Chalkbeat

I’ve seen the disconnect in local news. As your audience engagement intern, I want to reach you.

2025-06-30T21:50:15+00:00

Growing up, my family and classmates cemented in me the idea that school wasn’t just about learning — it was an extension of your neighborhood and your community. When you come to school, you bring a little piece of your home with you and swap with your classmates.

My mother wanted me to learn with students from a patchwork of different backgrounds. When I was 5, my family moved from rural Oregon to Aurora, Colorado, to be closer to family. My mom advocated for us to live within the boundaries of the high school she had attended years earlier. Returning to Overland High School was the clear choice, because my mom valued its diversity. When I was a student at Overland, I remember the administration boasting that our student body spoke more than 50 languages.

I started to recognize how news organizations outside our city perceived us differently. While other areas of the Denver metro area got cheerier coverage, like business spotlights and heartwarming features, Aurora frequently got the crime and poverty treatment. Aurora faces many challenges, and those issues deserve coverage. But news that focuses only on its detriments erases the nuances of my beloved hometown.

During my senior year of high school, I enrolled in my school’s broadcast journalism class. We reported on identity clubs in the school, notable alumni, and school events like culture night where students could showcase their culture through clothes, food, dances, and more. We were the counternarrative to the often one-note news coverage afforded to our community. Every brainstorming session, we turned the school upside down and inside out to shake out stories. It felt like honoring the passion my mom has passed on to me for my school and community.

Chalkbeat audience engagement intern Florian Knowles holds a diploma at his kindergarten graduation at Eastridge Community Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado in 2010.

Here I am, three years later, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and entering my senior year of college, and here, too, the local news coverage is full of crime and poverty stories.

As an adult, I’m faced with a similar question that I faced when I was 5: How do I learn about this new place?

One way I’m diving into my community is through the New Mexico News Map Project. My professor recruited me as an intern to help create a map of local news outlets across the state. I’ve found that the smallest news outlets can fill the most vital niches for readers, whether it’s telling people about the local arts scene in Grants, New Mexico, or explaining the implications of the Laguna pueblo’s budget.

As the media landscape shifts and more and more people spend their time online, it gets harder to stay connected to news outlets that are struggling to catch up. The outlets I logged had online presences that ranged from homemade websites featuring multimedia formats to print publications that were practically nonexistent online outside of LLC records. Communities that felt like their local coverage wasn’t accessible or complete responded by creating their own social media news content. We came across 411 Facebook groups where news is shared by local members and Instagram pages with memes sprinkled into their coverage. People want to stay connected to their community.

As I dig into my work this summer at Chalkbeat, research, accessibility, and visibility are top of mind. I’m excited to work with Chalkbeat and Civic News, knowing their reporting emphasizes the power of local news and creating impact in communities. My experiences in Aurora and New Mexico have shown me that mission-driven news organizations are essential to fulfill community and audience needs. I hope to ensure that the communities we cover get access to the high-quality news that the reporters here publish, and also for them to feel seen and heard, and to connect them to the information they are seeking.

This summer, Chalkbeat will experiment more with social media videos to meet our audience where they are. I’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts on Chalkbeat’s social media presence and how it can better meet your needs. Feel free to email me at fknowles@chalkbeat.org with any thoughts or questions.

Florian Knowles is a senior at the University of New Mexico studying video journalism. He is interning at Chalkbeat as the audience engagement intern as a part of the New Mexico Local News Internship program.

How Chalkbeat’s reporting made an impact on schools and local communities in 2024

2024-12-19T22:07:15+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.

As 2024 comes to a close, Chalkbeat journalists are looking at how our education reporting spurred change in our communities.

This year started off with an unexpected shoutout to Chalkbeat during the third season premiere of the ABC comedy “Abbott Elementary.” (If you want to relive the excitement, this season is now streaming on Hulu). But what we value even more is hearing from real people impacted by the education stories we write.

Here are a few of many changes our thoughtful reporting brought about in 2024.

Members of Congress push federal officials to fix FAFSA for students with undocumented parents following Chalkbeat’s reporting

More than 90 members of Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education urging officials to fix a glitch preventing students with undocumented parents from filling out federal financial aid forms following Chalkbeat’s coverage of this problem. The letter included language from Chalkbeat’s articles — we were among the first news outlets to report on the problem’s effects on students from immigrant families.

Colorado school district reverses decision to cut a dyslexia program for older students

Chalkbeat Colorado was the first news outlet to cover the planned cuts to a unique public school program for older students with dyslexia. Less than a week after their story, district officials met with families in the program and pledged to continue it at the same level it was operating. In a recording of the meeting, one parent said about his talking to the media, including Chalkbeat, “I apologize for stirring the pot, but that’s what got you in this room.” Chalkbeat’s coverage exposed the district’s abrupt last-minute decision to cut the program to a wide audience and helped galvanize a district-level response to the planned cuts. Initially, the cuts had been orchestrated by school leaders, and district leaders professed not to know about them.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s investigation forced a group to register as lobbyists after they showed support for school vouchers. The group? Part of Jay-Z’s philanthropic organization.

