Education Journalistsin the USA

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 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 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 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.

Alyssa Munoz is a news reporter for KOAT Action 7 News whose education coverage centers on how institutions are run and how their decisions shape students, staff, and the wider community. She focuses on stories where schools, universities, and public bodies face questions of direction, accountability, and impact, especially in higher education leadership and battles over where a school is headed. Her reporting on a law school dean’s contested contract renewal treats governance fights as tests of a school’s mission and priorities. She also covers wages and salaries, examining how pay, funding decisions, and economic pressures affect public institutions. Munoz reports on cultural projects with educational and economic dimensions, interviewing producers about films’ cultural meaning and financial footprint. Her work is on-air and interview-driven, with tight segments built around concrete stakes and how decisions touch people’s lives.

Anna Esaki-Smith writes as both a journalist and an international education specialist, examining how higher education policy, admissions practice and labor-market demands reshape what a college degree is worth and who gets access to it. She covers admissions mechanics and the fairness of selectivity, focusing on early decision and early action, admit rates, timing of offers and the profile of early applicants. She reports on cost, return on investment and institutional value, using tuition, debt and earnings data across different types of colleges. She tracks policy shifts, global trends and institutional strategy, including international student flows and workforce needs. She explores technology and AI in teaching and admissions, the changing application, and student experience, preparation and fit. She is also an author of a book on using college as a “superpower” and works as an international education consultant.

Anthony Talcott is a digital journalist with News 6. He covers how education, public safety, health emergencies and state decisions play out in the lives of Floridians. He has worked on News 6’s digital coverage since April 2022. His reporting mixes breaking news and explanatory pieces. He focuses on school discipline, classroom speech, violent crime, self-defense cases and emergency rules tied to public health threats. He also writes features on unusual local landmarks and local history. His stories use clear, direct language and concrete incidents to show how rules, politics, law enforcement and everyday life meet.

Antoinette Grajeda closely tracks how Arkansas education policy decisions show up in classrooms and student outcomes, grounding her coverage in concrete numbers, program details and the practical consequences for students, educators and districts. She is a deputy editor at the Arkansas Advocate and continues to report, drawing on long experience with public policy and social systems. Her education beat centers on student performance, statewide reforms, assessment results, new requirements under the LEARNS Act, school choice, funding and voucher programs. She reports annual test scores by subject, follows shifts in proficiency rates and explains how legislative changes reshape obligations for schools and families. Alongside this work, she covers broader state-level policy and legal issues, including criminal justice and governance, informed by a background reporting since 2007 on politics, health, education, immigration and the criminal justice system across multimedia platforms.

Avery McGurgan is a summer intern with the Centre Daily Times and a rising senior at Penn State University, pursuing a dual degree in journalism and English. She focuses on local features reporting, not quick news. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, civic life and inclusion. She reports on how people experience social change in their own neighborhoods, with attention to State College residents and events. Her work often uses deeply reported, community-focused stories. She covers older LGBTQ+ residents, queer history and Pride, State College’s Juneteenth Block Party, and inclusive events like the Special Olympics Pennsylvania kickoff. She relies on first-person accounts, scene-setting, quoted voices and short-form video to show how communities remember, celebrate and learn through local traditions and public spaces.

Becky Phelps is a reporter and anchor at KCRG-TV9 who focuses on how education and community decisions play out in the lives of students and families, often inviting students and viewers into interactive projects. She co-hosts Ask 9, a streaming show that takes viewer questions and breaks down complex topics in a clear, conversational way, from a school district financial crisis to NASA’s Artemis II mission. Her reporting centers on education, covering district budgets, school finance, student eligibility for sports, and kids’ social media use, grounding policy stories in everyday student experience. She helps run the station’s Summer Writing Contest for school-age writers, tying prompts to civic projects. Phelps also reports longer-form series on community identity and modern dating, anchors weekend evening news, and works across live newscasts, streaming explainers, podcasts, and contests with clear language and practical focus.

Bob Vosseller is distinct for tracking how school policies and incidents move from official decisions to real effects on students, families and the wider community. He is assistant news editor at Jersey Shore Online and brings decades of award-winning weekly and daily newspaper reporting to a beat that blends education with civic accountability. He covers school governance, discipline and safety at the point where classroom life meets security and law enforcement, following cases from student actions through police and administrative response. His education work also examines programs, curriculum and student journalism, showing how classroom projects become practical outlets and opportunities. Beyond schools, he reports on local government, crime, public safety, finance and health, and ties these decisions back to education. His community features on residents, nonprofits and events keep human impact in view. His style is clear, factual and process-focused.

Brittany Johnson is an investigative reporter on Channel 5’s 5 Investigates team. She stands out for education reporting that uses individual student stories, public documents, and data to show how policy and bureaucracy shape the lives of children and families. Her work covers school discipline, early grade suspensions, funding, and oversight, and she brings the same investigative lens she uses on courts and public safety to questions about school systems. She also reports on new state education datasets and on plea deals in homicide cases. Across her stories, she works in long-form television pieces, often paired with digital coverage, and ties personal cases to broader patterns in government and schools.

Brooke Sjoberg stands out for detailed local reporting that ties school districts to development and city decisions. She is a reporter at Community Impact, covering Bastrop, Hutto and Round Rock ISDs and development in the greater Austin area, and she joined the outlet in May 2021. Her main beat is education, with coverage of district performance, board action and school construction in Bastrop, Hutto and Round Rock ISDs. She also reports on business openings, closures and development, often with exact dates, dollar figures and other concrete details. Her stories are short, data-heavy and practical, built to show how local policy, growth and school changes affect readers.

Camellia Burris is an education reporter for Nashville Public Radio who covers Tennessee schools through a civil-rights lens. She focuses on how laws, history and policy shape the daily experience of students and families, returning to questions of segregation, access and accountability. An attorney as well as a journalist, she uses her legal training to report on school governance, funding and the rights of students with disabilities and students of color. Her work traces how racial segregation and its legacies show up in school names, attendance zones and racial demographics, and what those choices say about whose stories are honored. She also reports on disability services, family supports and special education, and on how colleges serve students and Black communities. In a public radio newsroom, she produces features, explainers and listener-driven segments that pair on-the-ground voices with clear policy and legal context.

Cameron Brown is a multimedia journalist at 12 News who uses straightforward video, on-air, and digital reporting to show how public systems work in everyday life. He joined WBNG 12 News in early 2026 and brings experience in radio, television, and print to tight, broadcast-ready stories that keep attention on local people and institutions. His main beat is education, with a focus on what happens in classrooms, how state-level expectations like New York’s Portrait of a Graduate shape academic readiness, and how teacher–student relationships affect whether students are prepared for what comes next. He also covers elections from inside polling places, centering turnout, logistics, and the experience of voters and poll workers, and reports on safety programs for older drivers as practical public service efforts.

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, with a beat that spans Georgia-wide policy decisions, local school districts and programs shaping students’ early learning. A central thread is school funding and oversight, showing how money and management decisions affect daily operations and long-term planning. She devotes sustained attention to early childhood education, statewide programs and how they stack up against national standards. Her reporting on teachers focuses on their working lives and classroom realities, using individual narratives to explain broader workforce pressures. Across her work she relies on data, public records and clear narrative storytelling, informed by a background in government oversight reporting and prior education coverage in Florida.

Cate Charron is a First Amendment reporter at The Indianapolis Star. She covers speech, press, religion, assembly and petition rights, with a focus on how those rights are tested in higher education. Her beat centers on campus speech disputes, student press freedom, academic research and the legal fallout of policies, lawsuits and investigations. She tracks how universities handle constitutional rights and how those choices affect students, staff, faculty and researchers. Her reporting is legal and systems-focused, and she connects individual cases to broader patterns. She has previously worked for The Indianapolis Star and the Herald-Times, covering the Indiana General Assembly, social issues and breaking news.

Chris Papst uses public education as an accountability beat, treating Maryland school systems as institutions that must show how they spend money, report results, and respond to families and staff. He is the lead investigative reporter for Fox45’s Project Baltimore, a continuing series on Maryland’s public education system built on records, data, and on-the-ground complaints. His work focuses on statewide and multi-district issues, including leadership turnover, public-record retention, test scores, data redaction, and performance transparency. He frequently reports on health, safety, and conditions inside school buildings, connecting parent concerns and internal records to legislation and policy change. His reporting is explicitly investigative and often adversarial toward opaque institutions, using tools such as records requests, data analysis, internal correspondence, and follow-up on how officials respond. He is a National Emmy-winning investigative journalist and the author of the bestselling books Failure Factory and Capital.

