Past Events

In the campaign for the White House, education has gained considerable attention, from proposals to make college debt-free to sharp criticism of the Common Core standards. The fault lines are not simply between Democrats and Republicans, but also among candidates in each of the two parties, and competing factions in their political ranks.

There’s no question that living in a neighborhood with concentrated poverty and racial isolation can take a big toll on children’s learning. But how can journalists go deeper to better understand — and convey to readers — the educational challenges posed when families don’t have enough money for food, heat and other essentials, and often encounter the trauma of neighborhood violence? How can stories get beyond the stereotypes and statistics to put a human face on the circumstances of children in highly impoverished neighborhoods, and how those are translating into the classroom?

With a critical shortage of teachers looming on the horizon, a perennial issue becomes more urgent. How well are America’s teachers prepared? Are future teachers ready for the first day of school? What is the evidence and should colleges of education and other training programs be held accountable?

If you want to learn the skills to push your reporting on numbers to the next level, apply now to EWA’s Diving Into Data Workshop, a four-day seminar on collecting and analyzing data at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The data workshop is meant to encourage reporters to be more active with data-based reporting, whether for quick-hit stories or longer projects.

The Education Writers Association and American Educational Research Association are joining forces to offer a fellowship program for journalists interested in broadening their understanding of education data. Reporters and editors chosen for the fellowships will attend an intensive joint data workshop, as well as data-oriented sessions at EWA’s 68th National Seminar hosted by The University of Chicago and AERA’s 2015 Annual Meeting in the Windy City.

This fall, the share of K-12 students in the United States who are Latino is projected to climb to nearly one quarter, a figure expected to rise to nearly 30 percent by 2022. And proportionately more Hispanic students are enrolling in postsecondary education than white, non-Hispanic students.

For many college students — whether fresh out of high school or adults returning to school — their most serious obstacles to a degree won’t be homework or tests, but rather the challenges of navigating student life. Colleges are now being forced to face the longstanding problems that have often led to students’ flailing and failing on their own.