SPRINGFIELD — A survey of Illinois educators reveals a significant disparity in how they interpret a three-year-old state law’s requirement to teach high school students a “unit of instruction” on media literacy.

About one-third of respondents to a survey conducted by the University of Illinois Springfield indicated they spend more than one class period but no more than one week covering the topic, while about 29 percent spend more than three weeks’ worth of class periods. Sixteen percent of schools surveyed discuss media literacy during a single class period over the course of a full school year.

Illinois became the first state in the nation to require public high schools to teach media literacy, which can include lessons on accessing information, analyzing and evaluating media messages, reflecting on how media affects the consumption of information and triggers emotions, and how to engage in thoughtful conversations with people using facts and reason. The state-mandated lessons began with the 2022-2023 school year.

A key feature of the law is its “bottom-up approach” that gives local schools flexibility to design and deliver media literacy lessons as they see fit, said Yonty Friesem, an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago and a co-founder of Illinois Media Literacy Coalition, a group that helped develop a media literacy education framework that teachers could use to build lessons in wake of the new law.

Survey response data

Click a question below to see how the school districts responded.

While the local-control approach made the legislation more politically palatable, the flexibility brings major differences in what the students learn.

“We definitely don’t see the impact that we wanted to see,” Friesem said of the law.

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He recalled being asked to speak about media literacy in a high school class. The session lasted an hour.

“That was the unit of instruction,” Friesem said. “Which, yes, they’re correct, it is. But I would prefer it to be a little bit longer.”

Media literacy findings

Further illustrating Illinois schools’ variations on how they handle media literacy education, the UIS survey, taken in spring 2024, found:

• Less than 82 percent of teachers said high school freshmen received media literacy instruction at their schools. That percentage decreases as students get older. Seniors received the training at 63 percent of the schools.
• One-third of educators reported a student who attends their high school for all four years will experience a media literacy lesson four or more times. Another one-third of teachers say their students will see just one lesson over their four years in high school.

In Springfield, students are receiving the lessons in a variety of ways. Mike Havener, a library media specialist at Springfield High School, one of three public high schools in the capital city, arranges with other teachers to bring their classes to the library so Havener can offer a session that covers media literacy. But even then, he doesn’t see every student in the building.

“I am not reaching with fidelity every student,” he said. “I mean, we range between high 1,300s to almost 1,500 students and just to get that quantity of kids through the library (for these lessons) … that is not happening. I can say that I do see every student in some capacity. But that’s not always me teaching a media literacy lesson. They’re coming in for English. They’re coming in to get a book. … I try to sneak it in as much as possible. There are other teachers in the building that do teach media literacy as part of their normal coursework.”

For Heather Danek, who teaches public speaking courses at Minooka Community High School in the Chicago suburbs, media literacy lessons in her classroom are “interwoven throughout the class. It’s not just a one-and-done situation for me.”

“We start within the very first unit talking about meeting the needs of an audience and audience expectations which I think is part of media literacy and thinking about the information that you’re using to create a point, thinking about the way that you’re building an argument using information,” said Danek, who serves on the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition. “And then, as we get further into like research projects, then I do more of the nuts and bolts of things like the true analysis of sources, looking at quality places to find information.”

‘It’s a pedagogy’

That approach — working media literacy into the everyday educational process — is what will make the lessons most effective, said Michael Spikes, the other co-founder of the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition and a lecturer at Northwestern University.

“It’s a pedagogy,” he said. “… Not so much like you got to go take the media literacy class, or you do media literacy when you have the unit, like what we have in the policy. … It’s a way of seeing the world the way you move through (it) more than just saying it’s just a subject that you learn.”

To that end, the UIS survey showed schools are working media literacy lessons into a variety of courses.

Nearly 60 percent of respondents said the lessons are included in English courses, 47 percent in history/social studies, 33 percent in business classes, 29 percent in literature and 18 percent in civics. Just more than 16 percent of schools said they deliver the lesson in a separate media literacy course.