Christine Charnosky treats law schools as political and civic institutions, reporting on how they are led, funded and held accountable. She is the legal education reporter at Law.com, covering leadership changes, policy shifts and outcomes data across the law school landscape. She reports on law school governance, from widespread dean turnover and naming decisions tied to philanthropy to organized pressure campaigns around dean contracts and initiatives to protect the rule of law. She analyzes national bar passage data, focusing on racial disparities and translating regulatory reports into clear takeaways, and links those figures to student and practitioner experiences. She covers mental health, stress, burnout and wellbeing programming as core parts of law school culture. Her current beat is shaped by earlier local newsroom reporting on crime, courts and public safety, with attention to individual consequences and straightforward narratives.

Chuck Samples is a governance-focused education reporter who follows how formal decisions by school boards and higher education regents shape funding, policy and accountability. He works for KVOE, tracking school board deliberations on money, resources and personnel and showing how those moves affect district leadership, staff and students. His coverage of tuition and fee plans at a regional university centers on regents’ votes, proposal details and the planning behind cost changes. He reports on accountability and conduct cases in schools by linking legal outcomes and disciplinary actions to district standards and policies. Alongside education, he covers community initiatives, recovery and mental health events, arts programs, training for volunteers, weather and public safety, sports talk around high school basketball and interviews with political figures. His reporting uses a straightforward news style, clear headlines and hard news formats built around official actions and statements.

Cierra Morgan is distinctive for using school recess to show how child learning and education policy shape the school day. She reports for the Los Angeles Times as an education intern. Her beat centers on everyday school routines, especially recess length and classroom discipline. She has written about how an extra 30 minutes of recess can affect what children do when they return to class. She has also covered the use of recess as punishment and the policy effort to stop that practice in California. Her work turns a familiar part of school life into reporting on student well-being, classroom practice, and state rules. She uses question-led, explanatory stories to connect family concerns to policy change.

Cristina Janney is a reporter and newsroom leader at Hays Post who links education coverage to how local programs shape opportunity for students, parents, and the wider community. She pairs straightforward institutional stories with service pieces that explain how initiatives work in practice. Her reporting focuses on clear, accessible information about education-related resources and the people who run them, including coverage of Fort Hays State University milestones and student recognition. She turns university announcements into concise public records of achievement and covers programs like the BEACON child care and study space for parents with an emphasis on logistics and accessibility. Through the Post Podcast, she extends this focus to conversations on local skill-building and workforce development. As an editor, she oversees daily operations and digital presence while maintaining a direct, utilitarian style centered on concrete information.

Daisy Kershaw is a television journalist at WLWT News 5 whose education reporting centers on specific schools, defined problems and the voices of people directly affected. She reports and anchors, with a clear focus on coverage of school discipline, parent concerns and how policy decisions play out in classrooms and families. Her recent work includes reporting on Cincinnati Public Schools parents worried about alleged discipline disparities at Fairview German Language School, naming the district, the school and the nature of the allegation. She frames these stories at the intersection of policy and lived experience. Kershaw’s background as a multimedia journalist at an NBC affiliate in Savannah shapes her daily-news tempo, combining visuals, interviews and plain explanation in both on-air reporting and digital storytelling within a general assignment environment.

Dan Nakaso reports on how education, public health and social services intersect, following how policy is made and adjusted across large systems when they are strained by crisis or opportunity. He is a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and has also worked there in reporting and editing roles. His beat centers on Hawaii’s public schools and the University of Hawaiʻi, focusing on concrete policy decisions, funding, technology projects and facilities. He covers classroom distancing rules, tuition pathways, workforce programs tied to construction trades and an AI-focused healthcare data center. He follows related threads into healthcare payment models, homelessness, emergency housing and land policy when they shape conditions for students and families. His reporting is straight, sourced news built around on-the-record interviews with governors, agency heads, school leaders, medical executives and community organizations, with clear explanations of timelines, budgets and accountability.

Dana Goldstein is a national correspondent at The New York Times who covers education as a window into politics, family life, the economy and culture. She focuses on how policy decisions play out for students, parents and teachers, treating schools as the place where national debates are felt most directly. Her core beat is education policy, including learning loss during the coronavirus pandemic, school choice and vouchers, programs for Black students, disability advocacy and special education, college admissions, and segregation and integration. She reports on curriculum and textbooks, showing how content fights shape what students learn about their country. Her work on inequality, school reform, teachers and classroom technology traces how race, class, neighborhood and policy design, along with new tools like artificial intelligence, change daily classroom life and the teaching profession.

David Giuliani reports on the friction points where local school policy, politics and community values collide, tracing how board and administrative decisions affect students, parents and teachers in the western suburbs. He writes for Patch, with a beat centered on school governance, curriculum disputes, and budgeting and contract choices in public education. He closely follows school boards under scrutiny and residency disputes, documenting how members weigh compliance, fairness and public perception when families’ status is questioned. He covers curriculum, race and ideological conflict in classrooms, focusing on specific classroom practices, hallway displays, reading lists and board agendas. He regularly reports on leadership changes, contracts, staffing costs and health insurance, linking personnel moves to fiscal pressures. He also writes about school culture, children’s books and local politics intersecting with education.

De’Jah Gross is an education reporter who tracks how school district money and governance decisions show up in the day-to-day lives of students, staff and families, with a primary focus on Cincinnati-area public schools. She covers education for WCPO 9 News, returning to the same systems over time as budgets tighten, positions are cut and communities organize in response. Her work centers on Cincinnati Public Schools budgets and staffing, following financial problems and staffing fallout from early scenario planning through board votes and final job cuts. She reports on school board decisions, community response, district elections and accountability moments, and shows how budgets and policy reshape classroom and program experience. Gross brings a broadcast-first, multimedia approach shaped by past reporter, anchor and producer work, using clear explanatory scripting and tightly focused segments to break complex school-system issues into understandable pieces.

Dylan Berman covers education and campus life for The Spectator as both investigative and opinion editor, treating campus stories as questions of power, dissent and whose experiences guide institutional decisions. He links policy and administration to student realities, showing how official choices surface at commencement, in classrooms and in public forums. His reporting on conflicts around commencement, Palestine and the treatment of Muslim students treats graduation as a test of belonging, free expression and accountability. A news piece on a “Red Talk” about prison education reform disrupted by a protestor examines educational access, criminal justice and who controls campus debate. He also reviews demanding literature, including Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” and publishes historical fiction in a university research journal. He has been selected as The Spectator’s next editor-in-chief.

Eileen Buckley is a senior reporter at WKBW 7 News with a long broadcast career and a clear education beat that follows policy into real classrooms. She reports for “Eye on Education,” covering how shifts in standards, assessment, curriculum, and school accountability show up in the school day. Her stories range from statewide exam requirements and the move to phase out Regents for graduation to classroom projects that teach students journalism, deadlines, and responsibility, and districts celebrating Top 10 school rankings. She centers student, educator, and family voices, using direct quotes, on-the-ground visits, and plain-language scripts to show how institutional decisions shape daily life in schools. A veteran radio and television journalist and Hall of Fame member, she builds education pieces around strong soundbites and clear narrative arcs.

Ella Carter-Klauschie reports on how colleges serve students far from traditional campuses, with a focus on higher education in prisons and for other marginalized groups. They are a fellow with the College Journalism Network, reporting primarily for CalMatters in collaboration with partner outlets and multimedia teams. Their core beat is prison higher education and secure technology, following California’s expansion of college programs in prisons and the laptops and closed networks that enable or limit access. They show how policy, security rules and campus culture shape what incarcerated students can actually do, centering student voices alongside faculty, coordinators and officials. Beyond prisons, they cover community colleges serving first-generation, system-impacted, rural and Native students, and report on campus politics and civic dialogue using short-form video and social platforms. Their work combines policy detail with day-to-day student experience across text and visual formats.

Emily Scolnick covers education policy with a focus on charter school controversies, especially cyber charter school operations and their impacts on Pennsylvania's education system. She works at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star in a nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom. Her reporting centers on charter school policy and how virtual education models affect students and public funding. She examines regulatory challenges, scrutinizes claims from cyber charter leaders, and documents legislative actions affecting educational institutions. She emphasizes policy implementation details, specific legislative processes, and their practical consequences. Her coverage of paid family and medical leave proposals shows how she tracks bills from committee consideration through final passage, highlighting procedural milestones and stakeholder reactions. Working close to Pennsylvania's legislative proceedings, she delivers fact-based, timely reporting on education-related bills as they move through the policymaking process.