Team Roc, the philanthropic arm of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation entertainment company, had been asserting for months that they were not lobbyists but merely “concerned citizens” advocating for school vouchers in Philadelphia. Chalkbeat reporters attended one of its “dine and learn” events and noticed its advocacy looked a lot like lobbying. Chalkbeat’s investigation proved Team Roc’s events were part of a broader lobbying campaign that it had been conducting unregistered. After the publication of the investigation, a Team Roc spokesperson confirmed the group registered as lobbyists with Pennsylvania.

Newark students with disabilities missed class during the first week of school. Chalkbeat uncovered the problem and helped them get placed in classrooms.

Chalkbeat Newark reporter Jessie Gomez spoke with parents of students with disabilities who said that on the first day of school, they were told their child did not have a school placement. Other parents said they were told their child was enrolled at a different school. Chalkbeat reached out to the district, which said it was not experiencing a problem with enrollment despite parents claiming they had reached out to the district’s enrollment office for multiple days to resolve issues that forced some students to miss multiple days of school. Within hours of Chalkbeat Newark publishing its story, some of the parents quoted in the article received a call from the district notifying them of their child’s placement in a school.

Sometimes impact takes time. In this case, it took more than a year for changes to happen in Chicago.

The pandemic spurred a technology revolution in Chicago schools as the district spent big on new laptops, tablets, and devices to deal with virtual and hybrid learning, and also to implement a new universal curriculum. In 2022, Chalkbeat Chicago’s Mila Koumpilova and WBEZ’s Sarah Karp spent several months digging into data obtained through FOIA and speaking to staff in schools about how this technology spending spree happened. They found it was poorly planned and poorly tracked. The district’s inspector general investigated and through a tech audit found 77,000 missing devices worth more than $23 million. That office made 16 recommendations to the district to fix the “flawed” device tracking and this year, CPS officials said they’re taking steps to better track technology across the district.

The Michigan Department of Education took action based on Chalkbeat’s reporting

The Michigan Department of Education reached out to all public school districts in the state to remind them to not send home the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress reports with a printing error. The action came immediately after Chalkbeat Detroit inquired about erroneous reports that were sent to parents in one district. The district had missed the department’s initial notification about the printing error and mistakenly sent the inaccurate reports to parents. The paper reports are the only way parents have to check their children’s M-STEP scores, which show whether students are meeting state standards for their grade level.

Chalkbeat Tennessee’s reporting connecting the impact of Hurricane Helene’s destruction to the school voucher debate sparked a lot of conversation — and outrage

In the days following Chalkbeat’s analysis of school funding issues related to Hurricane Helene’s destruction in northeast Tennessee — including that $144 million is sitting idle in the current state budget for a school voucher program that hasn’t passed — House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons issued a statement criticizing Gov. Bill Lee’s recovery plan for not dipping into unused voucher or reserve funds. Tanya Coates, president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teacher organization, issued a statement calling on the governor to release the voucher funds for immediate disaster recovery efforts. JC Bowman, who leads Professional Educators of Tennessee, wrote an editorial calling the governor’s plan “tone deaf” to the needs of Tennesseans when voucher funding lies fallow.

State senator files bill following story on lax charter school oversight in Indianapolis

In 2023, Chalkbeat Indiana’s reporting found few guardrails in state laws for authorizers of Indianapolis charter schools, which have allowed some charters to quickly expand amid enrollment struggles and vary widely in how authorizers hold schools academically accountable. After reading Chalkbeat’s reporting, Indianapolis state Sen. Andrea Hunley filed a bill this year to limit who can authorize schools in Marion County. The bill did not advance.

Chalkbeat New York’s reporting brings a slew of changes to education communities across the city in a single week

Chalkbeat’s New York bureau was especially busy in November. Less than a week after reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney’s story about special education issues at Beacon High School, the interim principal withdrew his name from contention to become the school’s permanent principal. Elsen-Rooney also wrote a story voicing complaints from New York City high school basketball coaches over what they felt was an unduly harsh decision by the league to penalize a number of teams for missing a roster deadline. Hours after the story was published, the league rescinded forfeits for a number of teams. NYC Council members Rita Joseph and Lincoln Restler introduced a bill requiring the city’s Education Department to report annual figures on the number of school librarians across the city following Chalkbeat reporter Julian Shen-Berro’s article spotlighting the loss of school librarians over years. And Chalkbeat New York Bureau Chief Amy Zimmer’s 2023 investigative piece about problems with NYC’s Community Education Council elections had an impact more than a year later. The NYC comptroller released findings of its own investigation, corroborating much of Chalkbeat’s reporting and calling for immediate fixes.

Thanks for reading and supporting Chalkbeat over the past 10 years.

