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EWA Webinars & Conference Calls

EWA regularly hosts free Web-based trainings and conference calls on a range of topics designed to help journalists improve their understanding of key education issues. Recordings of these webinars are available below, with the most recent displayed at the top. Upcoming webinars will be listed on our Events page. If you need technical assistance opening any of the files below, contact Glen Baity.

Interviewing Children: An EWA Guide for Reporters
December 18, 2012
1 hour

Interviewing children is a critical component of the daily work of education reporting. Yet practices for gaining access and making the most of one-on-one opportunities vary widely among news organizations and individual journalists.

EWA introduces its new primer, "Interviewing Children: An Education Reporter’s Guide," in this webinar. The guide’s author – veteran journalist Sarah Carr – shares insights from her own experiences on the beat. Also participating in the discussion are Columbia Journalism School Professor LynNell Hancock, who discusses ethical guidelines for talking with children in sensitive situations such as cases of trauma or abuse. Additionally, Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at Columbia University, will discusses how reporters handled coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, as well as best practices for interviewing children in the wake of such tragedies.

Supplemental materials:

Giving Guidance: Counselors' Role in College and Career Readiness
November 27, 2012
1 Hour

When it comes to making sure students are college and career ready, middle and high school guidance counselors play a critical -- and often underreported -- role. In this EWA webinar, attendees received an advance look at the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center's second-annual survey of guidance counselors, in which respondents outlined some of the challenges of helping students meet ever-increasing expectations, as well as identified shortfalls in their own training and professional development. In this recording, you'll  also hear from experts in the field as to the implications of the survey's findings, as well as what's being done at the local, state and national level to improve guidance counseling. You'll come away with a deeper understanding of the issues, as well as ideas for localizing this important story for your own readers.

Moderator: Emily Richmond, EWA Public Editor

Presenters:

  • Pat Martin, assistant vice president, College Board National Office for School Counselor Advocacy
  • Peggy Hines, director of the Education Trust's National Center for Transforming School Counseling
  • Kathleen Smallwood, middle school guidance counselor, Mobile (Ala.) County Public Schools

Supplemental Materials:

National Office for School Counselor Advocacy website

True North: 201 National Survey of School Counselors (PDF)

Presenter powerpoints (.zip)

EWA/OECD Education at a Glance 2012 Web Briefing
September 10, 2012
57 minutes

Andreas Schleicher, OECD Deputy Director for Education, walks reporters through this year's Education at a Glance, The leading international compendium of comparable national statistics measuring the state of education worldwide. This year’s report includes new indicators on early childhood education and care, on inequality in education and how a parent’s education influences their child’s academic attainment, and on the factors affecting the performance of immigrant and disadvantaged children at school.

Supplemental materials:

Diving into Data: Requesting (and Analyzing) Public School Numbers
August 23, 2012
53 minutes

After you’ve filed your back-to-school stories, get ready make waves with some hard-hitting, data-based reporting this academic year. If you’ve never parsed test scores, attendance numbers or graduation rates, this webinar is a great place to start.

Jack Gillum, an investigative reporter with the Associated Press, offers tips on how to use data to enhance your reporting; find the information to get you started; and identify newsworthy trends in the numbers. Gillum contributed to an award-winning 2011 USA Today series on suspicious student test score gains in Washington, D.C.

Supplementary materials:

Back To School: Finding Fresh Angles on Familiar Ground
August 16, 2012
1 hour

For education reporters, coming up with fresh ideas for back-to-school stories is an annual challenge. As part of EWA's Summer School Webinar series, we invite you to get some smart tips from three veteran journalists who know how to mine the beat, and avoid the ordinary. We discuss new ways of approaching the first day of school, ideas for unique profiles, and how to make the most of your publication's multimedia resources.

Presenters:

  • Dave Breitenstein is an education reporter at The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla. with 15 years' experience covering both K-12 and higher ed beats. He has received 31 state and national writing awards, and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and a master’s in educational leadership from Florida Gulf Coast University.
  • Ann Doss Helms has covered K-12 education for The Charlotte Observer for the past 10 years, a stretch that has seen the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district go from being accused of "academic genocide" by a judge to winning the 2011 Broad Prize for Urban Education. She has a bachelor's in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern and a master of liberal arts degree from Winthrop University.
  • Phyllis Fletcher is an editor at KUOW Public Radio in Seattle. Before that she was KUOW's education reporter. In that role she took EWA's first prize in beat reporting for broadcast in 2011. Fletcher holds certificates in Java programming and forensic accounting.

Powerpoints:

Links from Ann Helms’ presentation:

Follow the Money: What's Hiding In Your School District's Spending?
July 18, 2012
56 minutes

So you’ve managed to get your hands on all the records your school district keeps about its budget and spending. Now what? How can you turn a giant data dump into a compelling story for your readers?

In this EWA webinar, you’ll hear how reporters at the Dallas Morning News used public records to create databases of district spending and budget information, and how they used those databases to uncover everything from fraud and mismanagement to cozy vendor-employee relationships to the misuse of federal grants.

Kent Fischer, a former DMN reporter who now works with the communications firm GMMB, gives tips and advice on how reporters can collect and organize spending records in ways that truly allow them to "follow the money."

Supplemental materials:

Summer Idyll -- or Idle? Story Ideas for Journalists
June 26, 2012
58 Minutes

All over the country, the year’s last school bell is ringing. But now that it’s time for pool parties and summer camp, what happens to the knowledge students gained during the school year?

Gary Huggins of National Summer Learning Association; Kathleen Manzo of Education Week; and Katy Murphy of the Oakland Tribune talk about how reporters can examine summer learning loss and how to tell when schools and communities offer effective summer school.

