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EWA Board BiographiesStephanie Banchero, Acting Vice President Actives Scott Elliott, Acting Secretary Richard Whitmire, Immediate Past President Cornelia Grumman, Board Member Dakarai I. Aarons, Board Member Dale Mezzacappa is a contributing editor at the Philadelphia Public School Notebook and an independent writer and consultant who spent 20 years covering education for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Before that, she reported on government and politics from Trenton and Washington for the Inquirer and the Record of Hackensack, N.J. Among other projects, she is currently consulting with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent quarterly publication that covers the city schools. She has taught journalism at Swarthmore College and is working with the Hechinger Institute for Education and the Media to develop a resource list for a new course in education reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She’s earned a long list of awards from organizations including EWA, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Columbia University School of Journalism. In 1990 and 1991, she studied issues relating to children, poverty and education as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She is a graduate of Vassar College. Contact her at (215) 242-1485; dalemezz@comcast.net.
Marie Groark is a senior policy officer and spokesperson for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Grants from the foundation support work in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and in more than 100 countries. In education, the foundation has focused on improving high school graduation rates. Groark was previously a principal consultant with IBM Business Consulting Services, where she oversaw strategic planning projects for state and local governments, as well as non-profits and private corporations. Contact her at the Gates Foundation, P.O. Box 23350, Seattle, WA 98121; (206) 709-3299; http://marie.groark@gatesfoundation.org/. Stephanie Banchero covers state and national education issues, including testing, teacher quality and the achievement gap. Her work has shown the impact of the federal No Child Left Behind Act on students and teachers. She has received many awards for her writing, including a 2006 first place feature award from EWA for her magazine profile of a father struggling with the care and education of his children and a 2004 first place award from EWA and the Missouri School of Journalism for her three-part series on a student transferring from school to school. Both years, she was a finalist for EWA’s Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting. She joined the Chicago Tribune in 1997, following stints at the Charlotte Observer, the Philadelphia Inquirer,Salt Lake Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. She has quo;s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and spent the 2008-2009 academic year in Palo Alto at Stanford University as a John S. Knight Fellow in Professional Journalism, studying school reform, early childhood education and teacher preparation. Contact her at the Wall Street Journal,1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10036 ; stephanie.banchero@wsj.com. Richard Whitmire graduated from the College of Wooster in Ohio and then taught high school English for one year in Canandaigua, N.Y., before taking a newspaper job in Geneva, N.Y. He worked on several New York papers before moving to Washington to take a job handling special projects with Gannett News Service. After working on the design and launch of USA Today he returned to Gannett News Service to cover the Pentagon. In 1986 he received a Knight Journalism Fellowship to study national security topics at Stanford University. In 1991 Whitmire switched to reporting on education and in 2000 he joined the editorial board of USA Today, where he writes editorials about education issues. In 2004 he concluded a Journalism Fellowship in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland where he looked at why boys are falling behind in school.Whitmire is married to ABC News senior producer Robin Gradison. They have two daughters. He is currently freelancing - contact him at Arlington, VA 22201; Richard.Whitmire@gmail.com or at his blog http://www.whyboysfail.com/. Cornelia Grumman joined the First Five Years Fund in 2008 and leads the national organization in its commitment to increase federal investment in high quality early childhood education programs, beginning at birth. She was previously a member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board where she won many awards, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials that led to reforms of Illinois’ criminal justice system, a 2001 Studs Terkel Award for her coverage of disadvantaged communities, and 2006, 2005 and 2001 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism for her coverage of children and families. Grumman joined the Chicago Tribune in 1994 as a general assignment reporter. She also worked at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. and the Daily Southtown in Chicago, and as a stringer in The Washington Post’s Beijing bureau. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Duke University.Contact her at the First Five Years Fund, at 33 W Monroe, Chicago, IL, 60603-5400; (312) 453-1844;cgrumman@ffyf.org. Elizabeth Green is a reporter for Gotham Schools.org. She worked as an education reporter at The New York Sun in May 2007 and continued until the newspaper closed in October 2008. Before working at the Sun, Elizabeth covered K-12 education for U.S. News & World Report magazine. She graduated from Harvard in 2006 with a degree in social studies. Elizabeth has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and The Brian Lehrer Show to speak about education news. Contact her at Gotham Schools, 349 W 12th Street, New York, NY 10014; (917)388-9035; eliz.w.green@gmail.com. Scott Elliott is the editorial writer and columnist at the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, where he has worked since 1998. He is the author of a popular education blog called "Get on the Bus." He is formally an education reporter who covered national, state and local education issues with a focus on school choice, testing and urban school reform. In 2004-05, he was the Knight Wallace Journalism Fellow in Education at the University of Michigan. Elliott and his colleague, Mark Fisher, wont he 2005 National Headliner Award for education reporting for a series of stories about testing and No Child Left Behind. Elliott also is the author of Public Schools, Private Markets: A Reporter's Guide to Covering Privatization in Education, published in 2005 by the Education Writers Association. Contact him at the Dayton Daily News at 45 S. Ludlow St., Dayton, OH 45402; (937) 225-2485; scemel@aol.com. Kent Fischer is a three-time winner of national education writer’s awards and has more than 10 years of experience on the beat. He recently left the Dallas Morning News, where he covered the Dallas public schools, to become an account manager at GMMB in Seattle. His beat specialties had been tracking district expenditures, school choice, privatization and charters. Before moving to Dallas in 2003, Fischer worked at the St. Petersburg Times, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the Concord (N.H.) Monitor. His stories probing corruption in Dallas schools have so far resulted in the resignations, firings or indictments of a dozen district employees. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. Contact him at GMMB, 1200 Westlake Ave., Suite 1005, Seattle, WA 98109; (206) 618-3441; kent.fischer@gmmb.com. Kathryn Baron is a freelance radio reporter and producer in the San Francisco Bay area. She worked at KQED Public Radio from 1997 to 2008 after several years in television, commercial radio and print reporting. When she’s not hosting the morning newscasts, Kathryn covers education—from preschool to college—a beat she says is in her DNA coming from a family of teachers. After earning a B.A. degree from the State University of New York at Albany, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work for a non-profit education group organizing students around Title IX. It was while watching firsthand the sausage-making process of how a bill becomes law that she decided to return to journalism, where she had first dabbled as a teenager delivering Newsday on her blue Schwinn. Her articles have appeared in Parenting, the Nation, Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News, among other publications. Contact her at Edutopia, PO Box 3494, San Rafael, CA 94912-3494; (415) 662-7018; kathryn.baron@edutopia.org. Rodney K. Ferguson is a partner at the Brunswick Group, LLC in Washington, DC. He used to oversee the Washington office of marketing and communications firm at Lipman Hearne Inc. There, he worked with clients including the Brookings Institution, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the College Board, the U.S. Department of Education and Scholastic Inc. Ferguson has spent more than 15 years in journalism, public policy communication and education. He earned a Master of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Birmingham Southern College. Contact him at Brunswick Group, LLC., 1101 K St. NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20005; (202) 393-7337; rferguson@brunswickgroup.com. Cathy Grimes is the education team leader at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., organizing and managing the coverage of six writers and producing stories and special projects for the paper. She joined the staff in 2006 after completing a Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard University, where she also taught undergraduate and graduate journalism courses. Grimes was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2004 and 2005 for stories about No Child Left Behind and special education. She studied theater arts at San Franciso State University before pursuing a bachelor of arts in humanities at the University of Washington.Contact her at the Daily Press, 7505 Warwick Blvd., Newport News, VA 23607; (757)247-4758;cgrimes@dailypress.com. Scott Jaschik is the editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed. He co-leads the editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, resources and interactive features. Jaschik has published articles on colleges in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and Salon. From 199 to 2003, Jaschik was the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a graduate of Cornell University. Contact him at Inside Higher Ed, 1320 18th Street, NW, 5th Floor, Washingotn, DC., 20036. (202)659-9208; Scott.Jaschik@insidehighered.com Dakarai I. Aarons is an award winning staff writer for Education Week, where he covers local school districts and school leadership and management. He also is the author of the District Dossier blog on edweek.org, which delivers news and analysis on the trends and challenges facing America's school districts. Before joining Education Week, he covered local and state education issues for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., earning recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Tennessee Press Association. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, the Des Moines Register, and The Miami Herald. a native of Washington, D.C., he holds a bachelor's degree in news-editorial journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Contact him at Education Week, 6935 Arlington Road Ste 100 Bethesda, Md. 20814; (301) 280-3110; DAarons@epe.org.
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