Emily Seymour is a regional news reporter who covers public education through the lens of school governance and campus leadership, showing how decisions by boards and administrators translate into concrete change for students, families, and staff. She reports on school board deliberations and votes, book challenges, curriculum, and policy, grounding big debates in specific Northern Virginia schools and programs. Her work on petitions to remove books from high school libraries tracks challenge procedures, board decisions, and their consequences for teachers, librarians, and families. She regularly covers principal appointments and school leadership changes, situating personnel moves within division priorities and school culture. Seymour also follows school construction and modernization projects, explaining site plans, design options, and capital timelines. Her beat includes university projects and facilities that connect education to regional economic and scientific development, and she writes in a neutral, straightforward news style.

Emma Whitford stands out for her reporting on faculty power, academic freedom and the business side of higher education. She is a faculty reporter at Inside Higher Ed. She covers all things faculty, including labor issues and unions, shared governance, academic freedom, hiring, tenure, research funding and pedagogy. Her work follows campus labor fights, contract talks, strikes and clashes between faculty senates and administrations. She also reports on how political pressure, funding cuts, enrollment declines and governance decisions shape faculty work, job security and academic offerings. Before Inside Higher Ed, she wrote about business, finance and technology in K-12 and higher education at Forbes. Her reporting is detailed and data-informed, often using reports, surveys and financial documents to connect campus disputes to larger policy and budget trends.

Eric Casey treats schools and colleges as business actors in a regional economy, not just academic institutions or community fixtures. He covers the business of campuses and institutional real estate for the Worcester Business Journal, focusing on colleges and schools at major inflection points, especially when property is at stake. His stories follow how institutional closures, consolidations, and expansions become listings, redevelopment projects, or zoning questions, with attention to brokers, buyers, and long-term site strategy. He reports on education as part of the regional economy, linking institutional decisions to jobs, vendors, neighborhoods, and tax bases. Casey gravitates toward closures and transitions and uses clear business prose, specific numbers, and structural details to show both the balance-sheet and community sides of education stories.

Eric Garcia uses education to show how power in Washington shapes real lives, treating classrooms and campuses as the place where national politics becomes concrete. He is a senior Washington correspondent for a national outlet and a columnist for MSNBC, where his opinion columns sit at the intersection of policy and lived experience. He covers Congress, elections and U.S. governance, and writes a regular politics newsletter tracking power struggles and legislation over time. His education work focuses on disability, institutional accountability and how schools and universities treat marginalized students. He reports by pairing interviews, public records, legislative detail, advocacy and think tank work with political history. His book on autism and years of disability reporting inform coverage that treats disabled students as central to judging whether institutions keep their promises.

Gary Larkin is the editor of the Fairfield County Business Journal at Westfair Communications. He stands out for covering education through the lens of business, philanthropy and community life. He focuses on how funding, corporate partnerships and institutional programs create real opportunities for students. His recent work has covered Spectrum Scholars and other scholarship and corporate education initiatives, with close attention to eligibility, selection, tuition support, internships, mentoring and career development. He treats education as part of the regional economic ecosystem and writes in a clear, practical style. A veteran journalist, writer, author and adjunct professor, he explains complex programs in straightforward terms.

Gianella Ghiglino is a multimedia journalist who centers community voices and lived experience, reporting on how policy decisions and institutional changes shape daily life. She works at the station as a video, digital, and on-air reporter covering education, local government, and community safety within a regional news framework. Her core beat is education, with a focus on classroom technology, “Tech with Intent” initiatives, device and platform restrictions, and how school board decisions affect students, families, and frontline staff. She also reports on public safety and international developments through the lens of local families and cross-border ties. Her background includes coverage of the refugee crisis, border wall construction, and the pandemic’s impact on border cities. Across topics, she uses clear explanations of policy, concrete detail on how rules work in practice, and on-the-ground perspectives from people directly affected.

Grace Tucker is an education reporter whose work starts in school board rooms and budget documents but stays focused on what those decisions mean for students, families and neighborhoods. She covers education policy and school district decisions for The Cincinnati Enquirer, with an emphasis on Cincinnati Public Schools and nearby districts facing financial and enrollment pressures. Her beat includes budget gaps, levy debates, tax structures, health and safety issues, and how state mandates show up in classrooms and homes. She reports through board accountability, clear explainers and student-centered stories, often highlighting people directly affected by vaccine policy, funding cuts or new initiatives. Tucker treats education as a community beat, hosting regular public office hours and using social platforms to invite questions that shape her coverage, while drawing on a background in entertainment and trending news to make complex topics accessible.

Greg Ng reports on education leadership and governance with a tight focus on how local school districts make decisions. He works on WBAL-TV 11 News’ digital team, turning school board actions and district announcements into clear, timely updates for online and app audiences. His beat centers on school superintendent appointments and other leadership changes, showing who leads local systems and how those leaders are chosen. He covers county boards of education as decision-making bodies, emphasizing formal votes and explicit actions over personalities. His reporting on districts like Baltimore County and Harford County gives readers direct accounts of key succession choices. Ng’s work is digital-first, with clear headlines, direct language, and concise news updates built around specific institutional decisions, combining producer-level precision with the directness of a beat reporter.

Hannah Gonzales is a television reporter for KSAT 12 whose education beat centers on how policies and programs shape the daily lives of students and families. She focuses on higher education programs and student pathways, explaining how colleges and universities redesign routes to a degree through concrete program details and what they offer prospective students. She also covers education policy and funding programs with a data lens, using statistics and measurable outcomes to show who gains from new initiatives. Beyond school coverage, she reports on families, safety and community impact, pairing personal stories with clear explanations of legal rules and consequences. As a Good Morning San Antonio reporter and visible presence on KSAT’s social platforms, she brings a direct, program-focused style rooted in real people’s experiences. She joined KSAT 12 in May 2026 after two years reporting for KXII.

Hope Perry is an education reporter at the Evanston RoundTable whose distinct approach is sustained, document-based coverage of Evanston/Skokie School District 65 leadership decisions and their concrete outcomes over time. She focuses on money, contracts and accountability in schools, putting exact figures and terms at the center of stories such as the district’s $191,000 exit payment to outgoing Superintendent Angel Turner. District 65 is her core beat, and she spends much of her reporting time inside public proceedings and events, attending more than 25 in the past year to track how decisions accumulate. A journalist, editor and audio engineer, she also writes about education for a university alumni magazine and edits women’s basketball coverage for a sports publication, connecting local K–12 governance to wider questions about schooling, culture and equity.

Howard Blume stands out for education reporting that traces power, policy, and money into real classroom consequences. He covers education for the Los Angeles Times and is the paper’s lead reporter on the Los Angeles Unified School District. His beat centers on LAUSD leadership, governance, scandal, and oversight failures, plus statewide K-12 legislation, curriculum battles, student protection, screen-time limits, school meals, truancy, and discrimination. He writes about superintendents, board politics, audits, investigations, and state mandates, and he explains how those decisions affect students, families, teachers, and school climate. His reporting is clear and direct, with an investigative focus on who benefits, who is accountable, and how rules work in practice. He has won the top investigative reporting prize from the L.A. Press Club and print Journalist of the Year.

JT Moodee Lockman tells the story of Maryland’s schools through data, policy, and the conflicts that unfold in and around classrooms. She is a digital producer and reporter for CBS News Baltimore, focused on education and wider local news across the state. Her coverage treats school systems as institutions that shape graduation, staffing, safety, civil rights, and community trust. She follows leadership decisions inside districts and shows how they play out for students, staff, and families. She reports on education policy, funding, and performance metrics, using official data, legislative proposals, and state frameworks to connect decisions to outcomes. Her work sits at the intersection of schooling, public safety, and civil rights, and extends to wider civic, environmental, and social safety net issues. Her background as a creative multimedia storyteller and multiskilled journalist informs straightforward reporting built from state reports, legislative texts, district communications, and community voices.

Jay Shakur reports for WCPO 9 News and stands out for covering how public systems serve children, families and neighborhoods when they fall short. He focuses on education accountability, school climate, youth mental health, immigration enforcement and neighborhood safety. His education reporting looks at discipline, equity, transparency and school oversight, often through the voices of parents, students and community leaders. He also covers youth groups working to close mental health care gaps, local policing cases that lead to immigration custody, and crime and justice stories tied to violence, fraud and arson. His work tracks what happens after complaints, how agencies share responsibility, and how officials’ decisions affect ordinary people on the ground.