None of this impact would have happened without our readers. Chalkbeat’s journalism can’t exist without your support. If you want to help us bring about more change in 2025, consider donating to Chalkbeat.

What comes next for America: A message to readers

2024-11-12T15:42:36+00:00

I want to say something to our readers and our supporters here at Civic News Company about last week’s presidential election. However you voted, many of us right now are united in a sense that our politics are broken — and that our country may not be able to take on the challenges we face.

I think we can. But to get there, we have to repair something that goes deeper than politics. We have to repair the fabric of our civic life.

Healthy civic exchange across diverse American communities — real-life, non-virtual communities — has been fraying for decades. But that erosion has sparked a counter-force, a fledgling movement for civic renewal. People trading toxic shouting for real conversation. Communities crossing divides. Journalists like us forming outlets like Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat, where people can get trustworthy reporting about issues in their communities, in defiance of polarization and misinformation.

The truth is that when Americans get the tools to work on real issues in their local communities, they solve problems and create healthier politics. They become what we at Civic News Company call “civic catalysts.” They show up to public meetings; they start organizations; they run for office.

We’ve seen this in our work at Civic News Company through both the Trump and Biden years. We’ve seen ordinary people take action to bolster the integrity of their county elections after Votebeat reports on proposed or real changes. We’ve seen parents and students become aware through Chalkbeat of well-intended changes in education laws that went awry and work to overturn them. In many cases, we have seen Republicans and Democrats work together, changing course when Chalkbeat and Votebeat’s reporting showed them that their actions harmed fair voting or local schools.

We need many more civic catalysts. Because whether you find the potential policies of the second Trump administration thrilling or terrifying, you have to see that our country has challenging business in front of us. We’ll have to consider and track Trump’s explosive policies as they shape life in actual communities, from promised deportations to his proposal to eliminate the Department of Education to the possibility of a vaccine skeptic holding the highest public health position in the land.

Trump aside, schools face an “education depression”: student achievement has declined for the first time in decades (a trend that actually preceded COVID). Since Civic News Company has started reporting on public health with the launch of Healthbeat this summer, we’ve learned that many experts see another pandemic as not an if but a when. Meanwhile, our public health system remains unprepared, and on top of that faces a public health skeptic in the incoming president.

Pillars of our democracy that we were fortunate to take for granted now require vigilant attention. The U.S. system for elections was severely tested, and while it actually came out stronger, it is nonetheless plagued by distrust. The January 6 attack and two recent assassination attempts on President-elect Trump show a rising tendency toward political violence. And our media is corrupted by misinformation, magical thinking, foreign interference, and a fourth estate reduced both by diminishing economic prospects and declining credibility.

In the face of these challenges, we cannot throw up our hands. We have to enter the arena. Like you, our readers and supporters, already do.

You support organizations like ours as a vote for a healthier democracy.

And you are yourselves civic catalysts.

You are teachers, young people, and parents who look out not just for your own interest, but ask what’s going on in your community and what you can do to help. You are voters, election officials, and poll workers who monitor democracy’s most precious system, and take action if a law or policy threatens it. You are community leaders who work to improve your neighbors’ health.

You are the reason I know that we can set toxicity aside and start solving the big problems in front of us. And you inspire me to be my own civic catalyst, in the best way I know how — doing everything in my power to keep Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat strong. With your support, we can help you make this country a better place, one local issue at a time.

Elizabeth Green is the founder and CEO of Civic News Company.

Chalkbeat now has a new look — and a public health sister site

2024-08-26T11:30:03+00:00

Welcome to the new Chalkbeat!

If you’re a regular reader, you might notice that things look a little different here today. Nothing about our stories or the functionality of our site is changing, but we have a new look that we hope you enjoy: simple, modern, and with the work you know and love front and center.

Why? It’s always nice to feel fresh at the start of a school year. But more importantly, the change comes as we launch a new sibling site. Meet Healthbeat, which is officially launching today to cover public health.

Healthbeat reporters will be digging into issues that shape our collective well-being, from infectious diseases to air and water quality and food safety. And they will be bringing the Chalkbeat (and Votebeat) model of national and local reporting to bear on public health at a time when it’s badly needed. Healthbeat will start with bureaus in New York City and Atlanta as well as national reporting in partnership with the great folks over at KFF Health News.

I hope you will check them out, starting with editor in chief Charlene Pacenti’s introduction to Healthbeat’s work. You can also sign up for Healthbeat’s newsletters here.

— Sarah Darville, Chalkbeat editor in chief

How can Chalkbeat best connect with its readers? I’m here to find out.

2024-07-01T18:50:47+00:00

I grew up in Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami University, where I had a front seat to the shrinking local news industry.

Our local paper, The Oxford Press, grew thinner each year before shutting down last winter. Miami’s on-campus NPR station stopped producing local programming in 2009. By the time I made it to the university in 2018, our student newspaper, The Miami Student, was the largest media organization in town.

