professor of law and education at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. He puts the odds of parents winning at 1 in 10.

Parents who lose a child to suicide are empathetic plaintiffs but he sees competing interests, including the burdens to teachers and taxpayers who ultimately pay the tab.

Although every state except Montana has laws against bullying, Kentucky has not spelled out legal remedies for bullying in its statute, according to StopBullying.gov. And courts have been reluctant to hold teachers or schools liable for a suicide — what is seen as an unpredictable tragedy — absent proof that school employees had direct knowledge a student was suicidal and did nothing, or as one scholar put it, took a "cruel stance toward the plight of a severely bullied student."

Patton and her lawyer, Vanessa Cantley, say that is what happened to Stephen.

In her brief to the Supreme Court, Cantley cites an affidavit from former student Phyllis Smith, who said she watched in the hall as students made fun of Stephen's stutter in front of teachers, who did nothing.

Another student, Zack Shepherd, told how students bullied Stephen at lunch, taking items out of his lunch box and scattering the rest. On two occasions, Zack, Stephen and a third boy reported Stephen's bullying to Bickford, the principal, but Zack said she "blew us off," according to the brief.

Teachers allowed other students to be bullied with no consequences for the bullies. Students put gum and barbecue sauce in Phyllis' hair. While teacher Patricia Handshoe, one of the defendants, picked it out, Handshoe did nothing to punish the girls who put it there, according to the brief.

The school's hallway cameras might have documented incidents of bullying, but Bickford testified that the secretaries in charge of monitoring the cameras were never trained in how to recognize it, Cantley said.

“How in the world will we be able to talk young people into becoming teachers or principals if they are held responsible for a student's suicide?”

Wayne Young, Kentucky Association of School Administrators

 

Harm can continue even after bullying stops

If the case goes to trial, students will testify that Stephen made statements regarding his impending suicide that a reasonable juror could attribute to bullying, according to the court brief.

But lawyers for the teachers and administrators say they saw no signs Stephen was suicidal.
They contend he suffered from a variety of other maladies, including migraine headaches since age 6, that could have prompted him to end his life.

In fact, he once said to another student that he would rather die than have another migraine, the teachers' lawyers, Neal Smith and Todd Kennedy, say in their brief.

They note that the only teacher who even suspected Stephen might have been bullied one day asked him about it and he assured the teacher that he and the other students were "having fun."

Bickford testified in a deposition that she never saw Stephen being bullied and nobody ever told her that he was.

Researchers unsure of success of anti-bullying programs

The defendants also note that Jon Akers, director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety, testified the school had an effective anti-bullying policy in place and followed it.

That program included educating teachers and students about bullying and offering a "bullying box" that allowed students to make anonymous reports.

Judge John David Caudill of Floyd County Circuit Court threw out Patton's suit, in part because he found the defendants enjoyed what is known as qualified immunity. The courts generally don't allow defendants to be held liable for a person's suicide because it is an intervening act that they couldn't reasonably be expected to foresee.

Exceptions include a jailer knowing that an inmate is suicidal and not taking reasonable steps to prevent him from killing himself. However, Caudill said, "The record is clear that Stephen was not known to be suicidal."

Two girls arrested on bullying charges after suicide

The Kentucky Court of Appeals held that the defendants were not immune from a suit but found they couldn't be liable for a suicide, especially one that didn't occur at school.

Cantley concedes that not every case in which a student is bullied and ultimately commits suicide should result in a viable lawsuit. But she asks the Supreme Court to find that suicide is not a total bar against recovery of damages.

In e-mail she said if the court sends that case back for a jury trial and the estate prevails, his parents will use any proceeds to start a foundation in Stephen's memory to finance anti-bullying education and training.

"Every day, teachers and school administrators throughout this state teach students that if rules are broken, consequences follow," Cantley said. Here "rules were broken. Stephen Patton died. But there have been no consequences for those who broke the rules."