Jeff Jenkins is a longtime news director who treats university governance and school labor disputes as live, contested processes rather than background noise. He leads the news division at West Virginia MetroNews and still reports on high‑stakes education stories, following how boardroom and legislative decisions turn into concrete consequences for universities, schools, and the people in them. He closely tracks governance fights at West Virginia University, especially academic restructuring and program reviews, breaking down meeting mechanics, vote counts, objections, and the board figures driving change. He also covers teacher work stoppages and school closure disputes, focusing on how education workers organize, what they demand, and how conflicts with lawmakers affect day‑to‑day school operations. His straightforward hard‑news reporting is document‑driven, centered on decisions, votes, formal statements, and direct quotes.

Jeffrey S. Solochek is distinct for tracking how Florida education politics and policy play out in real schools, from state boards and lawmakers to district offices, principals and classrooms. He is an education reporter at the Tampa Bay Times and has covered statewide education issues there since 2000. He has also spent more than 25 years covering education in Illinois, Texas and Florida. His beat centers on public-school systems, teacher unions, legislation, charter schools, school start times, calendar changes, book challenges, accountability, safety, leadership and staffing, and he reports with frequent Gradebook roundups that turn multiple developments into short, scannable updates.

Joe Calabrese is an education reporter for FOX 5 DC who covers how school systems function under real-time disruptions. He focuses on closures, evacuations, outages, and other infrastructure, safety, and policy failures that interrupt instruction, treating them as core education stories. His reporting lives at the intersection of facilities, operations, and student safety, explaining how power, transportation, buildings, and security issues translate into canceled classes, relocated instruction, or modified schedules. He tracks how quickly administrators move from emergency response back to normal operations and what that means for students and staff. His stories are on-the-ground and service-focused, spelling out what is closed, what is open, and what alternatives exist, while pressing public institutions on communication, contingency plans, and accountability.

Jonaki Mehta stands out for her focused reporting on students with disabilities and learning differences. She is an NPR education correspondent who covers how education systems treat these students, with a beat centered on the policies, civil rights decisions, funding, and classroom tools that shape their access to services, protections, and accommodations. She has reported on efforts to shift oversight of special education and civil rights out of the Education Department, cuts to federal education spending, AI in special education, and the tension between screen-free school efforts and assistive technology. Her reporting is built from stories about students, teachers, and experts, paired with clear explanation of how federal decisions affect daily school life. Before this work, she produced All Things Considered, documentary series, and talk shows, and began at NPR West as a National Desk intern.

Jorja Roman is a television journalist for Spectrum Bay News 9 who links education and public-interest reporting with visual storytelling rooted in people. She focuses on what happens inside real classrooms, using specific teachers and schools to show how early childhood learning develops the whole child, including social, emotional and developmental growth. Her reporting connects education, research and public policy, such as translating university wastewater modeling into clear, consequence-focused coverage tied to safety and environmental impact. She also delivers live news coverage and co-hosts a morning newscast that runs through top stories, traffic and weather. Her dual role shapes concise, structured segments with strong narrative hooks, using scenes and interviews so viewers see how expert knowledge and local decisions affect everyday life.

Josh Kristianto is an education-focused reporter and multimedia journalist for ABC15 Arizona whose work centers on how institutions treat students, families, and communities. He brings an accountability lens to stories that blend education, legal detail, and community impact. His reporting covers retaliation and abuse in special education, internal school culture, discipline, and how administrators respond when staff raise student safety concerns. He also reports on new faith-based education models, including the first Orthodox classical school in the Valley, following founding efforts and community involvement. As an investigative reporter, he produces deep legal dives on major criminal cases, translating complex court records and proceedings into accessible narratives. He also covers community-led pushes for justice, following volunteers who organize search and advocacy efforts when official systems have not yet delivered resolution.

Josh Moody covers how money, management and governance shape colleges and universities, treating finance and leadership as the central lens on higher education. He is a reporter focused on the business side of the sector, following how institutional budgets, ratings agency actions and leadership decisions affect campus operations and strategy. He turns major sector analyses and state-of-the-sector reports into clear stories about risk, resilience and institutional decision-making. He documents how enrollment pressures drive distress, mergers and closures, and connects shutdowns of small colleges to wider market stress. His beat includes governance and political fights over boards, campus programs and state-level interventions. He also reports on new models and strategic bets, from three-year degrees to big-money athletics and emerging industries, showing how institutions test unconventional approaches in search of financial stability and differentiation.

Julia Silverman covers how Oregon’s education policies play out in real schools, focusing on power struggles, funding decisions and inequities that shape students’ daily experience. She reports for The Oregonian/OregonLive on the full arc of public education, from state board directives and legislative plans to district budgets, test scores and the time students spend in class. Her beat centers on state education policy and governance, school funding and district finances, instructional time and student outcomes, and facilities and climate. She tracks disputes among top education officials, statewide funding overhauls, budget debates in major districts, and differences in instructional time. She reports on infrastructure and HVAC upgrades as schools respond to climate change. She writes in clear, direct language, breaking down complex policy and finance mechanics and using data on test scores and time in school to show concrete impacts on classrooms and students.

Julie Carey is Northern Virginia bureau chief at the station, known for covering education through a legal lens and tracking how school disputes move into courts and formal complaints. She reports on the legal and political fault lines in Washington-area education, following cases involving defamation suits, discrimination claims, safety, discipline and public accusations. Her beat sits at the intersection of school governance, community conflict and public accountability, with close attention to how boards, superintendents and local officials handle controversy. She has reported for the station for more than three decades, bringing deep institutional knowledge of local school systems and politics. Her work is video-driven and on the ground, with field pieces from schools, courthouses and community events that pair clear legal explanation with voices from parents, educators and officials.

Justin Weinberg treats philosophy itself as his beat, covering how the profession works, changes, and shows itself to the wider world. He runs and edits Daily Nous, a philosophy news site that tracks academic life, education policy, and the online spaces where philosophers argue and build communities. A philosophy professor and editor, he reports on how philosophy is taught, researched, and discussed in departments and programs, and how digital tools and platforms shape that work. His reporting blends straightforward news with tight framing that explains why changes in infrastructure, higher education experiments, and debates about the value of philosophy matter to philosophers, students, and institutions. He writes in a steady, clear way and opens space for others to weigh in, making his coverage a running record of how philosophy adapts to new pressures and opportunities.

Kaeden Lincoln reports on how Idaho’s education systems work in practice, linking policy and governance to the facilities, programs, and events that shape students’ options. He is an intern with Idaho Education News, focused on K-12 and postsecondary education, with steady attention to career-technical pathways, leadership networks, and the real impact of new programs and investments. His beat centers on K-12 policy and systems, including the state legislature, education department, local school boards, and elections, with coverage grounded in the mechanics of school oversight and the people who carry out state policy. He also reports on new career-technical facilities and education leadership conferences, tying infrastructure, program design, and workforce needs to what students and educators see on the ground. An early-career reporter, he works in clear, event-driven formats that connect formal decisions to everyday school and college life.

Kaela Babasin focuses on how institutional decisions at Whitman College shape the daily lives of students, with a steady emphasis on affordability, policy, and campus culture. She covers both reported news and first-person pieces, connecting tuition models, scholarships, and campus rules to questions of access, student wellbeing, and the financial structures behind a college education. Her reporting on tuition reform explains the mechanics and implications of new pricing models. She also writes about scholarships and study abroad, showing how need-based aid determines student mobility and learning options. Her work on attendance policy, consent education, and health training links campus rules to mental health, disability access, and safety. She reports on financial pressures facing student publications, treating campus media as another site where funding and policy shape student experience.

Kathryn Muchnick covers children and education for the Louisville Courier Journal, with a focus on how K-12 systems shape daily life for students. Her beat centers on Jefferson County Public Schools, where she tracks board governance, state law, classroom policy, staffing, support services and district operations. She reports closely on how lawmakers and local leaders shift authority inside JCPS, including changes tied to a new Kentucky law, board-size proposals and vacancies. She also covers how restructuring affects educators, academic coaches and support staff, and how district fixes like a bus driver shortage affect families. Her work uses explainers, Q&As, video pieces and direct reaction from educators and community members to make policy changes clear and show what they mean for students, parents and schools.