Supplementary files

Community College Outcomes: Advance Look at New Digital Resource for Tracking Student Progress
April 25, 2012
38 minutes

Community colleges are widely considered a critical link in the nation’s continued economic recovery. As a result, the open-access entry point to higher education is facing both renewed scrutiny and higher expectations, with policymakers demanding actual evidence of effectiveness.

On April 30, the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center announced its “Completion Arch,” a new digital tool for measuring community college student success. This webinar offered EWA members the opportunity for an advance look and demonstration of this comprehensive resource, as well as the opportunity to ask questions of College Board officials.

The Completion Arch categorizes all publicly available metrics relating to student progress in five key areas: enrollment; developmental education placement; progress; transfer and completion; and job placement/workforce outcomes. The Completion Arch allows users to track similarities and differences in the ways that regions and states measure data related to the progress of community college students.

Powerpoint

Deciding Diversity: The Supreme Court Reconsiders Affirmative Action
March 22, 2012
53 minutes

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will take on the issue of affirmative action in college admissions for the first time since 2003. The plaintiff in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin argues that her race was the deciding factor when she was denied admission to the school. Regardless of the outcome, this case will have major consequences for schools around the country for years to come.

To examine the impact the ruling might have, EWA's webinar features two veteran education reporters who discuss Fisher, the history of affirmative action in higher ed, and the key points of this story education reporters need to understand. Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, talks about the case's effect on post-secondary admissions, while Mark Walsh, Ed Week's veteran Supreme Court reporter, focuses on the stories K-12 reporters should think about.

Powerpoints:

Further Reading

Mining the Data: What States Have and Where to Find It
Feb. 7, 2012
58 minutes

Elizabeth Laird, Director of Communications and External Affairs for the Data Quality Campaign, provides an update on states’ progress toward collecting and using education data and reveals the type of data and related reports available from your states. She'll especially concentrate on linking K-12 and postsecondary data to explore issues like college and career readiness, college remediation, and other topics.

Background reading:

Powerpoint (download)

Freelancing 101: How to Thrive as an Independent Education Writer
Jan. 26, 2012
1 hour

Are you interested in freelancing, but don’t know how to get started? Veteran journalist David McKay Wilson offers a primer for reporters new to freelancing and those who want to learn the ropes of this exciting career path. Wilson broke into journalism as a freelancer for the Boston Phoenix and continued to freelance over his 26-year career. He left Gannett's The Journal News in 2007 after 21 years to launch a business that focuses primarily on publications at institutions of higher education. He is a regular contributor to publications at Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth, Fordham, Loyola Chicago, SUNY Purchase, NY Institute of Technology, and Sarah Lawrence. His work has appeared in alumni magazines at 101 colleges and universities, including 33 institutions in 2011. Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation.

Do the Math: Outsmarting Statistics
Jan. 20, 2012
1 hour 

No one ever entered the journalism profession to crunch numbers, but dealing with data is a crucial part of the education beat. Holly Hacker, statistics guru and education reporter for the Dallas Morning News, shows you the basics for understanding how to effectively report on statistics. Click here to download the Powerpoint presentation.

Homeless Students: Covering the School Safety Net
Dec. 19, 2011
1 Hour, 3 minutes

From Maine to California, school districts are reporting significant increases in the number of homeless students. Our webinar takes a closer look at the underlying issues, and also gives participants a blueprint for localizing this important story. Our presenters will include Barbara Duffield, policy director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children; Pamela Hosmer, Program Manager for the San Diego Unified School District's Children and Youth in Transition program; and Dr. Ellen Bassuk, a Harvard University professor and founder and president of the National Center on Family Homelessness.

Behind the Numbers: What the SAT Scores Really Say
November 9, 2011
49 minutes

States love to brag when their SAT scores go up, and are quick to offer reasons why they went down. How can reporters see through the spin and put their states in context?

Holly Hacker, education reporter and stats guru at the Dallas Morning News, explains some basic statistical concepts using state SAT scores, showing you the biggest force driving those scores to help effectively and fairly compare your state with all the others.

While this webinar is focused on the SAT, these techniques are applicable to many other education issues.

Teacher Evaluations: A State-by-State Overview and Lessons From Early Adopters
October 25, 2011
1 hour 3 minutes

In advance of its 2011 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, the National Council on Teacher Quality offers a closer look into what is shaping up to be a critically important education policy trend. Across the nation states are engaged in create teacher evaluation systems to provide meaningful information about teacher performance, based in significant ways on student achievement, and tying information on teacher effectiveness to decisions of consequence about tenure, compensation, professional development and advancement.

With momentum towards performance-based teacher evaluation across the states, NCTQ:

• presents a detailed picture of the changing policy landscape across the states on performance-based teacher evaluation;
• highlights noteworthy state policies in performance-based teacher evaluation; and
• provides early observations on current challenges to building performance-based teacher evaluations in the states.

Panelists:
• Sandi Jacobs, Vice President, National Center on Teacher Quality
• Dr. Jane Hannaway, a vice president of the American Institutes of Research and director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research

EWA/OECD Web Press Conference -- Education at a Glance 2011 (audio starts at 00:54 -- Windows Media Player required to view)
September 12, 2011
49 minutes

Education at a Glance is the leading international compendium of comparable national statistics on education. This year’s edition shows how the economic crisis has changed the job perspectives for workers at different qualification levels. It presents an overview on how much countries invest in education and how they allocate their resources within the education system.

With pressure on government spending growing and demand for higher education rising, Education at a Glance aims to help educators and policy makers formulate strategies for maintaining quality in education. The report also includes new data on private and public returns on education and looks at possible impasses for more investment in higher education.

For the first time, Education at a Glance also includes analysis of education systems in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. Andreas Schleicher, Head of Indicators and Analysis at the OECD Education Directorate, offers a presentation.