First case in the country

The first suit in which a school district was found liable for a student's suicide also involved a 13-year-old.

After Shawn Wyke tried to hang himself in October 1989 in a restroom of his junior high school in Polk County, Fla., the dean of students called him into his office, read Scripture to him and took no further action. He didn't tell Shawn's parents or inform other school officials.

Shawn tried to kill himself again on school grounds later the same day then hanged himself in his back yard a couple of days later.

A court found the school district could be found liable for failing to notify Shawn's parents, saying "a prudent person would not have needed a crystal ball to see that Shawn needed help and that if he didn't get it soon, he might attempt suicide again." The court also said "the risk of a child's death substantially outweighs the burden of making a phone call."

A jury returned a $500,000 verdict although the school district was found responsible for only a third of it.

Inside Kentucky's Common Core

This from KET:

On the next edition of Education Matters, panelists join host Bill Goodman to discuss the state’s adoption and adaptation of the national Common Core standards, which in Kentucky are known as the Kentucky Core Academic Standards (KCAS). 

Education Matters

 “Inside the Common Core”

Monday, April 13 at 9/8 pm on KET

After airing, the program will also be available for

streaming online at KET.org/educationmatters. 

In Feb. 2010, Kentucky became the first state to adopt the national Common Core State Standards in mathematics and in English/language arts. On this edition of Education Matters, education experts join Goodman to offer an overview of the new Kentucky Core Academic Standards, which, according to the Kentucky Department of Education, “outline the minimum required standards that all Kentucky students should have the opportunity to learn before graduating from Kentucky high schools.” 

Panelists address the ways the national standards have been adapted to meet the state’s specific needs – and how these new standards have been implemented in school districts across Kentucky over the past four years. 

Panelists include Karen Kidwell, director of the Division of Program Standards at the Kentucky Department of Education, and Lafayette High School AP Calculus

Ali Wright

and Algebra teacher Ali Wright of Lexington, a National Board Certified Teacher and a National Center for Teaching Quality “teacherpreneur.” Also joining the panel are Mikkaka Overstreet, a teacher-in-residence at Louisville’s Cochran Elementary School, where she facilitates a collaborative partnership between the school and the University of Louisville’s College of Education; Phillip Guthrie, a mathematics teacher from Henry County High School; and Amanda Davenport, who teaches fifth grade at Taylor Elementary in Brooksville and math at Bracken County Middle School. 

Additionally, the program includes visits to two schools – Frankfort’s Second Street Elementary and Lexington’s Lafayette High School – to investigate the ways that the new standards have been successfully integrated into Kentucky’s math and language arts classrooms. 

Education Matters is a KET production, produced by Tom Bickel. Nancy Carpenter is the executive producer. Series information and streaming video can be found at KET.org/educationmatters. KET is Kentucky’s largest classroom, serving more than one million people each week via television, online and mobile. Learn more about Kentucky’s preeminent public media organization on Twitter @KET and facebook.com/KET and at KET.org. KET’s education coverage is part of American Graduate: Let’s Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. #AmGradKET

11th Hour language could make SEEK a "Necessary Government Expense"

This from KSBA:

Gov. Steve Beshear

If Gov. Steve Beshear agrees, an 11^th-hour bill adopted by the Kentucky General Assembly would eliminate cuts in the SEEK program this year due to a projected shortfall.

Before adjourning the 2015 session early this morning, legislators in the House and Senate passed House Bill 510, originally a measure on tax collections. However, language adopted in a free conference committee of members of both chambers states:

Additional SEEK Funding: IF the above General Fund appropriation (in the biennial budget) is not sufficient to fully fund the SEEK program, including adjustments pursuant to KRS 157.360 in fiscal year 2014-15, the Kentucky Department of Education may request up to $10,000,000 in fiscal year 2014-15, which shall be deemed a necessary government expense and shall be paid from the General Fund Surplus Account (KRS 48.700) or the Budget Reserve Trust Fund Account (KRS 48.705).

