By Charles Sosnik
This fall, the news cycles about schools felt eerily predictable. Maybe it’s because I’ve been following education for decades, or perhaps the way reporters frame stories has settled into familiar patterns. Whatever the cause, it’s easy to anticipate which school-related events the local and national press will highlight—and how they will present them. I’m growing a bit jaded, and I believe we can do better.
Take my home state of North Carolina. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), an urban district serving more than 145,000 students, released test results showing a stark gap between students’ current performance and the standards labeled “college and career ready.” The numbers are bleak: roughly 16 percent of white students demonstrated grade-level math skills, while only about 5 percent of students of color met that bar. Predictably, many outlets focused on the racial disparity.
But that framing misses the larger story. Framed properly, this should be about systemic failure—CMS is not preparing most of its students for success. Whether 16 percent of one group and 5 percent of another reveals racial inequity, it also demonstrates something more basic: an overwhelming majority of students cannot do grade-level math. This is an indictment of the district’s instructional systems, not merely a statistic about race.
Superintendent Earnest Winston acknowledged the results, saying, “These results were not unexpected. But I will also tell you, they are not acceptable.” Those words raise an unavoidable question: if the poor outcomes were predictable, what concrete plan does the district have to change them? Predicting failure and tolerating it are not the same as solving it. If leaders recognized the trend but still produced the same results, either the right fixes weren’t known or they weren’t implemented.
Local reporting leaned hard into racial comparisons, and outside “experts” were summoned to explain the disparity. The school board even threatened to withhold $56 million until a plan to close the gap appears. That threat misses the point: the objective shouldn’t be to bring one group up to the mediocre performance of another. The demand should be clear and ambitious—show a plan that enables every student to achieve the math skills necessary for college or a career. Highlighting the gap without insisting on universal proficiency is a serious misdirection.
Meanwhile, COVID-related coverage continues to dominate local news. Our evening broadcasts, stretched across extended hours, allot a disproportionate amount of time to debates over mask policies and school reopening schedules. With so many slots to fill, we get multiple mask stories each night, sometimes borrowed from other markets. The narrative tends to emphasize conflict and uncertainty rather than concrete successes.
Yet amid the constant controversy, I’ve noticed virtually no feature stories about the positive shifts underway. There’s little airtime for student success in remote learning, for teachers developing stronger virtual instruction skills, or for the growing range of effective homeschooling and digital tools. Nor have I seen much attention given to the extraordinary streams of funding available to districts right now—resources that, if applied thoughtfully, could accelerate meaningful improvement.
Imagine a lighter, more constructive news segment: “Shopping with Superintendent Smith.” In it, viewers would hear district leaders openly discussing priorities and purchases—what curriculum they need, where technology could improve instruction, how professional development will be used, and how they plan to evaluate results. Rather than defaulting to consultants and canned responses, imagine transparency about strategic choices and accountability for student outcomes.
One antidote to growing frustration is simply to watch less news. But for those of us who grew up with evening broadcasts, it’s hard to break the habit. A better strategy is selective viewing—focus on a single half-hour of reliable reporting each day and filter out the noise. Because despite sensational headlines, the education sector contains more promising developments than many realize.
The pandemic, painful as it has been, forced a reckoning. It made educators and communities confront longstanding shortcomings and prompted innovation at speed. Teachers and administrators worked creatively to sustain learning, deploying new tools and approaches. In many places, schools emerged leaner and better prepared—forced to keep what worked and discard what didn’t.
There are still real trouble spots—Charlotte-Mecklenburg being a vivid example—but recognizing the problem is the first step. In Char-Meck, many children cannot do grade-level math. That’s both a serious failure and a clear opportunity. Admitting that past practices haven’t worked opens the door to different, more effective solutions. Math is not an impenetrable mystery; it’s a language—a structured system that, once properly taught and understood, unlocks countless possibilities for deeper learning and future success.
The work won’t be easy, and it might look unfamiliar to educators who have relied on traditional approaches. But effective curriculum, focused instruction, high-quality professional development, and meaningful use of available funds can make a measurable difference. More than that, restoring robust math instruction can reignite students’ curiosity and confidence—after all, it’s satisfying to be able to calculate a tip in your head or solve a practical problem with ease.
About the author
Charles Sosnik is an education journalist and editor who serves as Editor in Chief at the Learning Counsel. An EP3 Education Fellow, he draws on deep connections in the education community to bring context to the conversation. Charles frequently contributes to prominent education outlets and writes about the shifting landscape of instruction, technology, and policy. He often jokes that he is an editor by trade and Southern by the grace of God.