I led The Student’s design team, creating illustrations and building layouts for our weekly print newspaper late into the night every Monday. I also wrote fashion columns and edited a small style section. Working at The Student taught me how to write, report, edit, design, and work on a team.

But I’ll admit: I thought very little about who was actually picking up the newspapers or clicking on our articles online. I should have paid more attention. I didn’t realize the responsibility I had to my community as a student journalist. As long as I got to write about whatever I wanted, I was happy. The impact that my work could have on Oxford’s community did not often cross my mind.

“By the time I made it to the university in 2018, our student newspaper, The Miami Student, was the largest media organization in town.” Writes Owen Berg.

I didn’t come to terms with this until I joined Studio 20, a journalism master’s program at New York University, where I took a class called Audience-Centric Journalism. This course opened up my mind to the idea of audience engagement as a guiding principle for journalism in the modern age.

In that class, I was presented with a question that shook my perspective on news writing: Who decides what news matters?

Historically, it has been journalists who decided which stories were the most deserving of reader’s attention. In the age of print, whatever went on the front page was the most important. If reporters were missing the mark, they wouldn’t know unless readers wrote letters or called the newsroom.

Now, half of Americans get news through social media. This has facilitated a boom in journalism from independent online creators, but it has also allowed misinformation to spread like never before.

When anyone can amplify their voice to billions of people, how do we effectively listen to our audience and respond to their needs?

When it seems like there are endless ways for journalists to connect with readers, how do we pick the right strategies? And when readers have thousands of options for where to get their information, how do we ensure people are seeing accurate and thoroughly reported stories?

Owen Berg presents his masters capstone project at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. The project experimented with ways to deliver service journalism using postcards.

To me, audience engagement is about answering these questions. In practice, this might look like translating our work into different languages to make sure it reaches the communities that could use it. Or it might look like posting on social media and asking for reader questions or comments to better shape our coverage.

In other instances, audience engagement might mean taking our work offline and delivering articles in person. As a graduate student, I was lucky to work with The City, a publication in New York, on a postcard campaign that delivered impactful service journalism to new readers. Bringing digital news out into the “real world” isn’t always easy, but it’s our mission as journalists to reach the people affected by the topics we cover.

At Chalkbeat, I’ve already had fun posting on our Instagram and X accounts, but I’ll also be coming up with new ways to reach readers on platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn.

Most of all, I’m excited to hear from you. I know I have a lot to learn from our dedicated readers, so if you have a story or a suggestion for us, please reach out to me at oberg@civicnews.org.

Owen Berg is Chalkbeat’s audience engagement intern. He is a recent graduate of the Studio 20 program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He was born in Oxford, Ohio, and attended Miami University.

You’re invited: Hear local educators share their stories of when lessons don’t go to plan

2024-02-14T22:01:49+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Things don’t always go as planned - even when there’s a lesson plan. And now, you can hear directly from educators about the times they adjusted those plans, whether it was in the moment or after another experience changed their perspective.

Join us for the “From Lesson Plan to New Plan” teacher story slam from 7 to 9 p.m., Friday, March 1, at Fay Biccard Glick Neighborhood Center, 2990 W. 71st St., Indianapolis.

The event is hosted by Indy Kids Winning and Chalkbeat Indiana, and supported by Teach Indy.

This story slam is a continuation of story slams hosted by Teachers Lounge Indy that were a place for teachers to share their stories, spend time together, and learn from each other. This time, it’s also the night before the Teach Indy Educators Conference.

Come to hear the stories, meet other educators, and try handcrafted vegan wines from Sip & Share Wines.

To attend, register here for a free ticket on Eventbrite: https://ckbe.at/indystoryslam

Also, if you’re an educator and want to tell your story, please let us know here.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Votebeat is coming to Wisconsin. Here’s what you can expect.

2024-02-13T22:14:38+00:00

Exciting news! Votebeat will soon be adding Wisconsin to our coverage area, with the hiring of a new local reporter there.

This is a critical time to cover voting in Wisconsin — a pivotal 2024 swing state that conspiracy theorists and hyper-partisans have affixed a target to. Former President Trump and Republicans want to win the state back, and one strategy has been to rewrite the voting rules from the policies of 2020, when Democrats won by a narrow margin. Court decisions and new laws since then have changed many rules, like outlawing drop boxes and tweaking the witness requirement for absentee ballots. Those debates continue in unpredictable ways — and with the Supreme Court’s new liberal majority, many rules may still change in 2024.

That kind of environment calls for Votebeat’s specialized journalism, aimed at helping people understand elections so they can participate in strengthening them. And thanks to generous supporters such as The Joyce Foundation, Moriah Fund, and Square One Foundation, we’re able to launch the coverage we’ve long wanted to bring there.

Much recent coverage in the state has focused on the disputes in the capital between the Republican-majority legislature and the state’s Elections Commission — climaxing most recently with an attempt to oust the state’s chief election official — and on conservatives’ conflict with the state Supreme Court as it revisits key voting decisions.

