Twitter Feed Analysis: January 31 – February 7
This week, the #edreform, #edpolicy, and #edpolitics Twitter streams deviated from last week’s mentions of the effectiveness of teacher unions, teachers’ roles in education reform, and the 2012 State of the Union address. The most notable Twitter topic was Representative John Kline’s (R-MN) proposal to reform the Elementary and Secondary Education Act with the draft Student Success Act and the draft Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act.
The Twitter response to the two draft bills was overwhelmingly negative. Many “retweeted” an issue brief on the draft legislation released by the Center for American Progress. The issue brief noted that the draft bills depart from the trend of more federal control of public education by modifying some provisions to give greater autonomy to states. Positive tweets about the draft bills mentioned this point. However, the Twitter consensus was that the draft bills present huge obstacles to schools educating historically disadvantaged students, many of whom are minorities, because they would dilute Title II-A funds that benefit schools in high poverty areas. Other people “tweeted” that the draft bills would remove accountability measures for poorly performing schools, raising concerns that this loss, compounded with the loss of some Title II-A funding, would negatively affect student achievement in these schools.
Others “retweeted” an Education Week report that “Principals, Superintendents, School Boards Critique Kline Draft.” These tweets included the concern that should the draft bills increase the number of charter schools, it could reduce charter school accountability. News agents and people who may be teachers but are unaffiliated “Tweeters” contributed most to this discourse. I did not notice any charter school organizations that “tweeted” on this issue in particular.
More concern over charter schools arose when the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a statement contending that proposed Treasury and IRS reviews of pension systems would restrict states from allowing public charter school teachers to choose state retirement plans. The Twitter sentiment was in favor of protecting the right of public charter school teachers to choose these plans.
Concerns about high school graduation standards were given some exposure on Twitter. The New York Times published “Despite Focus on Data, Standards for Diploma Still Lack Rigor.” The article was “retweeted” numerous times by people concerned with the evidently mediocre standards to pass the New York State English Regents exam, especially after the proliferation of “data-driven” education reforms. While the number of points awarded to poor student work on the free-answer portion was criticized, the appropriateness of the test’s content was not questioned.
Another publication given “retweet” exposure on Twitter was the Center on Education Policy’s report, released February 7, on where state education agencies have chosen to cut funding. Many tweets expressed outrage that many of these agencies cut costs via teacher and school personnel attrition while maintaining or growing employment for departments that deal with teacher evaluation and with student achievement data systems.
One topic that was an anomaly among the Twitter feeds was the proposed savings that online textbooks could give public school districts. The Utah State Office of Education is developing its own online textbook initiative.
Since following the coverage of #edreform, #edpolicy, and #edpolitics was my first experience using Twitter, I was a bit overwhelmed. Judging from this week’s tweets, Twitter is a good source of news coverage of and think pieces on education policy. I think this week’s tweets covered very substantive topics, but at times Twitter seemed like an echo chamber of retweets in agreement with other people’s tweets. For most of the issues, one side of the debate was well-represented while the other, either praise or criticism, was fairly absent. I would like to have seen a variety of opinions, similar to how a major newspaper would interview prominent figures with opposing opinions. However, Twitter is valuable in that it does not discriminate between the opinions of “insiders” and of the public.
I chose to share the Foundation for Child Development’s “Investing in Public Programs Matters: How State Policies Impact Children’s Lives” with the class. This policy paper received a lot of exposure on Twitter and examines how state policies, including tax rates and revenue, affect children’s well-being, which is critical for school readiness.
