Public School Notebook celebrates 20 years of muckraking excellence
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
It is hard to imagine education news in Philadelphia without the Notebook.
The Philadelphia Public School Notebook turns 20 and is celebrating this Tuesday at the University of the Arts. Event details are here.
It is hard to imagine education news in Philadelphia without the Notebook. There are great education reporters at other outlets, including The Inquirer and WHYY (the Notebook has a partnership with the latter). But the Notebook alone provides the sort of comprehensive coverage that our perennially battered School District needs.
Decades of underfunding, concentrated poverty, waves of reforms-of-the-moment, high-stakes standardized testing and the unmet needs of special-education students all require more reporting and investigation than the rest of us reporters can handle.
The Notebook provides that, uncovering evidence of widespread cheating in Pennsylvania schools, serving as an online forum for teachers and advocates and offering a running explanation of the mind-bending twists and turns of state and city education politics. Their excellent 20th anniversary special issue looks back over two decades of Philly schools and their hard-hitting coverage.
The Notebook also writes about the teachers, students, parents and community members who make great things happen every day amidst incredibly difficult circumstances. And they do it all on a shoestring budget and sweat equity.
Writing for the Notebook taught me how to cover education. I'm in debt to the paper. And so is the rest of Philadelphia. Congratulations.