Katie Ellington Serrao is a lead reporter and solutions journalism coordinator whose beat links local education systems with housing and community issues. She works at Richland Source, where she reports on school governance, staffing, budgets and family supports, and continues a staff reporting role she has held since 2019. Her education coverage follows school boards and district decisions, including stories on teacher termination, staff cuts tied to levy campaigns, contract issues and the impact of financial strain on classrooms. She reports on child care costs and supplies, early learning and how policy and local markets shape family routines. Housing and neighborhood change are regular parts of her work, alongside feature reporting. She covers education, economic development and agricultural topics through a solutions lens, focusing on responses, initiatives and collaborations across multiple sister newsrooms.

Katie Hyson is distinct for treating racial justice and social equity as one continuous beat, following the lived experience of people most affected instead of starting with official narratives. She reports for KPBS, where she also hosts the podcast “Free Jane” and the five-part investigative series “One of Their Own,” reopening an unresolved police death case through an equity lens. Her coverage cuts across health, criminal justice, housing, education and local politics, using data and ground-level reporting to show how policies and institutions shape everyday life. She often frames current events in the longer history of discrimination and reform, documents power and community leadership, and foregrounds student, family and neighborhood voices. Hyson came to this beat after similar work at a public media outlet in Gainesville and earlier community-oriented jobs in immigration advising, organic farming and nonprofit sex worker assistance.

Kelsey Souto closely covers power and accountability fights around Fayette County Public Schools, treating the superintendent’s office and elected board as an ongoing beat. She is a television journalist for WKYT whose work centers on education, with a particular focus on school leadership, budgets and oversight. She blends live, unfolding reporting with close reading of documents, meeting agendas and financial figures so viewers see both events and their meaning for the school system. She follows personnel and leadership questions, including scrutiny of Superintendent Demetrus Liggins, and stays with stories when documents and conduct are in dispute. She previews and reports on board meetings, multi-year budgets, audits and contracts, treating numbers as central and tying finances to classroom and community impact. She extends this work on streaming news, explainers and community segments, using clear, step-by-step updates and interviews to show who is affected and how.

Kevin Richert focuses on the intersection of education policy and politics, treating schools and universities as part of a broader civic system shaped by power, campaigns and governance. He is a senior reporter and blogger for Idaho Education News, where he covers how laws, budgets and elections affect classrooms, campuses and higher education, with particular depth on Boise State University and its leadership. His beat includes statewide elected officials, state boards and local trustees, and how they translate political priorities into rules, funding decisions and accountability measures. He writes a daily blog, produces enterprise reporting and podcast episodes, and uses data, timelines, votes and procedures to track education budgets and policy fights over time. With more than three decades in journalism and an award for enhancing public discourse on key education topics, he offers sustained, analytical coverage of education politics, policy, transparency and public records.

Lauren Lumpkin reports how decisions made far from the classroom ripple through students’ lives, connecting education policy, leadership and equity to everyday school experiences. She is a national education reporter for The Washington Post, covering the forces reshaping public education across K-12 and higher education. Her beat includes public school systems, leadership crises, pandemic recovery, book challenges, curriculum debates and student voice. She writes accountability, explanatory and narrative stories that treat superintendents, boards, state officials and university leaders as central characters, focusing on how their choices shape budgets, trust and long-term planning. She uses data, expert voices and on-the-ground reporting, pairing national indicators with specific schools and districts. Her higher education coverage examines admissions, state policy and funding, with particular attention to racial and socioeconomic inequities in access to selective public institutions.

Leqi Zhong follows money and power in local school systems and shows how those choices land on students, families and classrooms. She is the Clovis accountability and enterprise reporter for The Fresno Bee, focusing on education, local politics and public finance. Her core work tracks how school districts grow, spend and cut, with close coverage of bond measures, long-term building plans and budget decisions in Clovis Unified, Fresno Unified and across the region. She reports on political influence, campaign activity and conflicts of interest around school officials and PACs, treating education as part of the civic landscape. Zhong documents student protests, classroom mandates at risk and progressive initiatives in practice, keeping equity and lived experience at the center. She also contributes enterprise reporting on fraud and governance failures, using records, timelines and sourcing to explain how public institutions work and where they break down.

Lila Thulin reports on how a major public university teaches, supports its students and turns research into public impact, always tying institutional news to larger social questions. She is a writer and media relations staffer at Berkeley News, where she covers history, race and ethnicity, gender, disability, housing policy and journalism. She explains rankings, research hubs, faculty honors and major grants in clear language, linking prestige to the work those milestones fund. Her stories follow new and redesigned classes, student support programs and equity efforts as lived experience, grounded in scenes from classrooms and community spaces. Thulin also writes historical explainers on love, marriage and sports, and previously produced service journalism on media literacy and political media. Across outlets, she combines step-by-step guidance, expert context and human voices to show why developments matter beyond campus.

Linh Bui is distinct for showing how education policy and programs play out in the daily lives of students, families and educators, with a focus on concrete initiatives and the people they affect. She is an anchor and reporter for WTOP News, bringing a broadcast background and classroom teaching experience to coverage of schools and learning. Her work spans legal and accountability stories tied to online harassment, school-based pilot programs that keep students in class, summer meal services that address food insecurity, and reimagined museums that use new technology. She follows legal cases through verdicts and emphasizes outcomes and individual impact. Her reporting stays on specifics, operational details and real-world results, using tight, structured storytelling to explain how education policies, programs and institutions function beyond classroom walls.

Logan Stefanich is a KSL reporter who follows the money and mandates shaping education in Utah. He covers education, business, technology and southern Utah communities, with a real beat centered on K–12 and higher education spending cuts, reallocations, audits and compliance with state requirements. His reporting tracks legislative directives, school board actions and campus budget plans, and it often uses concrete dollar figures, timelines and policy responses. He has also covered transparency in education spending, specialized schools, boundary-change rules that affect special education, and local initiatives like Paul Mitchell The School Provo’s Style It Forward program.

Mack Carmack is a digital content producer at LEX 18 known for fast, document-based coverage of public institutions, especially education systems and the justice system. She focuses on how policies, official decisions and allegations of misconduct affect families, students and communities, tying incidents to broader questions of accountability. Her real beat is education power structures and accountability, following senior school leaders, lawmakers and investigators through paper trails and formal responses. She reports on serious criminal cases and court developments, often involving children or vulnerable people, and regularly handles breaking news about fatalities and major public safety incidents using verified details from authorities. She works in short, hard-news formats built around official documents and agency releases, with concise, telegraphic copy shaped by a background in multimedia journalism and broadcast communication.

Maddie Hanna is an education reporter whose work stands out for its close tracking of how K-12 policy and suburban school politics turn into real-world changes for students, families, and teachers. She covers K-12 education for The Philadelphia Inquirer, focusing on districts in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. Her beat includes facilities projects, long-term spending, enrollment shifts, discipline and personnel disputes, teacher protections, and equity in access to learning. She reports from board meetings and committee sessions, follows appeals and records disputes, and uses open-records requests, internal documents, and data to test district claims. Her stories surface specific votes, contract terms, timelines, project costs, staffing levels, and demographic patterns, and they center community voice and student experience to show how policy decisions build or erode trust and affect daily life in schools.

Madison Carmouche-Soward is a multimedia journalist and weekend evening anchor at CBS-affiliated WKYT who specializes in sustained, accountability-focused coverage of public education. She covers how school governance, finances, and policy decisions affect students, families, and staff, often staying with complicated district stories over multiple meetings and formats. She spends much of her time on the Fayette County Board of Education and its finances, following budget decisions, accounting problems, tax-rate debates, and carry-forward balances and explaining why district and critics cite different numbers. Her beat also includes district communications and community access, including Q&A-style sessions on finances and leadership. Alongside conflict-driven reporting, she highlights school-based initiatives, student work, and school-community partnerships. Earlier in her career she worked in another Kentucky television newsroom as a producer, reporter, and anchor on community-centered stories.

Mariana Dale is a senior K-12 education reporter at LAist whose work focuses on how education policy and classroom practice shape the daily lives of children and their families. She treats education as a continuum that begins before kindergarten, building on years of early childhood reporting for public media outlets. She covers early childhood, K-12 schools, school climate, immigration and democracy in the classroom, with a sustained focus on screen time, classroom technology and the digital divide. Her reporting explains complex district decisions and broad policy debates in clear, service-oriented stories and guides that show families what changes mean in classrooms. She blends boardroom resolutions, on-the-ground classroom reporting and voices from school leaders, students and caregivers, producing school game plan guides, policy explainers and other practical tools for people navigating school systems.