Votebeat will dive deeper — zooming in on the effect those fights have on the more than 1,800 local clerks and their ability to run elections for their communities of voters. We’ll also help voters stay up to date on what the rules of elections actually are, so they can fully participate.

Votebeat is no stranger to Wisconsin, having mobilized two reporters there in 2020 to cover election issues in partnership with Wisconsin Watch during our pop-up experiment in covering elections in a whole new way.

If this kind of mission-driven journalism sounds exciting to you or a talented journalist you know, you can apply here. Votebeat’s small team, again partnering with Wisconsin Watch, is tight-knit and energized, and we can’t wait to bring another talented journalist into our fold.

Hearing from readers who care about elections in Wisconsin will be crucial to our coverage. We want to start the conversation now. If you have ideas for us, you can reach us here. You can also sign up here to get updates about our launch.

The impact of Chalkbeat’s reporting in 2023

2023-12-26T12:00:00+00:00

When readers pored over Chalkbeat national reporter Kalyn Belsha’s investigative stories that looked into Paper, a virtual tutoring company with contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, they saw the truth about how the company operates.

Belsha found Paper’s tutors often juggled sessions with multiple students at a time and were even offered “surge” bonuses of two to three times their normal pay for every minute they worked with four or more students at once. Some of the districts sending their federal pandemic relief money to Paper were under the impression the tutors worked with one student at a time, a method found to have more success with struggling students.

The result was swift. The nation’s fifth-largest school district, Clark County in Nevada, gave schools the option to stop using Paper’s tutoring. One hundred and fifty schools opted out. Parents in Virginia shared the Chalkbeat articles at a school board meeting. In the weeks that followed, Boston and Hillsborough County, Florida announced they wouldn’t be working with Paper anymore.

This wasn’t the only time Chalkbeat’s stories on education news had a real and important impact on school communities this year. Here are a few of the many changes our thoughtful reporting brought about in 2023.

Chalkbeat made sure the public saw a plan that would impact nearly every aspect of Philadelphia’s district schools

Back in May, Philadelphia’s Board of Education was scheduled to vote on a consequential five-year strategic plan impacting nearly every aspect of the district’s schools.

But there was one problem. With only three days to go before the vote, the public hadn’t seen the plan.

This didn’t sit right with Chalkbeat Philadelphia. They knew this plan from Superintendent Tony Watlington would cover subjects they write about every day: remediation of asbestos in schools, a plan for year-round classes, gun violence, and low test scores.

They knew readers would care, too. So they wrote about the lack of transparency, and it had a quick impact. Just 24 hours before the Board of Education meeting, the district postponed the vote a week and released the strategic plan.

When disaster struck NYC, reporters made sense of conflicting information to help the community

A historic downpour paralyzed New York City in September and hit some schools hard, flooding buildings and creating treacherous commutes for families.

At a press conference that morning, Mayor Eric Adams reassured families that their children were made safe by a shelter-in-place order, meaning no one was to enter or leave school buildings. Chalkbeat quickly heard from sources across the school system, all with the same message: There had been no such order.

Chalkbeat’s reporters got to work and provided a comprehensive look at the communication breakdown between officials that led to the crossed wires — a misunderstanding that could someday have serious consequences as climate change leads to more unpredictable and severe weather.

A day after the article was published, schools Chancellor David Banks told reporters that he had launched an internal review to “do better next time,” vowing to pinpoint policies that need updating in light of events like that rainstorm and the air quality emergency over the summer.

A pattern of racism at a Newark school was made public because of a reporter’s close attention to a community

One by one, Newark parents, students, and educators stood before the Board of Education at a meeting and described being targeted at their school — the Newark School of Global Studies — for the color of their skin.

This wasn’t the first time school leaders had been warned in calls and emails about the harassment, threats, and slurs endured at the magnet school. But this time was different. Chalkbeat Newark reporter Jessie Gomez was in the audience.

Gomez doggedly reported out the allegations, obtaining emails that revealed how administrators had been aware of the racial tensions at the school for months and how pleas for help reached the offices of powerful elected officials.

Just weeks after Chalkbeat’s first story was published, Superintendent Roger León and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka met in person with the students to discuss the issues that were driving some to transfer out. Baraka’s office also organized a town hall to spotlight student voices and discuss unity among Newark’s Black and brown communities in light of the situation at the school.

Additionally, the Newark Board of Education then paid a third-party consultant to study the racial and cultural dynamics at the school — a report Chalkbeat is pushing to be released publicly.

Without Gomez’s consistent reporting, attendance at school board meetings, and relationship building, the school community would not have known about these critical issues that have far-reaching consequences. Her reporting received the prestigious Local Impact in New Jersey Journalism award, presented by the Corporation for New Jersey Local Media.

Authors couldn’t discuss or distribute their own book at a school event in Memphis. Now the banned book is being reviewed

In a story showing the chilling effect of Tennessee’s censorship laws, Chalkbeat’s Laura Testino reported on significant restrictions put on a book event at a Memphis high school.

