Ezra Wallach
Ezra Wallach focuses on how education policy, district decisions and emerging technologies shape the daily lives and long-term paths of students, families and teachers. He works as a news reporter at The San Francisco Standard, with a core focus on schools and education systems. His recent stories follow leadership changes, enrollment pressure, campus openings and closures, and the tension between college access and academic outcomes.
SFUSD leadership and enrollment storylines
Wallach tracks the internal dynamics of the San Francisco Unified School District, paying close attention to how leadership shifts translate into concrete choices for the school system. He has covered the district’s launch of a new school year with a fresh leadership team and highlighted the “tough decisions ahead,” framing governance changes in terms of their practical consequences for classrooms and budgets.
He extends that lens into enrollment and facilities decisions, detailing how plans to close schools coexist with the opening of a new campus in Mission Bay. His reporting on the SFUSD lottery system follows one family living with the results of a “broken” process, using their experience to illustrate how policy mechanics affect real students and parents. In a first-day-of-school piece structured around five key storylines for the year, he lays out the district’s major themes and fault lines in a concise, agenda-setting format.
Parent power and civic mobilization
Wallach gives sustained attention to parent organizing and its influence on education politics. In his profile of Meredith Dodson, described as “SF’s most powerful mom,” he traces how a fight to reopen schools grew into a potent parent organization, and how that group’s leader, now stepping down, leaves behind institutional power, supporters and critics. The piece centers one parent’s trajectory to show how grassroots frustration becomes a structured force in local decision-making.
His interest in civic mobilization extends beyond formal education coverage into large-scale protests and marches. Photo-led and crowd-focused stories on a rebranded Women’s March rallying against Donald Trump and the “No Kings” protest document mass participation, slogans and street-level energy, tying public demonstrations back to the broader political climate that surrounds schools and families.
Across these assignments, he treats mobilized parents and protesters as political actors whose choices and pressures shape the environment in which education policy is made.
College pathways and testing debates
Wallach’s education beat reaches into the transition from high school to university, with particular attention to who gains access and who persists once they arrive. In his reporting on Mission High’s leading rate of admissions to UC Berkeley, he juxtaposes the school’s standout success in getting students through the door with the high number who later drop out, using that contrast to interrogate what true opportunity and preparation look like. The story connects a single campus’s achievements and challenges to the larger question of how well public schools support students through college.
He also covers UC faculty efforts to bring the SAT back into admissions after a period of test-blind decision-making, positioning standardized testing as a live fault line in debates over fairness and academic rigor. The University of California system has operated under a test-blind policy since 2020, with a faculty-led push discussing possible changes for future admissions cycles.
By placing faculty demands and policy constraints in the same frame, his work presents testing not as an abstract controversy but as a concrete rule set that could reshape who gets into selective campuses.
Experimental schooling and general assignment range
Wallach reports on experimental and elite education models that sit at the edge of mainstream practice. His coverage of a $75k-a-year private school encouraging students to “go viral” on Twitter examines an eight-week boot camp built around challenges such as daily posting on X and volunteering for unglamorous jobs, highlighting how social media and status are being woven directly into a school’s curriculum and culture.
In a separate piece on AI in schools, he contrasts bans in New York City and Los Angeles with San Francisco’s still-forming plan, situating local policy in a national debate over technology in the classroom.
Alongside his education beat, he retains a general assignment range that includes public safety and protest coverage. He has reported on a police chase in which a man threw a live grenade onto a Berkeley street, as well as large political marches and demonstrations, bringing the same factual, scene-driven approach to breaking news that he uses in schools coverage. Before joining The San Francisco Standard, he reported for the Sebastopol Times, covering crime, education and agriculture, and his work has drawn interviews with national outlets including the Wall Street Journal, CNN and KTVU.
That background in varied local beats underpins his current focus on education as part of a wider interest in how institutions and policies play out at ground level.
4 more education journalists.
Bridie Short
Bridie Short reports on how learning environments shape young people’s experiences and their engagement with wider issues. She writes about education for Lynn News, a local news publication with a focus on community stories. Her coverage centres on classrooms and other learning settings, with attention to the people and events that define daily life there. She has written about drama students paying homage to the climate emergency with a performance, framing their creative response as part of their educational experience and blending arts coverage with an education lens. Her education reporting sits within a broader community news agenda, linking school and college stories to general news. Her pieces are grounded in concrete events and activities, showing what students and staff are doing rather than focusing on abstract policy.
Catherine Strohfeldt
Catherine Strohfeldt reports how education policy, money and behaviour collide in Queensland classrooms and childcare services, focusing on what government decisions mean for students, families and teachers day to day. She is an education reporter at Brisbane Times covering schools, universities and early learning alongside related state policy. She often starts with a single school, subject or provider to explain shifts in funding, discipline and workforce conditions, treating suspension statistics, surveys and on-the-ground accounts as complementary evidence. Her work links school fees, capital funding and teacher pay deals to who can access which schools and on what terms. Her beat extends into childcare chains in crisis and university leadership and governance. She also covers Queensland government, planning and environmental issues, showing how housing, health and coastal decisions reshape the communities in her education reporting.
Charles Bliss
Charles Bliss is a features-led reporter at the Eastern Daily Press whose distinct focus is education told through human stories about schools, pupils and the adults who work with them. He writes about what it feels like to be in a classroom or school community, using specific events, characters and concrete activity to show how reading, creativity and wellbeing are encouraged in young people. His education coverage centres children and teachers rather than policy, turning visits, campaigns and workshops into narrative pieces with practical detail. He gives particular weight to wellbeing, mental health and sensory learning, linking health, psychology and horticulture through tangible examples. Alongside education he covers health, environment, behaviour, everyday guidance and local innovation, using plain explanation, step-by-step advice and narrative structure to show how people learn, adapt and look after each other in their communities.
Conor Duffy
Conor Duffy stands out for linking education policy to the daily lives of students, parents and teachers, treating the classroom as part of a wider social system. He is the ABC’s national education and parenting reporter. His beat spans schools, universities and family life. He covers education policy, test scores, rankings, funding, teacher workload, behaviour, school refusal, student wellbeing and parenting stress. He reports on NAPLAN, university rankings, the Job Ready Graduates legislation and the cost of humanities degrees. He also covers privacy and school data. His reporting combines hard data, policy detail and personal stories. He has also done foreign, environment and investigative work for the ABC, including as North America correspondent, and has worked across Lateline, 7.30 and AM.