Mark A. Kellner focuses on how Christian institutions handle education, governance, and the law, using document-heavy reporting and close reading of contracts, complaints, and court orders. He is a reporter for The Roys Report, where he covers Christian higher education, sexual abuse cases in church-linked schools, megachurch and ministry lawsuits, and ministry-facing legislation. His work on Truett McConnell University, sexual abuse charges against church leaders and staff, and lawsuits involving large churches and ministries tracks lawsuits, criminal cases, and bills with attention to timelines and institutional context. He has reported on religion since 1983 for national, denominational, and specialist outlets, including a denominational magazine, a Faith & Family role at The Washington Times, and campaign reporting for the New York Post, treating faith, politics, and law as an interconnected beat.

Mark Baugh links education policy and district decisions directly to what happens in K-12 classrooms. He is a morning news reporter for KFOX14 who covers schools and students across newscasts and social platforms. His beat centers on K-12 standards, safety, governance and day-to-day school life, following changes from boardrooms and administrative offices down to teachers, families and students. He reports on state social studies standards, campus-level rules at schools like Lynn Middle School, and proposals on teacher representation in disciplinary meetings. He regularly covers school safety, district responses to health and security incidents, and accountability when families raise concerns. His back-to-school and “School Spotlight” segments track yearly changes and highlight classroom contributions. He reports live on television and online with short, clear updates that keep ongoing education issues in front of viewers.

Mark Haslett brings a long public radio career to coverage of how universities and public institutions shape the communities around them. He is the permanent host of All Things Considered at KUNM, anchoring a daily news program built around interviews and local stories. His recent reporting on calls to change leadership at the University of New Mexico School of Law follows a coalition of alumni and other stakeholders opposing renewal of the dean’s contract. He focuses on university governance, stakeholder campaigns, and how education institutions respond to internal criticism and outside pressure. His work sits at the intersection of education, public accountability, and institutional direction, with attention to real consequences for students and a school’s future. He blends straight reporting with conversation, centering source voices and using clear, measured language for a general news audience.

Maureen Sullivan is an education reporter for MassLive who focuses on how school system decisions shape daily life inside classrooms. She covers K–12 education, tracking concrete changes in policy and practice through specific school district examples rather than abstract debate. Her work examines how students, teachers and administrators navigate new rules and expectations, with special attention to classroom conduct and technology use. One recent story on a district’s new limits on cellphone use shows how she treats policy shifts as lived experience, exploring enforcement details, trade-offs for teaching and the impact on student behavior and instructional time. Across her coverage, she follows how superintendents, principals and school committees turn broader guidance into local practice, explaining what is new, why it is happening and how it will work in real schools.

Meagan Halbardier Moore is a television news producer whose education reporting focuses on crisis and change in public schools. She covers student safety, accountability, misconduct allegations, school communication with families, investigations, and the policy or leadership changes parents demand when trust breaks down. Her work stays close to parents, school leaders, officials, students, and the concrete next steps after a school incident. She builds short, clear stories around the people directly affected and uses plain, direct language. Across her work, she emphasizes lived experience over abstract policy debate and shows how school decisions affect families and communities.

Megan Tagami reports on how gaps in Hawaii’s school system become life-and-death issues for students, treating education as a public service rather than an abstract policy debate. She is an education reporter at Honolulu Civil Beat, where she covers long-running problems in public schools, including broken infrastructure, student safety, inequitable access to swimming lessons and new career pathways. Her work connects data, daily campus conditions and student experience to spotlight where public promises fall short. Tagami’s series on children’s drowning risk and lack of swimming instruction earned a national education reporting award. She has also written for The 19th News on the growth of career-based education and gender gaps in who benefits. She gravitates toward single schools or programs that reveal wider patterns, using straightforward, detail-rich, accountability reporting.

Megan Tomasic covers K-12 education with a close focus on how school policies, benefits and board decisions shape daily life in public schools. She is a K-12 reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where since 2022 she has connected administrative choices to the experiences of teachers, students and families. Her reporting follows school boards and library policy battles, tracking votes, procedures and formal language as districts debate access to books and curricular materials. She examines how benefits, staffing changes and statewide initiatives play out in classrooms, budgets and hiring. She also reports on marketing, school choice and enrollment pressure, as well as instructional models, attendance and snow days. Earlier, she worked as a general assignment reporter covering township government and a local school district, grounding her current beat in broader public board and agency dynamics.

Melissa Manno treats child care funding, voucher systems, and universal pre-K as core education infrastructure, connecting Albany’s decisions to families’ daily lives. She is an education reporter at New York Focus, covering how state education policies shape schools, child care providers, and households. Her beat centers on early childhood and child care as education policy, K–12 standards, graduation requirements, and access to support services. She reports on gaps between state promises and local capacity, the mechanics of changing Regents rules and diploma pathways, and how eligibility, cost, and fragmented funding affect equity in early learning and school-linked care. She grounds her work in parents’, caregivers’, and front-line workers’ experiences, using statewide outreach and source calls to test official claims and surface patterns that agency documents miss.

Mike Schaekermann bridges research and public explanation of advanced AI systems, writing for the Google Blog about how medical and search AI move from labs into tools that help people manage complex information. He focuses on diagnostic and conversational AI in health care, especially AMIE, Google’s medical AI system for clinical dialogue and disease management. His beat covers diagnostic AI, health condition management, AI agents and generative features in Google Search, and data excellence and evaluation for AI. He reports by grounding blog pieces in peer-reviewed studies he co-authors, emphasizing evaluation, clinical workflows and long-term use rather than product hype. His work explains how AI systems structure information, support learning, enable shared decision-making, and help people plan and reason through everyday tasks.

Mikhail Zinshteyn reports on how California higher education policy shapes access, cost, labor, and student outcomes. He is a higher education reporter for CalMatters, and his coverage of the state’s public colleges and universities appears in The Fresno Bee. He focuses on admissions, tuition, financial aid, campus housing, labor issues, community colleges, and new degree paths. He often tracks state legislation, budget decisions, and governing board votes, then explains their effects on students, faculty, and families. His reporting covers the tradeoffs between in-state and out-of-state enrollment, lecturer turnover, faculty strikes, artificial intelligence in teaching, and efforts to expand bachelor’s degree options. He finds stories through public data, documents, agency meetings, and interviews, and he writes in clear, direct language.

Morgan Fogarty is the managing editor and lead anchor of WCCB News at 10 at WCCB Charlotte, and her most distinctive work is education reporting on Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. She follows how the district is run, with sustained coverage of school board votes, superintendent crises, and operational changes, and she reports them in clear, tightly framed stories that focus on process, accountability, and practical effects. Her beat includes student performance and the day-to-day school year experience, from district data and first-week-of-school coverage to changes in learning models and opening plans. She also reports on crime, politics, and neighbourhood issues. Her reporting style is interview-driven and grounded in verified information from officials and documents, and she moves between the anchor desk and field or studio packages to cover the news.

Natalie Robbins is distinct for following the money, audits and leadership disputes behind classrooms and campuses to show how power struggles and inequities shape education systems. She covers education policy, governance and accountability across school districts, higher education and related public agencies, focusing on oversight, leadership and compliance. Her work tracks special audits that uncover financial problems involving education officials and examines clashes over law school leadership and diversity. Robbins situates education within broader debates over public funding, health care costs and access to critical services, explaining how federal and state budget decisions affect schools, colleges and social programs. She reports in a data-driven, document-based way, dissecting audits, budget acts and legislation and pairing them with interviews to clarify complex systems, test official claims and show who is most affected when institutions fall short.

Noel Gasca reports on how education policy shows up in the daily lives of students and families, with a focus on safety, access, and the community systems around schools. She covers education for public radio station KUOW, following how changes on paper move into classrooms, campuses, and youth experiences. She spends significant time on what makes school feel safe, and for whom, tracking both formal processes and on-the-ground concerns about surveillance, equity, and whether security measures address the causes of violence. She also reports on libraries and other institutions that shape learning outside classrooms, and on youth representation in cultural narratives, including pop culture stories. Her work centers student and family voices and uses clear, explanatory writing to show how policy and cultural shifts affect daily life in classrooms, libraries, and homes.

Olivia Doak is a higher education reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera whose work treats university decisions like major civic and business stories. She focuses on the institutions, finances and campus decisions that shape life at the University of Colorado Boulder and other local schools, following money, property and governance as closely as student experience. Her reporting tracks real estate deals, long-term leases, leadership changes, student conduct cases and town–gown tensions, explaining costs, funding and community impact in clear, economical prose. She covers CU Boulder as a central civic institution, grounding stories in public records, meeting coverage, official filings and direct quotes from administrators. Alongside higher education, she reports on local K–12 districts and education policy, emphasizing how board decisions and new programs affect families, teachers and students.

