Education Week - January 20, 2021 - 15

From 'Stunning' to 'Surprising': How News of the Capitol
Attack Was Repackaged for Schools
On Jan. 7, the Associated Press published a story describing how a violent
mob loyal to President Donald Trump
stormed the U.S. Capitol. The attack
was a " stunning " attempt to overturn
the recent presidential election, the
AP wrote. It resulted in some of the
most " jarring " scenes ever to unfold
in a seat of U.S. power. The mob's action prompted outrage, " mostly from
Democrats, but from Republicans as
well. "
But when tens of thousands of
American students were assigned the
story to read in school, they got a different version of events. An adapted
version of the AP story distributed by
the popular ed-tech company Newsela described the attack as " surprising, " resulting in " unusual " scenes
that " prompted anger from both parties. "
The changes prompted sharp criticism from media literacy experts.
" The word 'surprising' disfigures
the gravity of the event, " said Sam
Wineburg, an education professor
who founded the Stanford History Education Group. " This was an assault
on the seat of American government.
To sugarcoat it is to do an injustice to
students' understanding. "
Newsela, based in New York City,
aggregates thousands of digital news
articles, primary source documents,
and other content for classroom use.
The content is adapted to a variety of
reading levels for students of different
ages and skill levels. The company's
base of registered users includes more
than 37 million students and 2.5 million teachers spanning 90 percent of
U.S. schools. As of January 13, more
than 170,000 students had accessed
Newsela's adaptations of the Associated Press article about the Capitol
attack, according to a spokeswoman
for the company.
The changes to the AP story were
made by Newsela staff, not algorithms, said Jennifer Coogan, the
company's chief content officer.
" It's really a collaboration of the two
sides of our content team, editorial
and instructional, to ensure the editorial integrity of a particular product,
ensure its grade-level appropriateness, and to answer a question that
hangs over us always: Does this help
teachers? " Coogan said.
The Associated Press was not available to comment on the Newsela
edits.
Newsela attempts to make the
news student-friendly

Founded in 2013, Newsela now has
content partnerships with more than
100 publishers, including Education
Week. A company spokeswoman
said daily-news providers within that
group, including the Associated Press,
have agreements with Newsela that
allow the company to " level " their

Carolyn Kaster/AP

By Benjamin Herold

A man dressed as George
Washington and holding a Trump
flag kneels and prays near the
Washington Monument on Jan. 6.

content.
In addition to the original version of
the AP story on the Capitol insurrection, Newsela published for schools
versions at six separate reading levels.
Coogan said changes to the story were
overseen by a Newsela executive editor who recently worked at the ABC
News national desk.
One of the student-friendly versions of the AP story was labeled with
a " Lexile level " of 840, according to
MetaMetrics, a frequently used tool
for measuring text complexity. According to Newsela's standard, that
roughly corresponds to a 5th grade
reading level.
Many of the changes in this version
of the story were intended to break
up multi-clause sentences. Others
sought to replace long or rarely used
words with simpler and more familiar alternatives. The AP, for example,
wrote:
" Trump spent the lead-up to
the proceedings publicly hectoring
Pence, who had a largely ceremonial role, to aid the effort to throw
out the results. "
The Newsela adaptation read:
" Before the meeting, Trump had
been publicly pressuring Pence. He
told Pence to overturn the election
results. "
In several places, the company
also added additional context that
was not included in the AP's original
story. Newsela's 840L version, for

example, included a definition of the
word 'mob' ( " a large crowd of people,
especially one that is wild and uncontrolled and intent on causing trouble
or violence " ). It also included descriptions of the vice president's role in the
Senate and how the Electoral College
works.
In addition, Newsela's studentfriendly version of the story eliminated some sections of the AP original
altogether. A paragraph describing the
shooting death of one of the Capitol
protestors was cut. So were quotes
from U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (DCalif.), who told the AP that " Donald
Trump probably should be brought up
on treason, " and U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse
(R-Neb.), who said " this violence was
the inevitable and ugly outcome of the
President's addiction to constantly
stoking division. "
Coogan described such changes as
necessary to aid students' comprehension. Journalists tend to assume
significant background knowledge
that many children lack, she said, and
news copy can get " pretty Baroque, "
making it more likely to confuse than
inform a typical 5th grader. Reducing
children's anxiety and other socialemotional considerations also factor
in to Newsela's decision-making process.
" We do try to build in a tone that
will be more reassuring to students, "
Coogan said.
It was that impulse that media-literacy experts consulted by Education
Week found concerning, at least when
it came to altering specific words in a
news story about an event of enormous political and historical significance.
The Associated Press, for example,

wrote that some Republican lawmakers raised " objections " to the results
of the 2020 presidential election. The
Newsela version changed that word,
so students read that some Republican lawmakers raised " problems "
with the election results.
Peter Adams, the senior vice president for education at the nonprofit
News Literacy Project, criticized the
change.
" It legitimizes what we know to be
baseless claims about election irregularities, " Adams said. " You have to
be careful not to soften the unprecedented and dangerous nature of what
happened. "
Addressing the racial implications
of the riots

Coogan of Newsela said the company gives extra scrutiny to adaptations of sensitive and high-profile
news stories. The AP story was
adapted to more reading levels than is
usual to make it more widely accessible, she said. There were also internal
discussions about how to best provide
context to help teachers and students
address the racial disparities in policing made plain in law enforcement's
response to the insurrection.
" We all know there's racial implications to this situation, " Coogan said.
" We take that very seriously, because
our user base is extremely diverse. "
Part of that effort was Newsela making the AP story available to schools as
part of a " text set. " Titled " Conserving Democracy: The Importance of
Learning Civics, " the collection of
resources included links to four other
stories, plus a series of discussion and
writing prompts.

Teachers, for example, were encouraged to introduce the article with
a quote from former President Ronald
Reagan, then to prompt students to
write about why the peaceful transfer
of power is one of the most important
aspects of democracy.
Newsela also provided teachers
with guides for a series of activities
titled " What Could Have Happened? "
One was specifically related to race.
" The lack of aggressive police presence looked vastly different from the
ways that law enforcement acted during the protests against police brutality in 2020. This has people thinking
about race and how non-black people
are treated differently than black,
indigenous, people of color, " that
activity guide reads. " If different actions were taken by law enforcement,
how could protestors have been
treated? "
In the days after the Capitol insurrection, some teachers and librarians
took to social media to thank Newsela
for making such resources available.
The media literacy experts consulted by Education Week, however,
said the ways the company rewrote
the first draft of history for the nation's
students must become a teachable
moment in and of itself.
" This is a big deal, " said Wineburg
of the Stanford History Education
Group. " We shouldn't be coming up
with euphemisms, but instead allowing unprecedented events to shock us
and make us understand where four
years of downplaying a cascading flow
of lies ultimately led. "
See a related story, 6 Ways to Help
Students Make Sense of the Capitol Siege ,
on the new edweek.org.

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