Jeffrey S. Solochek
Jeffrey S. Solochek covers how Florida’s education politics and policies play out in real schools, following the chain from state boards and lawmakers to district offices, principals and classrooms. As an education reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, he combines steady beat reporting with recurring roundups that track charter expansion, calendar changes, book challenges and other shifts families and educators feel day to day. His work stays tightly focused on public-school systems, highlighting both high-level decisions and the practical details of running schools.
Gradebook and Florida education news in review
Solochek is a primary voice behind Gradebook, the Times’ dedicated stream for Florida education news, where he files frequent updates on teacher unions, legislation and statewide policy fights. In recurring “Florida education news” and “in review” posts, he groups short items on charter schools, school start times, holidays and accountability plans into single, scannable roundups. These packages pull together decisions from multiple districts and state agencies, giving a wide-angle view of trends without losing specific district names or actions. The emphasis is on concrete changes — from calendar votes to policy revisions — rather than abstract debate, so readers can see what is happening and where.
State boards, laws and curriculum battles
A core part of his beat is state-level decision making, including coverage of the Florida Board of Education and how its members handle charged topics such as evolution and accountability rules. He reports on civil-rights groups challenging state education plans, following how federal and state policy pressures intersect around testing, grading and compliance. His reporting tracks legislative activity affecting schools, including labor and governance issues highlighted in Gradebook’s focus on teacher unions and education laws. When state officials revisit rules — from door-locking requirements to standards debates — he documents both the political argument and the operational consequences for districts.
District leadership, operations and safety
At the district level, Solochek covers the mechanics of running school systems, from principal appointments at individual schools to broader leadership and staffing moves. He follows decisions about school start times, holiday schedules and other calendar issues that reshape families’ daily routines and district logistics. His coverage of school safety includes stories on how districts respond to immigration enforcement pressures and how lawmakers adjust security rules such as door-locking requirements to fit school operations. Local discipline and personnel accountability also enter his file, with reports on teacher misconduct cases and formal reprimands that show how districts and state regulators respond when educators violate standards.
Culture clashes, book bans and classroom life
Solochek tracks the culture clashes that now define much of K‑12 politics, including censorship disputes in which Florida school districts pull or reinstate classic literature. His work documents when book bans are overturned, emphasizing the specific titles at stake and the process districts use to review challenged materials. He pairs this policy-and-politics lens with occasional narrative features drawn from classroom and extracurricular life, such as a widely shared story about a middle school student balancing roles as a 120‑pound football kicker and a member of the advanced band. Together, these strands show both the pressure points around curriculum and identity and the everyday experiences of students inside Florida’s schools.
Across these threads, Solochek’s distinguishing trait is his consistency and specificity: he returns to the same school boards, districts and policy arenas over years, building a running record of how Florida’s education system changes over time. His stories are tightly constructed around concrete actions — a vote, a rule change, a new principal, a reversed ban — which makes his coverage a running log of decisions rather than a series of isolated controversies.
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.