The authors of “His Name Is George Floyd” were instructed to limit their comments, the only student questions were pre-screened, and students were denied their own copies of the book.

NBC News and FOX News followed up with their own reports, crediting and linking to Chalkbeat Tennessee’s story. The book’s co-author then published a first-person account for The New Yorker, where he is a staff writer, and also credited and linked to Testino’s reporting.

After admitting to not reading it beforehand, district officials said they would undertake an academic review of the Pulitzer Prize-winning work for placement in the school library.

None of this impact would have happened without our readers

For her reporting on Paper, Belsha interviewed 75 people, filed at least 33 public records requests, and reviewed hundreds of pages of internal documents and screenshots of employee communications. Similarly rigorous work is done every day by Chalkbeat’s reporters, editors, and staff to bring readers the education news they need to know.

We believe in the power of information to transform education. If you want to help us bring about more change in 2024, consider donating to Chalkbeat. Your contribution supports in-depth reporting and analysis of education policies, trends, and local issues. With your contribution, we can strengthen our efforts to ensure that each child receives the excellent education they deserve.

Adults failed me as a kid. I am a journalist today to be a watchdog for children.

2023-11-07T11:00:00+00:00

My earliest memory is of an adult hurting me in an unspeakable way.

For decades, pieces of the memory would sneak into the forefront of my mind from my subconscious. I spent a lot of time running away from the flashbacks, trying to keep them from becoming a reality. And yet, the abuse bled into almost every aspect of my life.

Hannah Dellinger

The sexual abuse I suffered at ages 3 and 4 impacted my childhood, my education, and my development in ways I am only now coming to understand three decades later.

I acted out as a cry for help in school. I had trouble focusing in class. Trauma-induced memory loss made me a poor test-taker. Executive dysfunction caused me to put off assignments. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder meant I was easily overstimulated in crowded settings. I didn’t trust any adults, especially those who held authority over me, like teachers. My self-esteem was shattered, and I had trouble connecting with other kids.

I exhibited all the telltale signs of a child in pain who needed extra support, but no adults heeded the call. Instead, I was punished for behavioral issues. I was made to feel like I was a “bad” kid, which exacerbated the feelings of guilt and shame that stemmed from the abuse.

After I was assaulted by an adult during a school activity at 15, my cries for help got louder. I self-harmed, had suicidal ideation, and developed a substance abuse disorder while still in high school.

No adults ever took the time to ask what was behind my surface-level behavioral issues, like acting out in class or not pushing myself academically, throughout my childhood and adolescence, despite best practices and what research tells us about kids who “act up.”

Because I never received any kind of trauma therapy or services as a kid, issues that could have and should have been addressed as early as pre-K, followed me into adulthood and were exacerbated by the intimate partner violence I survived in my early 20’s.

I became a journalist in part to help protect the vulnerable — especially children — from systemic injustice and the people in power who hurt them.

As I join the team at Chalkbeat Detroit as a reporter covering K-12 education in Michigan, I want our readers and the community to know I am here to be a watchdog for children and families. I will be a safe adult who will listen and believe children who are suffering. Because I know what it feels like to be a child in pain.

As the number of children experiencing trauma and mental health issues in America grows, those issues are becoming more a part of covering education. We are becoming more aware as a society and as journalists that children can’t learn if their basic needs aren’t being met.

Trauma can impact children’s bodies physiologically and alter their brains. Adverse childhood experiences can negatively affect overall health for a lifetime.

Around two-thirds of U.S. children will experience trauma such as abuse, neglect, homelessness, loss of a loved one, serious illness, domestic violence, or gun violence by age 16, according to a 2007 study.

In Michigan and Detroit, the way trauma impacts learning cannot be overlooked. The region’s long history of poverty and racism contributes to childhood stressors and kids experiencing trauma.

Seven out of 10 adults in Michigan reported adverse childhood experiences, according to a 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

Ninety percent of educators in the Detroit Public Schools Community District surveyed in 2019 said more than half of their students were impacted by trauma that hurt their ability to learn in the classroom.

The collective trauma of the pandemic in Detroit exposed many more kids to poverty, death and grief, food insecurity, as well as mental and physical health issues.

Behind those statistics are real children who are hurting in ways we can’t possibly measure. There are teachers and schools who aren’t equipped to meet their needs. There are policies in place that allow the cycle to continue.

As reporters covering these issues, we can bring awareness to these realities and, in some cases, prompt change. I am fortunate to be here to do this work.

I made a choice to embrace healing through therapy, psychiatry, and sobriety after years of powering through the pain until I hit a wall and I couldn’t anymore. I faced my worst fear and confronted my first memory.

After years of work, I am fully functioning in a healthy and sustainable way. Though I will always have to live with the impacts of the abuse, I have learned how to thrive and love myself. And I make the trauma serve a purpose because I want it to.