Patrick Damp covers education through everyday school and youth life, showing how classrooms, athletics, hospitals, and kids’ media shape community culture. He is a web producer for CBS Pittsburgh, where he turns local education and youth-focused stories into short, clear web reports. His beat centers on school communities, athletic programs, and the educators, coaches, and staff who anchor public schools. He also reports on youth health institutions like children’s hospitals and on children’s media, including coverage of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and its dedicated YouTube channel. Across these subjects, Damp focuses on specific students, adults, and places rather than policy, using concise, news-driven writing with a few direct quotes or scenes to highlight how schools and youth institutions provide stability, care, and pride in young people’s lives.

Peter Greene is a senior education contributor at Forbes and a retired high school teacher who writes about how education policy and reform play out in real classrooms. He focuses on public schools, teacher work and the gap between policy rhetoric and the daily realities of teaching. His core beat is the classroom impact of laws, reforms, industry initiatives and frameworks like competency-based education, often comparing them to earlier models such as outcome-based education. He writes from an openly pro–public education stance and centers teachers’ and students’ experiences. Greene often reviews books and research reports, using them to examine assumptions behind rankings, content-rich curricula and other proposed solutions. He writes in a direct, conversational voice, contributes essays to other education-focused publications and maintains a long-running personal blog on schools and education politics.

Rachel Gow reports for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with a focus on how policies, conflicts and support systems shape daily life in local schools and the wider community. She covers education as a lived environment, staying inside classrooms and campuses to show how administrative decisions, community tensions and incidents like wildlife sightings affect students, families and staff. Her beat also includes city rules, nightlife and neighborhood impact, breaking down regulatory changes and what they mean for businesses, patrons and residents. She reports on health, cancer survivorship and hunger relief through small-group settings and nonprofit work. Her coverage extends to public safety, city services and alert systems, and she uses both traditional text and video, moving quickly across formats while staying close to ordinary people’s experiences.

Ranji Sinha is a KIRO 7 television reporter who covers education, labor, health, and community life. He focuses on school strikes, staffing, district leadership, classroom disruption, budgets, enrollment, and labor negotiations. He also reports on how schools shape student routines, culture, and family life, and on health stories that connect medical issues to daily experience. His work often uses students, educators, parents, experts, and officials as primary voices. He reports live from rallies, strikes, vigils, travel hubs, and breaking news scenes, and he explains what is happening on the ground as events unfold.

Renee Cooper is an education reporter with an investigative mindset who covers schools through the lens of accountability, treating budgets, policies and safety decisions as stories about daily life for families. She reports for 5 Eyewitness News, connecting district-level moves to what happens in classrooms and at kitchen tables. Her beat includes education policy, funding, school governance and campus safety, with recent work on tight budgets, contested district cuts and petition drives in Anoka-Hennepin schools. She tracks how decisions move from proposal to board vote to impact on special education, class sizes and activities, grounding coverage in documents, experts and interviews with parents, teachers and students. Cooper also reports “First on 5” exclusives and accountability pieces that tie education to housing, social services and public safety, drawing on prior experience in lead investigative and anchoring roles in other local TV markets.

Ryan Suppe stands out for reporting on how Idaho’s K-12 education laws and policies move from statute and rule into daily life for schools, families and public officials. He is a senior reporter at Idaho Education News and covers education policy, with work centered on the Idaho Legislature, the Department of Education, local school boards and elections. He has previously reported on state politics, local government and business. His beat includes school funding, library rules, pronoun policies, open enrollment, private education tax credits and records-law disputes. He follows legislative sessions closely, tracks implementation, and explains how decisions affect districts, educators and students.

Sadie Dittenber traces how education policy, money and power decisions show up in real classrooms, following threads from school boards and state bills to student outcomes. She covers education for The Tribune and is a California Local News Fellow through the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. Her beat combines K-12 districts, Cal Poly and local government, using public data, documents and on-the-ground school reporting. She regularly builds “see how your district compares” explainers from school performance data, tracks post-COVID academic recovery, and ranks competitive Cal Poly majors by selectivity. She follows funding streams, endowments and stalled legislation, treating budgets and foundations as core education stories. She reports closely on book challenges, school board decisions, superintendent races and public records fights, connecting governance and accountability across schools, city hall, state policy and campus leadership. Before The Tribune, she reported for an education-focused newsroom.

Skidmore College Athletics runs an in-house news desk that treats varsity sports as part of the college’s educational mission, not just a source of scores. It covers athletics at the intersection of sport and campus governance, with a focus on leadership changes, departmental strategy, milestones, and honors. The desk reports on athletics leadership by detailing administrators’ experience, philosophy, and plans, and explains how new leaders shape student-athlete life, academics, and competition. It also covers awards and recognition, highlighting criteria, recipients’ achievements, and their place in program history to show the values of the athletics community. Program updates span multiple varsity sports, schedules, milestones, and notable performances. Coverage has an institutional voice and official format, emphasizing governance, student development, and program stewardship alongside results.

Sophia Peters stands out for fast, factual digital coverage of urgent local events. She is the Web and Social Media Manager for 47 ABC. Her real beat is breaking news, school safety alerts, education disruptions, crime, and public safety. She covers schools and universities under stress, including closures, bomb threats, delayed openings, transportation changes, and investigation updates. She also reports on fatal hit-and-runs, murder cases, and other charged public safety briefs. Her policy work includes stories on farming advocates responding to Governor Wes Moore’s “MeatOut Day.” Her reporting is web-first, concise, and built on official statements, court records, and time-stamped updates. She gives readers clear facts, next steps, and the practical impact of fast-moving events.

Steven Middendorp is a journalist, teacher, musician, and freelance writer with more than 20 years of investigative reporting experience. He currently works as a journalist and freelance writer and is known for investigative news reports about politics, culture, health, courts, and other beats. His work has appeared with outlets covering breaking news, courts, agriculture, and long-form investigations. He focuses on riveting details, thorough research, and unbiased presentation backed by reliable sources. His reporting process is driven by strong curiosity, careful fact-finding, and meeting editorial deadlines. He also writes marketing content, SEO articles, music and entertainment blogs, and academic-style pieces. He holds a bachelor of science in communications with an emphasis in journalism and in psychology.

Swasthi Maharaj traces how University of Florida leadership decisions translate into student costs and campus life. She is a university administration reporter on The Independent Florida Alligator’s university desk, following trustees, statewide boards and senior administrators and tracking their votes, appointments and disputes into concrete impacts on tuition, mandatory fees and the campus experience. Her coverage of UF’s presidential succession and stalled confirmations foregrounds process, political dynamics and timelines, clarifying what boards can and cannot do and what their choices mean for the institution’s direction. She reports fee increases in specific dollar and percentage terms and situates them in ongoing policy arcs. Alongside this governance and finance work, she writes human-centered campus features and draws on prior semesters covering K‑12 education, health and technology, and research at the intersection of journalism, artificial intelligence and education policy.

T. Keung Hui brings decades on the K-12 beat to detailed, equity-focused reporting on how public schools work in practice. He covers K-12 education for The News & Observer, tracking how school boards, state lawmakers and district leaders shape daily life in classrooms. His work follows the money, the politics and the consequences for students, families and educators, with particular attention to inequality, segregation and school funding. He explains complex policy, legislation and regulatory changes in plain terms, showing how hiring rules, licensing requirements and working conditions affect educators and school communities. Hui reports extensively on student outcomes, pandemic recovery and learning gaps, grounding broad debates in data, rankings, legal standards and classroom realities. He treats school boards and state officials as decision-makers to be scrutinized, and keeps his coverage focused on practical impact for the public.

Teagan King is an education and health reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal whose work centers on turning complex school system changes into direct, usable information for families. She focuses on how district decisions translate into concrete changes for students, especially around attendance boundaries, enrollment, budgets and school capacities. Her sustained coverage of the Madison School District’s boundary review explains draft maps, criteria for redrawing lines, public input and how proposals affect where children go to school. She links boundary shifts to demographics, housing development, facilities planning and fiscal pressures, using data and trend analysis in plain language. King also profiles student experiences and academic opportunities, such as national competitions, to show how policy plays out in young people’s lives. She previously reported on business and economic development and often uses Q&As and “what to know” guides in her reporting.

