T. Keung Hui
T. Keung Hui covers how North Carolina’s public schools work in practice, following the money, the politics and the consequences for students, families and educators. His reporting explains how school boards, state lawmakers and district leaders shape daily life in classrooms, with a particular focus on equity, segregation and the aftershocks of the pandemic.
K‑12 systems, policy and school board decisions
Hui covers K‑12 education for The News & Observer and has done so since 1999, with a primary focus on public schools. He reports on local and statewide education issues, turning complex policy debates into concrete stories about what changes mean for school communities. His work tracks school board decisions, state legislation and regulatory shifts, including how new rules affect hiring, licensing and working conditions for educators.
His coverage often follows how school governance intersects with broader political fights, such as “culture war” debates over what can be taught in classrooms. He reports on legislative proposals that tighten background checks and other requirements for public school employees, explaining both the procedural details and the implications for applicants and districts. Across these stories, he treats school boards and state officials as decision-makers to be scrutinized, not just quoted, and he consistently ties their actions back to classroom-level outcomes.
Inequality, segregation and school funding
A major thread in Hui’s reporting is how economic and racial inequality shape the quality of education students receive. In one representative story, he reports on a national “States of Segregation” analysis that ranks North Carolina among the most economically segregated public school systems in the country, with the state placed seventh for economic segregation. That coverage details how concentrations of student poverty intersect with race and geography, and how these patterns affect school performance and resources. His work regularly situates new data or reports in the context of long-running legal and policy fights over adequate and equitable school funding.
He also follows the implementation of court and policy efforts aimed at providing all students with a “sound basic education,” bringing in research on high-poverty schools and the additional supports they require. These pieces often connect statewide statistics to specific districts and communities, showing where gaps in funding, staffing or facilities are most acute. Hui’s approach is to anchor broad equity debates in concrete measures, rankings and legal standards, then show how those translate into day-to-day realities for students.
Student outcomes, pandemic recovery and learning gaps
Hui reports extensively on student outcomes and how schools are trying to close learning gaps, especially in the aftermath of COVID‑19 disruptions. In a recent special report highlighted by the masthead, he examines the strides schools have made in helping students catch up academically, while pointing out persistent concerns that some children may never fully regain lost ground. That work looks at test scores, remediation programs and targeted interventions, and it asks who is still being left behind as recovery funds wind down.
His stories on learning recovery often contrast statewide trends with conditions in individual districts, explaining which strategies show results and which are faltering. He pays close attention to how tutoring, summer programs and staffing decisions affect different student groups, including those in high-poverty schools. The emphasis is on outcomes over rhetoric: he brings readers back to data, benchmarks and the lived experiences of students navigating uneven recovery.
Beat longevity, sourcing and public engagement
Hui has spent decades on the K‑12 beat at The News & Observer, building a long view on how North Carolina’s school system changes over time and how recurring debates resurface. His author bios describe his role as helping parents, students, school employees and the broader community understand the education system, a mission reflected in his focus on clarity and practical impact. He treats education as a central public institution, not a niche topic, and his stories often explain how school decisions affect taxes, local economies and community cohesion.
Outside the paper, he presents himself as a K‑12 education reporter and uses social platforms to share his coverage and follow school board developments. He also signals personal interests in history, baseball and science fiction, but his professional feed stays tightly focused on public education and related policy debates. The result is a beat where longevity, detailed policy reporting and sustained attention to equity and student outcomes set his work apart.
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.