Cassidy Alexander
Cassidy Alexander reports on how Georgia’s education system is funded, governed and experienced in classrooms, blending accountability coverage with human stories and data analysis. She covers education for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, focusing on Georgia-wide policy decisions, local school districts and programs that shape students’ early learning.
School funding and oversight
A central thread in Alexander’s work is how money and management decisions affect schools, from basic operations to long-term planning. In coverage of Atlanta and Decatur school districts being owed millions in sales tax revenue after a paperwork error, she focuses on the practical consequences of bureaucratic mistakes for district budgets and school communities. Her background in government oversight reporting shapes these stories, as she traces funding problems back to the actions and structures of public bodies rather than treating them as isolated events.
Early childhood and statewide programs
Alexander devotes sustained attention to early childhood education and how statewide programs measure up against national standards. In a piece on Georgia’s pre-K program being rated among the strongest in the country, she examines how the program meets all key quality benchmarks and emphasizes its scale as the largest program to receive a top rating. Her coverage connects those evaluation findings to families and classrooms, explaining what high ratings mean for access, instructional quality and the trajectory of students entering the K-12 system.
Teacher workforce and classroom experience
Her reporting on teachers focuses on the experience of educators as workers and mentors within the system, not just as abstract staffing numbers. In a story following first-year metro Atlanta teachers as they weigh whether to stay in the profession at the end of the school year, she uses their individual narratives to illustrate broader pressures on the education workforce. The piece shows how classroom realities, support systems and career expectations shape retention, giving a ground-level view of policy conversations about teacher shortages and burnout.
Government oversight and data-driven storytelling
Across her beat, Alexander uses data and public records to anchor stories about schools, while keeping the writing accessible and driven by clear narratives. Her professional materials highlight experience in government oversight, data journalism and narrative storytelling, which aligns with her focus on education as a public system accountable to families and taxpayers. She reports on Georgia education issues as a dedicated beat, bringing together numbers, policy detail and lived experiences to show how decisions made in offices and legislatures play out in classrooms.
Before covering Georgia, Alexander reported on education in Florida, building a track record of following school systems over time and explaining how state and local decisions reshape them. That history informs her current work, which often situates one school or program within statewide trends and national comparisons rather than treating it in isolation. The result is coverage that helps readers see the connections between funding, policy design, workforce realities and the day-to-day life of Georgia’s schools.
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Abdul Latif Jameel
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Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.
Alexandra Hardle
Alexandra Hardle brings a watchdog lens to K-12 schools, using concrete incidents to map how district power, oversight and accountability work in real life. She covers K-12 education for The Arizona Republic, focusing on school systems, governance and the lived impact of policy on students, families and educators. Her reporting shows how school governance can fail students and staff and what that reveals about district culture. She often covers flashpoints, such as the Nazi salute fallout in the Deer Valley district, as windows into deeper dysfunction, tracking how leadership responds, how trust breaks down and how conflicts unfold in public meetings. Her work sits at the intersection of accountability reporting and community stories, grounded in public records, formal rules and multiple stakeholder perspectives, with clear, direct language that explains how institutions make decisions and how ordinary people experience them.