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

You’re invited: Hear true stories told by local teachers at this storytelling event

2023-10-12T11:30:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

The infamous “teacher voice” — we all know it, and now you can hear directly from local educators about the times they may have needed to use it.

Join us for the “Don’t Make Me Use My Teacher Voice” teacher story slam from 6 to 8 p.m Thursday, Nov. 16, at Ash & Elm Cider Company, 1301 E Washington Street in Indianapolis. The event will be hosted by Teachers Lounge Indy along with Chalkbeat Indiana and Indy Kids Winning.

Teachers Lounge Indy was formed to help early-career teachers build community, said organizer Ronak Shah. The group last hosted a story slam in 2019. Since then, many in the group have moved on and are no longer early in their careers.

However, Shah said a current teacher encouraged him to bring the event back, so he revived it.

To attend, register here for a free ticket on Eventbrite: https://ckbe.at/3FSCr6z.

Also, if you’re an educator and want to tell your story, contact: teachersloungeindy@gmail.com.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat rings opening bell at Nasdaq to mark 10-year anniversary and honor International Literacy Day

2023-08-30T17:01:08+00:00

It was a big day for Chalkbeat: CEO and co-founder Elizabeth Green rang the Nasdaq opening bell this morning.

The ceremony in Times Square marked Chalkbeat’s 10th anniversary and gave us a chance to talk about our mission — to tell the story of American education — in honor of the upcoming International Literacy Day.

“Chalkbeat has been at the forefront of covering literacy instruction across the country for a decade,” said Kristina Ayanian, executive producer at Nasdaq. “By shining a light on critical issues, Chalkbeat has fostered collaboration and ignited meaningful conversations that have the potential to shape the future of education.”

“We founded Chalkbeat 10 years ago out of a belief in the power of two things: education, which holds the power to change people’s lives, and journalism, which holds the power to change education,” Elizabeth said.

Alongside Chalkbeat board members, staff members, and reporters were a group of Chalkbeat readers and supporters.

You can also watch a recording of the event here.

Here are Elizabeth’s remarks as prepared:

Thank you very much, Kristina, and thank you to Nasdaq for recognizing Chalkbeat in honor of International Literacy Day.

We founded Chalkbeat 10 years ago out of a belief in the power of two things: education, which holds the power to change people’s lives, and journalism, which holds the power to change education. For 10 years, we have told the stories of American education, here in New York City and in seven other communities across the country.

We’ve covered the triumphs — like innovations in early childhood education in Denver, Colorado, which won more support for their work after we drew attention to it. We’ve highlighted the challenges, like when we showed how lax oversight in Indiana led a family to profit off of educational malpractice — and the laws got changed. And we’ve equipped people with resources they and their children need, like food maps for parents searching to feed their children when schools shut down in COVID.

Education and journalism both mattered tremendously 10 years ago when we founded Chalkbeat. They matter even more today.

Take the work educators have done to teach more people to read. It is one of the great success stories of the last century. And yet, here in the U.S., two out of three fourth graders are not proficient in reading. COVID brought children’s reading scores to levels not seen since the 1970s.

Journalism, too, faces historic challenges, and just when we need it most. In the last two decades, we have lost more journalism jobs than coal miner jobs. Hundreds of communities are now news deserts, with no one tracking the triumphs, or the challenges, and no one meeting people’s information needs.

The good news is, here we are. A small but mighty newsroom, standing with our community, being recognized by Nasdaq. Your recognition tells us that you see the stories that need to be told, and the communities and the kids who deserve to be part of telling them. It gives us hope. And for that we thank you tremendously. Perhaps we can come back in another 10 years and talk about the better story we were all able to write together, because we knew it mattered.

Introducing Civic News Company

2023-02-07T14:00:00+00:00

Dear Chalkbeat readers,

As many of you know, in May, we added a new newsroom to the Chalkbeat family when we launched Votebeat. Votebeat covers election administration and voting in Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, in much the same way Chalkbeat covers public education in our eight communities.

There have been many benefits to creating Votebeat, from affirming the power of Chalkbeat and our incredible community, to informing a conversation and decision-making process plagued by polarization and misinformation. In just a few months, our incredible team revealed the fringe movement that drove an entire Texas county’s election staff out of their jobs and uncovered connections between Arizona’s drop box vigilantes and a national election-disinformation network.

One downside of launching Votebeat, though, has been name confusion. We need a way to clearly define the relationship between our two newsrooms.

That’s why today, I’m excited to announce that we are officially launching Civic News Company, the parent organization for Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and possibly future beats to come. Civic News Company’s mission is to help people understand how America works, so we can all make it work better. We do this by producing Chalkbeat, world-class education journalism for, and in partnership with, the communities who need it most — and now also by producing Votebeat. In the future, we may introduce new “beats” covering additional topics that are critical to making this country work better for everyone who lives in it.

We are officially launching Civic News Company, the parent organization for Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and possibly future beats to come.

