Spinning the Message on NCLB

Abstract

THIS column is about a city with two tales -- one of spin and the other of sputter. No matter who occupies the White House for the next four years, the past four have borne witness to some of the most ludicrous uses of taxpayer money ever, as the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has tried to spin its message on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) across the country. What was amusing ineptness at first finally became hardball strategy and put the department in the same league as other federal agencies in its efforts at manipulating the media. As a former president of the Education Writers Association, I suppose I could be justifiably sensitive about what has been happening. Education coverage at the federal level used to be somewhat benign. Education was viewed as an important issue -- but not nearly as critical as, say, national security or the affairs of the Department of State. It was a low priority. way ED has shaped its media policies, however, has shoved education up a notch or two in status and importance. Education reporters now have a feel for what the conservative columnist William Safire wrote about this fall. Always quick to defend the Bush White House, Safire nevertheless said: The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before. It seems that the Education Department paid a public relations firm a tidy sum to rate media coverage of NCLB. Lumping news stories and editorials together, the analysis gave points to articles, reporters, and states according to how positive or negative the coverage of NCLB. (Secretary of Education Rod Paige himself got a grade of 95% for an op- ed in the Seattle Times; he failed to attain a perfect 100% because the paper was deemed a local and not a national newspaper). purpose of the analysis, according to a spokesperson for the public relations firm, was to further educate reporters who scored low. Since reporters are naturally cynical, their reaction to news of the rating project was more irreverent than acquiescent. Reporters who rated high scores were apologizing and trying to understand why covering a press conference about NCLB put them high on the list. Those who needed educating were more inclined to brag about their standing or to call the raters idiots. PR firm also produced videos made to look like press conferences (as had already been done by the Department of Health and Human Services to convey positive messages about changes in Medicare). NCLB videos were withdrawn, and so were the HHS videos when the Government Accountability Office said their obvious plugging of President Bush's political agenda represented illegal use of taxpayers' money. signs of heightened spin came early in the Paige tenure at ED. In the initial months of the implementation of NCLB -- when state and district leaders were begging for clarification of the law and for timely regulations -- Paige was on a photo-op tour of the country promoting certain aspects of the law, especially parental choice. His appearances were made that much jollier by the singing of a little song praising NCLB -- a song also paid for by taxpayers. Reporters found that they had to funnel all queries to ED through a single person, the communications director who managed Paige's media contacts in the Houston school district, where the secretary had been superintendent. Giving workshops especially for the communications staffs of big-city districts, this person, who is now back in Houston, describes how he measures, in inches, all media coverage of the schools and judges it as either negative or positive. …