Barbara Laker isn’t an education reporter. She doesn’t have a long list of teachers’ phone numbers in her contacts. So, it’s amazing that she was able to find and convince 24 teachers and other school employees from 19 elementary schools to swab pipes, drinking fountains and suspicious patches of black on classroom walls.

Blog: The Educated Reporter

Teacher Evaluation: The Only Constant Is Change, Experts Say

December 7, 2018 Beth HawkinsThe 74 for EWA

If there’s been one constant over the last decade in terms of teacher evaluation policies in the United States, it’s been change.

First, performance reviews incorporating student test scores became – mostly – the law of the land. Then, the academic standards educators and their pupils are measured against — mostly – changed. And then, in many places, those standards changed again.

So, has the implementation of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which did away with mandates on how states measure teacher quality, calmed the roiling waters?

EWA Radio

College Dreams Meet Reality in ‘Tennessee Promise’ Land
Community colleges, technical programs key to access but opportunity gaps persist
(EWA Radio: Episode 190)

December 3, 2018 Emily Richmond Subscribe to #ewaRADIO

In 2015, Tennessee began offering free community college to the state’s new high school graduates, part of a massive effort to push the needle on educational attainment. Three years later, the “Tennessee Promise” initiative gets close scrutiny in a new project by EWA Reporting Fellows Adam Tamburin and Jason Gonzales of The Tennessean.

Blog: The Educated Reporter

The State of Educational Equity (and Inequity) in Schooling

November 26, 2018 Meghan Mangrum of the Chattanooga Times Free Press for EWA

More than six decades since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education that separate was far from equal in 1954, many U.S. children attend schools that are still separate and unequal.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report noting just that. The 2018 report, which focused on funding disparities in public education, stated that segregation in schools by race and income level is widespread, and that “the education available to millions of Americans” is “profoundly unequal.”

Blog: The Educated Reporter

Walkouts, Shortages, and Scandals: Reporters Describe ‘How I Did the (Teacher) Story’

November 21, 2018 Dusty Rhodes of Illinois Public Radio for EWA

There’s no one way to get a great data story on the education beat. You can start with a hunch, dig for data, and then humanize the story with on-the-ground reporting. Or you can start with the people and work back to the data.

Stellar journalists described both of these approaches at a recent Education Writers Association event, in a session called “How I Did the (Teacher) Story.”

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

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