In February, Education Commissioner Terry Holliday asked the Beshear administration for $8 million to cover the projected shortfall resulting from factors including:

      · lower than projected property assessments;

      · higher than projected Prior Year End-of-Year Adjusted Average Daily Attendance; and

      · higher than projected Exceptional Child counts in categories of low and moderate incidence.

The commissioner cited projections of a state budget surplus due to improvements in General Fund tax receipts.

Last month, State Budget Director Jane Driskell essentially declined Holliday’s request as “premature,” citing the requirement that the state must first use any reserves to cover “necessary government expenses,” such as natural disasters and other emergency expenses.

Now, the HB 510 language formally designates full funding of SEEK for the current fiscal year as “a necessary government expense.”

Holliday praised House and Senate members for the action

“I’m encouraged that legislators recognize schools’ needs and still see education funding as a priority in the Commonwealth," the commissioner said in a statement to eNews.

KSBA Executive Director Mike Armstrong also expressed appreciation to the legislature for working to ease the impact of the SEEK cuts on districts this year.

“We’d especially like to thank the chairmen of the HB 510 free conference committee, Rep. Rick Rand and Sen. Paul Hornback, for recognizing the importance of this investment in education,” Armstrong said.

The 2015 General Assembly concluded its work and adjourned early this morning. Bills passed the past two days now to go Gov. Beshear for his approval or veto.

Kentucky Students take on Senators

Kentucky students held a rally Monday morning on the steps of the state capitol, demanding that two state senators stop sabotaging a bill they're hoping to move through the legislature. The bill, conceived and written by members of the Prichard Committee Student Voice Team, would allow high school students to sit on superintendent screening committees.

Student Voice Team member Eliza Jane Schaffer and adviser Rachel Belin appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night. (Kentucky story begins at 4:10)

House Bill 236 passed education committees in both chambers and was passed overwhelmingly by the state House. But then two state senators tacked on what the students are calling unrelated and unfriendly amendments, effectively killing the legislation.

The amendments were proposed by state Sens. CB Embry, Jr. and Albert Robinson. One would require transgender students to use bathrooms based on their sex when they were born. Another would allow students to express their religious or political views in school without facing discrimination.

Robinson, who proposed the latter amendment, told Morning Education (source via email) that thousands of people support it, whereas not one of his constituents has called about the superintendent screening bill. He said he never intended to kill the students' bill; in fact, he thought his amendment would help it pass. But the students have been "irrational" and they've resorted to personal attacks, Robinson said. As a result, he doesn't want to meet with them. "They're not reasonable people," he said, "and frankly, I don't know if they should be picking superintendents."

The students have taken to Twitter with the hashtag #saveourbill and they're reaching out to media to spread the word. Andrew Brennan, one of the students behind the effort, told Morning Education that state senators have told them "that this is just how the game is played." His response: "This is a bipartisan piece of legislation. It shouldn't be politicized."

The students said they haven't been thrilled with past media coverage of their campaign. Reports have portrayed them as naïve and confused about the political process, said Eliza Jane Schaeffer. "While we were shocked when the amendments were added, we understand what's happening," she said. The story is no longer about naïve students, or even about who should screen superintendents, the students said. They see it as a story about a dysfunctional political system that silences student voice.

Not Feelng the Love?

This from Morning Education (via email):

Teachers around the world report strong satisfaction with their jobs, but when it comes to feeling valued - well, that's a different story.

Fewer than one-third of U.S. teachers responding to the OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey said they felt society appreciated their contributions. By comparison, nearly 70 percent of teachers in Singapore and nearly 60 percent in Finland said society valued their work. (On the other end of the scale, just 5 percent of French teachers felt that way.) The TALIS survey was conducted in 2013; results were discussed at a recent webinar sponsored by the American Institutes for Research.

