Follow the Money: Digging Into School District Finances

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Follow the Money: Digging Into School District Finances

August 2, 2017

When it comes to school district finances, the numbers aren’t easy to add up. But tracking and analyzing this information is a powerful tool to drive smart news coverage.

Veteran education journalist Tawnell Hobbs of The Wall Street Journal shares tips and tricks for digging into district operating budgets and actual expenditures, as well as salary databases, overtime requests, check registers and credit card accounts, purchase orders, and more. Learn how to evaluate fiscal data that’s readily available and make the most of open records requests.

Lessons From the Oklahoma Teachers’ Strike
Educators’ walkouts fuel push for better pay, statewide education funding (EWA Radio: Episode 165)

April 16, 2018 Emily Richmond Subscribe to #ewaRADIO

After nine days on the picket lines, Oklahoma teachers are back to work this week. Like their counterparts in West Virginia and Kentucky who also went on strike this spring, teachers in the Sooner State were seeking more than bigger paychecks; they also aimed to draw attention to funding shortfalls for public schools statewide. Ben Felder of The Oklahoman shares his experiences as a local reporter covering what quickly swelled into a national story.

Blog: The Educated Reporter

The Ins and Outs of ‘Restorative Justice’ in Schools
What is it? Does it work as an alternative to traditional student discipline?

April 12, 2018 Patrick O'Donnell of The Cleveland Plain Dealer for EWA

When students misbehave at school, traditional approaches to discipline say you should punish them to deter future offenses.

But a growing movement toward “restorative” approaches to discipline focuses more on repairing the damage rather than suspending or expelling students.

Though details vary from school to school, so-called “restorative justice” programs instead encourage students to reflect on their transgressions and their root causes, talk about them – usually with the victims of the behavior – and try to make amends.

Blog: The Educated Reporter

Word on the Beat: NAEP
What reporters need to know about the 'nation's report card'

April 9, 2018 Emily Richmond

What it means: The National Assessment for Educational Progress, sometimes referred to as “the nation’s report card,” is given every two years to a representative sample of the nation’s students in grades 4 and 8 to gauge achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics. Twelfth graders also are tested on roughly the same schedule.

Blog: The Educated Reporter

The Teacher Strikes: What Reporters Need to Know

April 6, 2018 Emily Richmond

Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky are on the picket lines this week, pushing for better compensation for themselves and more money for schools in their respective states.

These strikes come just weeks after West Virginia’s schools were shuttered statewide for almost two weeks in March, eventually sparking the legislature there to award teachers pay raises.

Such work stoppages are historically rare, but the teachers involved say they were necessary to force resolutions to months - or even years - of stalled negotiations.

image of Betsy Devos testifying before House Appropriations Subcommittee

EWA Radio

There’s a New Federal Budget. What’s In It For Schools?
Education Department sees boost, despite Trump, DeVos' push to downsize (EWA Radio: Episode 164)

April 3, 2018 Emily Richmond Subscribe to #ewaRADIO

After months of wrangling, Congress passed — and President Trump signed — a massive spending bill that ups funding for the U.S. Department of Education. The bipartisan measure is arguably a “wholesale rejection” of Trump’s education agenda, according to Caitlin Emma of Politico’s education team. For starters, rather than meet the call from Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to slash federal aid, lawmakers instead allocated an additional $2.6 billion, bringing the Education Department’s budget to nearly $71 billion. How did this happen?

State of the Education Beat
Nation’s Education Reporters Confident They’re Making a Difference

Follow the Money: Digging Into School District Finances

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Follow the Money: Digging Into School District Finances

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