Ella Carter-Klauschie
Ella Carter-Klauschie reports on how colleges serve students far from traditional campuses, with a focus on higher education inside prisons and for other marginalized groups. Their work traces what happens when policy promises access to college and the realities of technology, security and campus culture on the ground. They report primarily for CalMatters as a fellow with the College Journalism Network, often in collaboration with partner outlets and multimedia teams.
Prison higher education and secure technology
Carter-Klauschie’s core reporting examines the expansion of college programs in California prisons and the tools that make or break that access. In a recent feature on California’s effort to provide laptops to every incarcerated college student, they follow community colleges as they move coursework onto secure devices connected to a closed network. The piece looks at how instructors redesign classes for online delivery behind prison walls and how students balance the promise of digital learning with tight rules on connectivity and content.
They return to the same terrain in coverage of prison education programs that grow in size but remain constrained by bans on open internet and limited technology. That work details the tension between corrections policies meant to control information and education initiatives that rely on modern tools, showing how those clashes shape what students can actually do with the laptops in front of them. Across these stories, Carter-Klauschie consistently centers incarcerated students’ accounts of both opportunity and frustration, pairing them with perspectives from faculty, program coordinators and officials.
The reporting also follows the scale of the initiative, noting that California prisons have distributed tens of thousands of laptops to incarcerated students and positioning that rollout within broader debates over reentry, workforce preparation and the role of technology in rehabilitation. By staying close to specific policies and programs while tracking their day-to-day impact in classrooms and housing units, Carter-Klauschie’s coverage gives prison education a level of detail that goes beyond headline numbers.
Community colleges and nontraditional students
Beyond prisons, Carter-Klauschie covers community colleges that serve students who have long been underserved by mainstream higher education. In a reported story on a California tribal college, they follow Native students who describe the campus as a “family” and explain how culturally grounded support structures open doors to degrees and credentials. The piece traces how the college’s mission, advising and community relationships work together to make higher education feel accessible to students who have often been excluded or discouraged.
This strand of their work looks closely at how community colleges design programs for first-generation, system-impacted and rural students, often connecting individual experiences to institutional decisions and state policy. Carter-Klauschie highlights how funding, governance and partnerships shape what these colleges can offer, but keeps the focus on the students navigating those systems. The recurring emphasis is on access and belonging rather than brand or prestige, with attention to the small, practical changes—courses, services, spaces—that make college viable for nontraditional learners.
Campus politics and civic dialogue
Carter-Klauschie also reports on political life around colleges, using short-form video and social platforms to cover how students engage with national movements and partisan groups. In a piece on a conservative organization’s event at a liberal campus, they document how the gathering fits into broader debates over free expression and political organizing among students. Their TikTok explainer on “engaging political dialogue at [a] liberal college campus” focuses on how conversations across ideological lines actually unfold, rather than on campaign strategy or party insiders.
These projects showcase an approach that treats campus politics as part of students’ educational experience, not just as a backdrop for national narratives. Carter-Klauschie uses visual reporting—short videos, reels and social edits—to capture tone, setting and interaction, making student voices central and allowing viewers to see how events feel on the ground. The work complements their written coverage of higher education, extending the theme of access and participation into the civic sphere.
Collaborative, student-focused reporting
Carter-Klauschie’s role with the College Journalism Network shapes both the subjects they choose and the formats they use. They contribute as part of a cohort highlighted by CalMatters for its focus on higher education, regularly publishing stories that are shared with partner outlets such as regional news sites. Their prison laptop coverage, for example, appears not only on CalMatters but also through outlets like LAist and Lookout Santa Cruz, extending the reach of detailed reporting on incarcerated students and community colleges.
Across platforms, Carter-Klauschie favors reported features that combine policy explanation with lived experience, whether inside a prison classroom, at a tribal college or on a politically charged campus. They work in text and video, often in collaboration with editors and visual journalists credited on social posts and project pages. The consistent through-line is a close focus on students navigating complex systems, with stories that show how decisions made by institutions and the state land in individual lives.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
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.