Among the other findings

Asian countries such as Japan and Korea put a strong emphasis on making time for teachers to observe other classes. In the U.S., by contrast, half of the middle- and high-school teachers surveyed said they never conducted such observations. The survey also found that U.S. educators spend more time actually teaching - about 55 percent of their work week - than most global peers.

Much closer to home, the 2015 TELL Survey underway in Kentucky.

This from KDE:

“We saw significant change in our schools, districts and at the state level as the result of the first two surveys,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. “As one example, our teachers said they didn’t have adequate or reliable Internet service to support their teaching. So we went to the legislature and asked for funding to support an upgrade in technology, which was included in the last budget. There’s power in the voices of nearly 50,000 teachers.”

Kentucky had an 87 percent response rate to the TELL Kentucky Survey in 2013;  state and local leaders are hoping for an even better response rate this year. The survey takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

To encourage greater participation, the Kentucky Education Association, Kentucky Association of School Administrators, Kentucky School Boards Association, the Hope Street Group and the Fund for Transforming Education in Kentucky are contributing prize money for weekly drawings. Every school that reaches a 50 percent response rate will be entered into a drawing for a $1,000 cash award for the school. Schools that reach a 100 percent response rate will be entered into a drawing for a $1,000 cash award that will go to an individual educator. School-and district-completion rates are posted on the www.tellkentucky.org website in real time.

No public monies are being used in the drawings.

The TELL Kentucky Survey is administered by the New Teacher Center (NTC), a national non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the development of a high-quality teaching force. NTC has conducted similar surveys in other states.

Survey data collected from across the country since 2002 demonstrates three primary findings:

• Teacher working conditions are critical for increasing student achievement

• improving working conditions creates a more stable teaching force

• Considerable gaps exist between the perceptions of teachers and administrators regarding the presence of key working conditions.

NTC will aggregate and report results from the 2015 TELL Kentucky survey no later than June 1. These reports will be a compilation of educator responses to all questions and will be presented as bar charts and in Excel format for the school (if at least 50 percent of educators respond), district and state.

TELL Kentucky is conducted under the leadership of the Kentucky Department of Education and supported by a coalition of education organizations, all of whom believe that it is critically important to listen to educators' views when shaping school improvement strategies.

Conservatives and No Child Left Behind

Morning Education (via email) heard reports last week that made them wonder: 

DID A BLOG POST CRASH NCLB?

A viral blog post  detailing (predominantly false) problems in House Republicans' No Child Left Behind bill took on a life of its own in the week leading up to NCLB getting pulled from the House floor. The post apparently led constituents to complain to their members about the bill.

But how much influence did it have on the Hill?

Morning Education spoke with seven right-leaning, rank-and-file House offices about what they were hearing that week. Most said they got some calls - in the dozens - opposing the bill but didn't recall the blog post being cited. One office, however, said that it fielded many calls on the post and spent a significant amount of time refuting its claims.

House Education and the Workforce Committee Republicans, meanwhile, are continuing to make the argument that their bill is thoroughly conservative. A release sent Monday prominently cites a blog post by Fordham's Chester Finn saying the Student Success Act is "the most conservative federal education move in a quarter century."

This from Chester Finn at Fordham:

The conservative case for H.R. 5

The Club for Growth is right about a bunch of issues, but they’re wrong about the pending House bill to replace No Child Left Behind with something far better. H.R. 5 (the “Student Success Act”), slated for floor action a few days hence, would, if enacted, be the most conservative federal education move in a quarter century. It has the potential to undo nearly all of the mischievous, dysfunctional, intrusive, big-government features of NCLB and return most education responsibility and authority to states, just as the Tenth Amendment prescribes. Which is, of course, precisely why the bill has come under sustained attack from the left! If right and left team up to kill it, we’ll be left with No Child Left Behind circa 2002, as modified (and made even more mischievous) by the Education Department’s unilateral “waivers.”

Moreover, states have always had the option—urged yesterday by the Club for Growth as if it were a fresh idea—to “opt completely out of the program.” Any state willing to forego its share of federal education dollars is free to do so—and to exempt itself from all the rules and constraints that accompany those dollars.