Thad Moore is an investigative reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whose education beat is framed through an accountability lens, following what happens when schools, colleges and public systems break down and what that means for students, families and communities. He focuses on colleges in crisis, especially where leadership decisions intersect with allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct, using lawsuits, internal records and on-the-record responses to show who knew what and when. He also explains how infrastructure and public services affect daily life, breaking down technical processes in plain language and pressing officials for answers. Previously, he covered state government for The Post and Courier, experience that shapes his reporting on policy, budgets and oversight. His award-winning work relies on documents, expert sources, clear explanation and persistent follow-up.

Theo Peck-Suzuki is CT Mirror’s education reporter, focused on how policy and funding shape K-12 classrooms and student opportunity. He covers the K-12 achievement gap, education funding, curriculum, mental health, school safety and inequity. His reporting tracks how commissions, reforms and state leaders’ decisions become changes in teaching, curriculum and student support. He writes about early literacy and reading scores, including early screening and district interventions, and about curriculum experiments such as the state’s first “course in a box” on music history. Before CT Mirror, he spent three years at WOUB Public Media covering housing, poverty and education, with earlier work on children and poverty. He reports in a direct, detailed style that links policy to daily school realities.

Todd Wallack is a national education reporter for The Washington Post who brings an investigative lens and data skills to stories about how education systems shape the choices, costs and outcomes facing students and families. He focuses on higher education and programs that promise fast, low-cost credentials and credits, examining what they offer and what they deliver. His reporting follows real students and parents as they weigh college offers, compare financial aid and decide between tests like the SAT and ACT, using narrative examples and clear explanations of competing options. He scrutinizes unaccredited organizations and compressed degree programs that market accelerated routes to college credit, probing gaps between marketing, oversight and actual credit transfer. His background leading and working on investigative teams, including at a public radio investigative unit, underpins his emphasis on evidence, documentation, data and the fine print in policies and programs.

Trish Hartman is an education reporter for 6ABC Action News whose work stands out for centering students’ daily experiences and school communities in coverage of budget and policy decisions. She focuses on how school closures, funding pressures, and classroom changes affect students, staff, and families, using stories like the closure of Collingswood Elementary School to connect fiscal strain to lived impact. She spends significant time inside classrooms and at school events, grounding her pieces in student voices, school rituals, and the physical spaces where learning happens. As part of the Action News team, she brings a general assignment and breaking news sensibility to education, treating school stories as hard news with clear stakes and accountability. Her recurring visits to classrooms create a feedback loop between newsrooms and schools.

Valarie Honeycutt Spears is a staff writer at the Lexington Herald-Leader. Her beat is K-12 education, social issues and related government topics, with steady reporting on how public school systems and government decisions affect students and families. She focuses on one school district’s governance, budget pressures and student outcomes, and she covers parental rights and child welfare in and around schools. Her reporting tracks Fayette school board and superintendent disputes, district budget cuts, state scrutiny of struggling schools and public records access issues. She reports by following board meetings, district decisions, state findings and the human impact of policy on families, staff and students.

Vincent Martorano is a television news reporter and multimedia journalist who moves between high-tension political scenes, campus traditions and community recovery, often with students and young people at the center of his stories. He works for CBS Austin, covering local news with a strong focus on education policy and its impact on school communities. His reporting tracks State Board of Education social studies standards, scheduled votes and proposed curriculum changes, explaining what they mean for families and classrooms. He covers Austin ISD consolidation and potential school closures with an emphasis on stakes for specific campuses and neighborhoods. He reports on student life and major university traditions, public safety and nightlife, business reopening after violent incidents, and science and agriculture developments that affect consumer prices and everyday life.

WPXI.com News Staff is the shared digital byline for the WPXI newsroom, used on web stories that blend desk reporting, feed material and updates from the wider Channel 11 team instead of a single correspondent. On the education beat, this byline delivers concise updates on school and campus developments, highlighting what is changing and what the public can do. The work tracks institutional decisions and official actions in a flat, collective voice that keeps focus on events. Coverage includes campus closures, such as the Penn State New Kensington transition, and incident-driven school stories like staff discipline tied to social media. Headlines carry the main value, often stressing “what’s next” and how readers can help shape outcomes. The staff’s education role is to explain procedures, document actions and spell out concrete next steps for people connected to schools and campuses.

William Bornhoft is the Minnesota editor at Patch who covers statewide news through an education and literacy lens, linking schools, families and public safety. He focuses on how education campuses function as community assets, including detailed reporting on closed school properties and their future uses. His coverage emphasizes the physical and social footprint of schools, from rinks and extracurricular spaces to the broader role of education infrastructure in local identity. He also reports on high‑impact incidents that affect families, such as cryptocurrency kidnappings and recreational accidents, showing how crime, technology and safety intersect with daily life. In his editor role, he curates stories across communities and uses clear, direct headlines to highlight how institutions like schools, families and newsrooms shape learning environments, community trust and everyday events.

Wu focuses on how large language models are benchmarked on real-world clinical practice texts and what that means for everyday medical documentation and decision-making. They report for Nature on education-related subjects at the intersection of healthcare training, documentation and evidence use in professional settings. Their work covers the design of benchmarking frameworks that mirror actual clinical workflows, showing how evaluation choices shape trust and use of these tools by clinicians and educators. Wu’s education beat sits where professional learning, healthcare processes and data-intensive methods meet, examining how practitioners are trained to work with records, guidelines and evidence as language models become embedded in documentation and decision support. They write in clear, direct terms that make complex technical decisions and their implications for training and curriculum design legible to readers.

Zachary Schermele covers how federal power struggles and political decisions reshape American education for USA TODAY, focusing on what those choices mean for students, families and institutions. He reports at the intersection of education policy and national politics, following the Education Department, Congress and the White House as they fight over funding, regulations and federal oversight. He writes, appears on camera and takes live explanatory roles when policy debates break quickly. He tracks attempts to weaken or dismantle the federal role in education, including closing or restructuring the Education Department and shifting protections for vulnerable students. He reports from Capitol Hill on shutdowns and floor fights and ties higher education to research funding, national security and student debt. A compassionate, wonky reporter, he pairs close reading of statutes and budgets with on-the-ground impact on people.

Zack Carreon reports on how education budgets and policy decisions become real changes in classrooms, staffing and campuses. He is an education reporter for WVXU, covering local school districts and higher education. His beat focuses on school funding, staffing cuts, school boards, elections, DEI rules on campus, teachers, unions and statehouse fights over vouchers and funding formulas. He uses specific staffing numbers, budget details and board-vote reporting to show the human impact on families, students and employees. He links local decisions to statewide debates, federal relief programs and the long aftermath of ESSER. He has also reported on Cincinnati-area districts and school report cards.

Zaria Oates is a news reporter at KSAT 12 who treats education as both a policy beat and a neighborhood beat, linking school board decisions and state programs to daily life for students and families. She focuses on how school systems affect accountability, safety and trust, tracking investigations, policy changes and funding programs that reshape classrooms. Her reporting on Judson ISD under state investigation and on the vote to close Judson Middle School follows the same district over time to show how governance pressures play out. She covers statewide initiatives like Texas Education Freedom Accounts with a direct, procedural style, explaining application steps, eligibility rules and timelines, then using denial and waitlist data to show unmet need and capacity limits. Oates also reports breaking news, community-impact stories and the military community, working across television, digital and social video. She joined KSAT 12 in June 2024 after reporting for another ABC affiliate.

Brentt Eads builds national softball rankings that connect the youth, club and high school game into a clear picture of the sport’s future talent pipeline. He serves as executive editor at Line Drive Media and has worked in sports media for more than 25 years across digital, print and game broadcasting. His beat is fastpitch softball, with a focus on national player rankings, high school team tables and recruiting information. He architects the Line Drive HOT 100 grad-class lists, the Line Drive SUPER 70 high school rankings and a master softball commitment tracker. His work uses structured, data-informed, multi-year lists and draws on feedback from large networks of coaches and scouts. He also leads community-driven features such as top stories packages and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day projects that invite players, parents and coaches to share their own softball narratives.

Writing under the gasworld byline, this news desk treats education as part of the core infrastructure of the industrial gases and hydrogen sectors. It focuses on how education, skills development and emerging research connect to industrial gases, hydrogen and cryogenics. The desk covers corporate announcements, technical milestones and research breakthroughs with a consistent emphasis on students, training pathways and the educational value of new science. It reports on gas suppliers supporting vocational skills events and technical training, hydrogen-focused student competitions and programmes that mix classroom learning with real-world technology challenges. The beat also includes early-stage research such as electron-on-helium quantum computing. The reporting favours concise news pieces that tie education initiatives and scientific advances back to gas technologies, markets, workforce development and future demand.