EWA Radio

Good superintendents can be hard to find, and even harder to keep. That’s proving to be the case In Boston. Brenda Cassellius is stepping down this summer after less than three years at the helm.

In the early months of the pandemic, many districts were rethinking their policies and practices around campus safety. Now, with buildings reopened and some educators reporting a rise in bad behavior, the conversation is once again shifting to how to best keep children safe, and what role – if any – school police should have on campus. 

Conservatives around the country are protesting what they claim is the teaching of a formerly obscure legal theory – Critical Race Theory – to America’s schoolchildren and undergraduates.  While of course CRT isn’t in the formal second or even eleventh grade curriculum, reporter Molly Minta of Mississippi Today and Open Campus asked herself: what are they afraid of?

President Biden’s education secretary, Miguel Cardona, is marking his first year in office. And what a year it has been – not just for the federal agency but for schools, educators, students, and families.

This will be a momentous year for higher education – as colleges attempt to recover from COVID shutdowns, student loan bills come due again, and big changes come to admissions offices. What will college look like this year? How are institutions planning to spend billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds? And how bad a hit are overall enrollment numbers going to take in the third year of the pandemic?

The Wall Street Journal’s investigations team is tackling the student loan debt crisis from multiple angles, including digging into questionable recruiting and loan practices by top schools. Case in point: the University of Southern California’s online graduate program in social work.

Reporter Annie Waldman and Reporting Fellow Bianca Fortis dug into the data from 16,000 provisional reports from state agencies and determined half the money was spent on programs, services or goods categorized as “other,” meaning no specifics are readily available.

Across the country, school districts are grappling with staffing shortages that are making it tough to recover from the disruptions of the COVD-19 pandemic. Matt Barnum, a national reporter at Chalkbeat…

Often overlooked and misunderstood, home economics is about far more than learning to bake cakes or sew lopsided oven mitts, argues education journalist Danielle Dreilinger. She discusses her new book, “The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live.” 

The Tulsa Race Massacre’s centennial has recently drawn headlines nationwide, but most Americans – including many educated in Oklahoma public schools – never previously learned about the tragic episode.

As both municipal and higher education leaders tried to fend of COVID-19, the two camps sometimes found themselves at cross-purposes when it came to fiscal and public health challenges, reports Sara Hebel, co-founder of Open Campus.

The Tulsa Race Massacre’s centennial has recently drawn headlines nationwide, but most Americans – including many educated in Oklahoma public schools – never previously learned about the tragic episode.

The impact of reporter Ian Shapira’s deep dive into the troubled culture at the nation’s oldest state-support military college was seismic: within days, the Virginia Military Institute’s leader had resigned, and Gov. Ralph Northam pledged an independent investigation.

The only federal program intended to help disconnected young adults find meaningful job training has turned into a $1.7 billion boondoggle. That’s the big takeaway from a new investigation by Anne S. Kim of Washington Monthly.

The impact of America’s $1.5 trillion in student loan debt makes a lot of headlines. But one team of reporters dug into a little-known corner of the student debt market and discovered a pattern of rule-evading and abuses that is destroying the educational opportunities and careers of tens of thousands of Americans.

In many communities, the demand for reliable, affordable child care has long outstripped the number of available spots. The coronavirus pandemic has only worsened the shortage, and many mothers have left the workforce to stay with their young children. In central Washington, the situation is taking a bite out of…

Imagine keeping tabs on the same group of students and families for nearly a decade — Oregon Public Broadcasting has done it, and plans to keep going through the next four years. OPB editor Rob Manning and education reporter Elizabeth Miller share stories from the cast in this project, which is supported in part by an EWA Reporting Fellowship.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, states are largely leaving it up to individual districts to decide how to track how much — or little — of the standard school curriculum are K-12 students learning during the pandemic. One reporter surveyed her state and discovered that many communities aren’t even trying to find out. Joy Resmovits of The Seattle Times offers insights, tips, and questions to ask of state and local education officials when looking at student learning loss amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Student absenteeism, budgetary struggles, and sharp drops in college enrollment are likely to be some of the big stories on the K-12 and higher education beats as the pandemic continues in 2021.

How do you capture both the experience of a young student learning to read remotely, and the challenges for their teacher on the other side of the screen? Education reporter Perry Stein masterfully weaves it together…

From basketball to band, debate club to dance teams, the coronavirus pandemic has curtailed extracurricular activities for many of the nation’s K-12 students. That could have a long-term impact on student enthusiasm for school overall, experts warn. Longtime education journalist Greg Toppo, writing for The 74, looks at how educators are working to keep kids connected to school, and the research showing a strong link between extracurricular participation and academic achievement.

Who takes a cross-country reporting road trip in the midst of a pandemic? NPR’s Elissa Nadworny decided it was the only way to find out for herself what life is really like on college campuses these days, and how students, faculty and administrators are dealing with a new world of logistical challenges.

When it comes to school discipline, Black girls are significantly more likely to receive harsh treatment than their white female peers, including referrals to enforcement. That’s the conclusion from a new analysis of federal education data by Erica Green and her colleagues at The New York Times. The project was a deeply personal one for Green, who spent two years digging into how racial and gender biases devastate the emotional well-being and academic trajectories of Black girls.