States have flirted with this option, and perhaps one will someday actually make such a move, but so far—that means for the last fifty years, inasmuch as NCLB was only the most recent iteration of a 1965 program—none has wanted to decline the money.

Because it’s unlikely that many states ever will, and even less likely that the money will vanish entirely (though H.R. 5 caps and redirects it in ways that the Obama administration is railing against), conservatives should cheer the flexibility and empowerment given back to state leaders by this bill. Then they should focus on the Senate, where Senators Alexander and Murray are trying to craft a bipartisan measure to take to markup in the weeks ahead.

Common problems with Common Core reporting

This from Alexander Russo in the Columbia Journalism Review.

"Something big is happening in New Jersey,” PBS NewsHour special correspondent John Merrow intones ominously at the start of last week’s NewsHour segment on standardized testing in New Jersey and elsewhere. “It’s happening in Newark … . It’s happening in Montclair … . And it’s happening in the state capital.”

The “something big,” according to PBS and other media outlets, is growing grassroots resistance among parents and students to a new set of tests being administered nationwide for the first time.

But so far, at least, much of the media’s coverage of this spring’s Common Core testing rollout has been guilty of over-emphasizing the extent of the conflict, speculating dire consequences based on little information, and over-relying on anecdotes and activists’ claims rather than digging for a broader sampling of verified numbers. The real story—that the rollout of these new, more challenging tests is proceeding surprisingly well—could be getting lost.

The tests under scrutiny were developed in conjunction with the Common Core State Standards, which the nation’s governors produced and President Obama has since supported. But since their creation in 2009, those standards and the new tests have become controversial among some conservatives as well as liberals, including some teachers and parents.

There’s no doubt that this spring’s Common Core testing is a big story. According to the AP, roughly 12 million students in 29 states plus DC will take the new tests. But looking at recent national media coverage, you’d think the whole Common Core enterprise was about to come crashing down.

Reality isn’t so clear. Efforts to convince state legislatures to roll back the standards and tests have fared poorly, as Politico recently noted. Last year’s trial run with the new tests generally went well, technically and otherwise. Parents’ willingness to opt their children out of the tests has been high in just a few schools and smaller school districts. Only a handful of teachers have endangered their jobs by refusing to administer the tests.

So the collapse of the Common Core and its tests may happen at some future point, but it isn’t happening yet—despite overheated coverage. I’m not the only one who thinks so:

“What’s missing from the journalism, and from the public’s understanding, is that students have long sat through hours of tests that their teachers may or may not find useful in helping teach better,” says former Education Writers Association public editor Linda Perlstein, who currently consults for clients including the pro-Common Core Gates Foundation. “People are blaming a lot on the Common Core, and reporters aren’t always critical and analytical enough in response.”

It’s not so much that the coverage includes factual errors (though there are some chronic problems on that front). Nor is it that reporters are being barraged with emails and tweets from testing opponents (though that’s happening as well). The real challenges are that instead of two simple “sides” for readers and reporters to choose from, there are multiple players with all sorts of views and interests—from parents and teachers to conservatives and liberals.

Then there are various technical glitches around the country that are hard to describe without over-generalizing, and the lack of timely information from districts and state education agencies that forces reporters to rely on anecdotes and advocates’ claims (about, say, opt-out numbers).

The March 11 PBS NewsHour segment illustrates many of these issues.

Co-host Judy Woodruff introduces the opt-out movement as a rebellion brewing in New Jersey and elsewhere and says if reports of students opting out keep building, “it could endanger the goals of the standards themselves.” According to PBS, anti-testing protests were occurring in New Jersey “just about every night, often with strong language.” And New Jersey wasn’t alone. Anti-testing efforts were taking place in Florida, New York, Washington, and Colorado.

“How strong is this grassroots test refusal movement?” asks correspondent Merrow. “Politicians are paying attention. Twelve states have already dropped the Common Core tests. And others are considering it.”

