Inaccurate Headlines

Read the headline of this article.

Now, you probably thought this was a case about whether a girl could use her assistant dog in school or not. To those of you with even a passing knowledge of disability law in the United States, that may strike you as odd. The reason for that is, this was not a case over whether the girl could use her dog, but whether her family could sue a school for not letting her use it. The headline is written in a way, however, that makes the case seem bigger, and more inflammatory.

The best headline is, in fact, the one at the lowest lexile level. It reads, "Fluffy white dog waiting outside court is the topic of conversation inside". Even that is a poor headline as it is too vague. It created a lot of confusion when I presented it to the class. I bring this up because that is exactly what happened when I used it for a current event lesson in class.