EWA is pleased to announce this year’s finalists for the 2018 EWA National Awards for Education Reporting, as well as the Edwin Gould Foundation’s Eddie Prize. 

(All category finalists are listed alphabetically by title.)

Single-Topic News

Small Staff (<25 FTE newsroom employees)

History Gets a Conservative Twist in Michigan Social Studies Standards
Bridge Magazine
Ron French, Lindsay VanHulle

The Post-Parkland Landscape of School Security
The 74 Million
Mark Keierleber

Medium Staff (25-99 FTE newsroom employees)

Michigan State University/Larry Nassar Coverage
Detroit Free Press
David Jesse

Parkland Shooting: From the Causes to the Aftermath
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Staff

The $3 Million Research Breakdown
ProPublica Illinois, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Chicago Sun-Times
Jodi S. Cohen, Logan Jaffe

Large Staff (100+ FTE newsroom employees)

Civil Wrongs
ProPublica, The New York Times
Annie Waldman, Erica L. Green

The Education Issue
The New York Times Magazine
Jeneen Interlandi, Sara Mosle, Dale Russakoff, Brian Ulrich, Jaime Lowe

Racial Disparity In Education
The New York Times
Dana Goldstein, Anemona Hartocollis, Winnie Hu, Elizabeth A. Harris, Erica L. Green, Katie Benner 

Feature Stories

Small Staff (<25 FTE newsroom employees)

Beyond the Buses: 50 Years Later
Berkeleyside
Natalie Orenstein

Building Bridges to Micronesian Students 
Honolulu Civil Beat
Suevon Lee

Lessons From the Opioid Epidemic
The Nation
Zoë Carpenter

Stars and Struggles
The Nevada Independent
Jackie Valley

Medium Staff (25-99 FTE newsroom employees)

The Hardest Lesson on Tier 2C
The Marshall Project
Eli Hager

How It Feels to Be Javion: 16 and Struggling to Read in Chicago Schools
Chalkbeat Chicago
Adeshina Emmanuel

Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter
The Oregonian
Bethany Barnes

Large Staff (100+ FTE newsroom employees)

Casualties of a Crackdown: MS-13 on Long Island
ProPublica, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine
Hannah Dreier

Final Test: Students at One of Houston’s Most Vulnerable High Schools
Houston Chronicle
Maggie Gordon, Jon Shapley

Georgia’s Separate and Unequal Special Education System
The New Yorker
Rachel Aviv

Beat Reporting

Small Staff (<25 FTE newsroom employees)

CALmatters
Felicia Mello

Honolulu Civil Beat
Suevon Lee

WLRN News
Jessica Bakeman

Medium Staff (25-99 FTE newsroom employees)

Chalkbeat
Erin Einhorn

Detroit Free Press
David Jesse

Palm Beach Post
Andrew Marra

WBEZ
Sarah Karp

Large Staff (100+ FTE newsroom employees)

Tampa Bay Times
Claire McNeill

The New York Times
Erica L. Green

The Washington Post
Moriah Balingit

Public Service

Small Staff (<25 FTE newsroom employees)

Eligible for Financial Aid, Nearly a Million Students Never Get It
The Hechinger Report, APM Reports
Meredith Kolodner, Alex Baumhardt, Chris Julin

Hard Words: Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?
APM Reports
Emily Hanford, Chris Julin

Predatory Teachers
Voice of San Diego
Ashly McGlone

Medium Staff (25-99 FTE newsroom employees)

Lessons Lost: How Rampant Student Turnover Undermines Achievement
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Erin Richards, Kevin Crowe, Angela Peterson, Erin Caughey, Andrew Mollica, Greg Borowski

Minimally Adequate: How South Carolina’s Education System Fails Students
The Post and Courier
Seanna Adcox, Paul Bowers, Jennifer Berry Hawes, Thad Moore, Glenn Smith

Parkland: History’s Most Preventable School Shooting
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Staff

Large Staff (100+ FTE newsroom employees)

Betrayed: How Chicago Schools Failed to Protect Students From Sexual Abuse
Chicago Tribune
David Jackson, Jennifer Smith Richards, Gary Marx, Juan Perez, Jr.

Miseducation: Exploring the Data on Racial Gaps
ProPublica, The New York Times, Chalkbeat
Annie Waldman, Erica L. Green, Lena Groeger, Ryann Grochowski Jones, David Eads, Patrick Wall

School Shootings
The Washington Post
John Woodrow Cox, Steven Rich

Toxic City: Sick Schools
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Barbara Laker, Wendy Ruderman, Dylan Purcell, Jessica Griffin, Garland Potts

Best Audio Storytelling

Smaller (<10 FTE newsroom employees)

As Autism Diagnoses Increase, Just One Virginia University Offers Formal Support Program
WCVE News/NPR Richmond
Catherine Komp

Community Groups Address Youth Homelessness, Eviction
WCVE News/NPR Richmond
Megan Pauly

Illinois Prison System Spent Less Than $300 on Books Last Year
Illinois Public Media
Lee Gaines

Larger (>10 FTE newsroom employees)

Allegations of Emotional Abuse Rock Denver’s Renowned School of the Arts
Colorado Public Radio
Jenny Brundin, Kate Smith, Jim Hill

Childhood Trauma and Oregon Schools
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Rob Manning

My Effing First Amendment
This American Life/The Chronicle of Higher Education
Steve Kolowich, Dana Chivvis, Zoe Chace, Brian Reed, Ira Glass

Still Rising: First-Generation College Students a Decade Later
APM Reports
Emily Hanford, Catherine Winter, Chris Julin

Best Visual Storytelling

Smaller (<35 FTE newsroom employees)

Explaining Idaho’s Education Challenges
Idaho Education News
Jennifer Swindell, Andrew Reed

Finding a Good Preschool Isn’t Easy: Try It.
The Hechinger Report
Lillian Mongeau, Ryan Alexander-Tanner, John Osborn D’Agostino

Tainted Taps: Lead Puts California Children at Risk
EdSource
Yuxuan Xie, Justin Allen, Daniel J. Willis, Nico Savidge

Larger (>35 FTE newsroom employees)

Is Your District Drawing Borders to Reduce or Perpetuate Racial Segregation?
Vox
Alvin Chang

The Next Edition: ‘We’re Kids, But We’re Also Journalists‘
The Washington Post
Whitney Shefte, Alice Li

The Sex Talk: The Conversation Not Happening About Campus Sexual Assault
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Kate Murphy, Meg Vogel

Voices of Change From Parkland
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Mike Stocker, Doreen Christensen, Yiran Zhu

The Edwin Gould Foundation Eddie Prize

A College Degree, More Than Fifteen Years in the Making
The New Yorker
Casey Parks

Minimally Adequate: How South Carolina’s Education System Fails Students
The Post and Courier
Seanna Adcox, Paul Bowers, Jennifer Berry Hawes, Thad Moore, Glenn Smith

More High School Grads Go to College, But One in Five Will Quit
The Hechinger Report
Jon Marcus