There are a few problems with the news segment. The opening footage showing Newark students protesting the local school board suggests that the new tests are a main concern of the protesters, when all previous reports have them rallying primarily against Christie-appointed Newark school superintendent Cami Anderson. Eleven of the 12 states that “dropped” the official Common Core tests have developed their own similar assessments, according to right-leaning think tanker Mike Petrilli. And—perhaps most problematic—the piece speculates about the future of the entire endeavor based on vague assertions about parents opting out without any hard numbers.

Students march in a still taken from the PBS NewsHour special.

Students march in a still taken from the PBS NewsHour special.

It’s as if someone told you that there were reports of violence in the Middle East that could, if they grew, result in the downfall of a nation. You’d want to know: How much violence? Where? For how long? Has this ever happened before?

The PBS segment isn’t alone in sharing some of these issues.

The Associated Press kicked off national coverage of this year’s Common Core testing with a Feb 17 story previewing the coming tests (Ohio Debuts New Digital Standardized Test This Week). However, it focused primarily on the controversies surrounding the standards and the mishaps that might potentially occur, mysteriously ignoring the previous year’s “field test” of the new assessments that had taken place in 2014 (and had generally gone well.)A March 7 Washington Post story begins with the observation that “A growing number of parents are refusing to let their children take standardized tests this year.” However, there’s no mention that mostly affluent parents are doing the opting out. That the opt-out trend “remains a tiny minority nationwide” is buried low down in the story.

A New York Times March 2 piece describes the opt-out movement as well-organized in New Jersey and elsewhere, leading to a “cascade of parental anxiety.” To the reporter’s credit, the piece includes a mix of responses from local administrators to the controversy, closing with a nuanced observation about a parent who signed a Facebook petition against the tests but is still going to have her daughter take them.

Testing critics are generally pleased with the attention and coverage they’ve been getting, though some feel that there’s too much unchallenged fear-mongering coming from the other side. “One area of weakness is a pattern of reporting fear-mongering statements by public officials about possible sanctions from test opt-outs/boycotts without checking their veracity,” says FairTest’s Bob Schaeffer, whose organization monitors standardized tests nationwide.

For his part, PBS’ Merrow defends including the Newark footage and the omission of the union’s activities. “Because [the Newark students] had more than one issue (quite a few, actually), does that disqualify them from being in the piece?” he wrote in an email to me. The union’s role in encouraging parents to opt out is inaccurate, he says. “We did not see strong evidence that the union was calling shots or pulling strings.” About the lack of hard numbers, Merrow notes that the piece acknowledges their absence at the end of the piece but couldn’t do anything more.

True enough, there is no statewide real-time data source tallying the numbers of students opting out of testing, and perhaps there should be. But at least some of the information from districts was reported by local papers. (Reporters from the NYT, Washington Post, WSJ, and AP did not respond to emailed requests for comment.)

There are some clear ways to minimize the issues around the Core.

Claims about opt-out numbers need to be verified through official sources (even if it means calling districts individually, as some reporters and bloggers have done). Wherever possible, reporters should find some way to give numerical context (i.e., in percentage form) rather than raw numbers, whose significance is hard to grasp. Speculation—especially one-sided speculation—should be treated like it is, one-sided.

Avoiding journalistic ambiguity would help. Readers can’t realistically be expected to know that “a small but growing number” could mean pretty much anything, that “across the nation” isn’t the same as nationwide, and that protests coming from “across the spectrum” doesn’t necessarily include moderate, middle-of-the-road organizations like principals’ associations.

There’s no question that something big is happening in New Jersey and around the country, but it’s not what most reporters are describing. Kids in New Jersey will take an estimated 90 extra minutes of testing compared to previous years. Roughly 250,000 kids are taking the tests every day. For the most part, the large-scale snafus that have been predicted do not seem to have occurred, did not take place last year during the trial run process, and should not continue to be reported until they actually take place.