Danek said she sees her students displaying media literacy skills, including being more aware of the quality of the information they’re using and being able to find reputable sources in trustworthy places.

Lack of statewide oversight, funding

Still, a deficiency in the law, Danek said, is a lack of statewide oversight to ensure compliance in classrooms throughout Illinois, which leaves many schools, including hers, implementing the law on a “hit or miss” basis.

“If I had this conversation with any curriculum director, or any building principal in the state of Illinois, I would hear the same answer,” she said. “… I think the challenges are communication. … How do we get the message out to people that they need to and should be doing this, and then how do we provide them with the necessary tools in order to do it?”

Another deficiency: The state didn’t set aside funds to train teachers to teach media literacy.

“I mean, it’s basically an unfunded mandate, right?” Danek said. “There wasn’t really any money put behind it. So, I think if you want a law that has some teeth, there has to be some money because you’re gonna need to identify ability, the opportunities for professional development.”

Other states’ policies

Just as Illinois school districts employ a variety of methods to teach media literacy, states around the country do, too.

As of the end of 2023, 19 state legislatures had approved bills or resolutions concerning “K-12 media literacy or digital citizenship education,” according to a policy report by Media Literacy Now, a group that pushes for the subject to be taught in public schools.

A study published in 2023 by University of Kentucky professor Daniela Kruel DiGiacomo and others examined state-level legislation and found the measures lack consistency in terms of substance, scope and intended implications.

Most legislation focuses on safety and civility in online environments but fails to address equity concerns adequately. Moreover, there is a notable lack of support in terms of funding, teacher training, and clear definitions of media literacy terms. The study underscores the need for comprehensive and coherent policy frameworks to effectively integrate media literacy education into the curriculum.

Back in Illinois, educators say identifying the skills of teachers and assessing the implementation of the law more comprehensively is another step toward making improvements.

While the UIS survey offers snapshots into outcomes, a statewide assessment is something those interviewed see as a necessary step, perhaps coming from the Illinois State Board of Education.

“Students have to pass a Constitution test to graduate,” Havener, the Springfield High faculty member, said. “I think there should be a media literacy test and that it has equal importance in weight in order for kids to graduate.”

Partisan divide

Another way to promote buy-in on media literacy across the state is for educators to fully explain to the public what it entails. Many people, educators say, equate media literacy to fact-checking and news literacy, one part of which is news consumers learning about biases that specific news organizations might have.

Those discussions often become lightning rods for political conflict and create the distrust each party’s faithful have for certain media outlets such as FOX News or MSNBC.

There was definitely a partisan divide in the Illinois legislature’s vote in 2021 on House Bill 234, which created the media literacy education law. In the House, the vote was strictly partisan, with all 68 “yes” votes coming from Democrats and the 44 “no” votes coming from Republicans. In the Senate, which passed the bill 42-15, three Republicans crossed over to vote in favor along with Democrats.

Illinois Republicans who opposed the measure in 2021, however, spoke in a legislative committee meeting about their beliefs against creating a statewide curricular mandate and didn’t specifically speak against the concept of media literacy.

Friesem said the full concept of media literacy goes beyond the news.

“The main pushback from conservatives is that (media literacy) is liberal indoctrination, which is the exact opposite, because real media literacy … is to learn to ask questions,” he said. “… So it’s not about if you’re conservative or liberal, you’re media literate or you’re not media literate. It’s about … questioning who is in power, why they’re there, why they’re sending those messages, why people who are not in power are sending those messages, the context.”

Dr. Ann Strahle is interim associate dean and a professor in the College of Public Affairs and Education at the University of Illinois Springfield. Jason Piscia is an associate professor and director of UIS’ Public Affairs Reporting program. The UIS survey was conducted in spring 2024 by contacting more than 750 high school principals at Illinois’ public high schools, asking them or other faculty at their schools to fill out a 19-question survey about how the media education law is being implemented in their building. Forty-nine responses, all anonymous, were received.