Mainstream media loves a compelling story. And, regretfully, media tends to care very little how accurate or complete that story is.

Media coverage of education is almost entirely a series of misleading stories grounded in either crisis or miracle rhetoric.

One of the darlings of the media is the charter school, the one aspect of the school choice movement that has garnered bipartisan support.

However, as a type of school choice, charter schools must market themselves and recruit. So when media and school marketing combine, I urge “Buyer Beware”:

Here, The State (Columbia, SC) has platformed the principal of a charter school, who makes a couple important (but misleading) claims: the charter school is exceptional and that is because the school practices separating boys and girls for instruction.

“Exemplary High Performing School” is causally connected by Wooten to the boy/girl instructional segregation; however, rarely can a school conduct the sort of scientific research in-house to determine causation, and more importantly, student achievement (test scores) remain overwhelmingly a reflection of the students’ socioeconomic status (60+%), not the school, instruction, or teacher quality.

Here is the missing parts to this story:

Note that Langston Charter Middle has the third lowest poverty index (PI) in the state (12.9), and for comparison, in the same district, the Washington Center has one of the highest PI (96) in the state. [Note that Greenville has a incredibly wide range of low and high poverty schools because the district is large and covers an area of the state with significant pockets of poverty and affluence; and thus, neighborhood schools tend to reflect that socioeconomic reality.]

Further, if we look at Langston Charter Middle’s state report card, the “exceptional” seems to be missing:

Yes, the academic achievement is “excellent,” but again, this data point reflects mostly the very low PI for the students being served.

Note that when Langston Charter Middle is compared to schools with similar student demographics (Daniel Island School, 8.2PI, and Gold Hill Middle, 11.5 PI), the “exceptional” appears to be typical among similar schools:

Media and marketing do more harm than good for public education. When the media is fixated on incomplete and misleading stories and schools feel compelled to market themselves for customers, we all lose.

The OpEd run by The State is not about an exceptional school or the success of separating girls and boys for instruction (although that does speak into a current political ideology that wants this to be true).

The story, as usual, is incomplete, and the marketing is at best misleading.

Once again, many in the US do not want to hear or see the full story: Our schools and student achievement mostly reflect the socioeconomic status of the students’ parents, homes, and communities.

When it comes to media coverage of our schools, I must emphasize: Don’t buy the story being sold.