We picked the name “Civic News Company” because education and elections are pillars of civic life. That is why we work so hard to cover them. Civic also means local, and we believe that the American story is best told locally: in communities, with communities, and for communities. Finally, “Civic News” honors the larger emerging movement that our work is a part of, a movement of journalism that prioritizes community benefit instead of commercial gain; thinks of readers as community members, not consumers; and knows that our work is crucial to democracy. We are also indebted to those who pioneered the idea of “civic journalism.”

If the idea of growing a local news organization that cares deeply about our country is interesting to you, I hope you will sign up to follow our journey. We love what we do here, and we love our community. Whether you read your first Chalkbeat article in 2014 or today, thank you for being a part of our community and helping us prove what’s possible when people and communities have the information they need to create a better future together.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

My passion for education equity is informed by my past — and our future

2023-01-25T23:22:09+00:00

Tonyaa Weathersbee’s first-grade photo, 1965-66. She was a child of Jacksonville educators during the early days of desegregation, and her passion for education equity was nurtured early on.

For my first day of school in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1965, my mother dressed me in an orange-and-white gingham dress that she made, tied white ribbons on my two smallish pigtails, and gave me a quarter and three pennies to buy the hot lunch that remains my favorite comfort food: Baked spaghetti, English peas, a roll, and a square of yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

Turns out it was a halcyon beginning that briefly insulated me from the harsh realities that raged around me.

One of those realities was starting school in the Duval County School System, which was so grossly underfunded that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools had disaccredited its high schools the year before.

Another was being a Black student in that system, one that ignored a desegregation order issued in 1960, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

Black students in this system had to navigate puddles and other assorted ickiness to reach classrooms in schools plagued with drainage problems, overcrowding, and other issues that turned learning into an ordeal when it should have been an adventure.

Schools were so crowded that, as a Black former Jacksonville elementary school teacher described it in a 2021 report on inequities in the school system, “Our third graders were going across the street to the little church that was across the street from the school, and then our fifth and sixth graders had to go down behind the school across the creek, to another church.”

“Our (Black) schools were allowed to get in disrepair,” the teacher recalled.

The learning conditions were so horrendous that in 1964, 27,000 Black students, under the leadership of the NAACP, boycotted the schools over two days.

My parents, who were both teachers in that system, tried to make my everyday education experience as fulfilling as that segregated system would allow. But they understood that if it persisted, I wouldn’t be prepared for a future outside of it.

Tonyaa’s father, William Weathersbee, and a classmate, William Cherry, at William Raines High School in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1976. Her father was a football coach and dean of boys at the school.

That is why they walked out in 1968 to protest the state’s refusal to adequately fund schools, a statewide walkout that served as a prelude to wider tensions that erupted later that year, when assassins killed Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

It would be another three years before Duval County finally yielded to the accreditors and the courts.

The last high school was reaccredited in 1971 and desegregation — largely through court-ordered busing — began that year. It was then that many of the glaring inequalities, like hand-me-down books and desks, began to ebb. The dilapidated Black schools were either closed or converted to other uses.

Yet decades later, in Jacksonville and in school systems throughout the nation, the battle for education equity still rages.

It is that history and lived experience that informs my work here at Chalkbeat Tennessee.

Tonyaa’s mother, Wallace Weathersbee, in her classroom at West Jacksonville Sixth Grade Center sometime in the late 1970s, early 1980s.

I fondly remember my first day of school because for me, that reflects how education should begin — as a journey of dignity and possibilities for children; as something to be experienced and not endured.

It should also be an experience in which resources are available to students regardless of where they live, or what color or ethnicity they are, or how much their parents earn.

But for far too many students in Tennessee and elsewhere, that’s not the case.

Public school students continue to be isolated by race and class. And today, as Black and Latino youths make up an increasing share of students in public schools, the stakes of failing to recognize the significance of this moment couldn’t be higher.

According to a 2020 report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, Black students now make up around 15% of students in public schools, while Latino students, who are the fastest growing segment of public school students, make up 27%. Asian students make up nearly 6%.

White students now make up 47% of students in public schools, down from 79% in 1970. That decline isn’t because more white students are going to private schools or being homeschooled, but because fewer white children are being born, according to the report.

“In a multiracial society where there is no racial majority, skills in working and living successfully in multiracial institutions are a vital asset,” the report concludes.

“These skills are learned, mostly through experience, and are extremely difficult to acquire living in segregated communities and attending segregated, concentrated-poverty schools.”

So while the quest for education equity when I was a child was driven by the civil rights movement and fears of more social unrest, what must motivate it now is the reality that the workforce of the future will rely heavily on people who aren’t white.

What that means is that education equity isn’t just about ensuring a future of opportunity for children who will constitute a majority of the nation, or simply about doing what’s morally right and fair.

It’s about the future of a nation that will need educated workers to fill jobs that people like myself — children of the 1960s and 1970s — now hold.

But if thousands of students are left to struggle in schools that have become more racially and economically isolated since my childhood, or in school systems that are horribly underfunded, as Jacksonville’s schools were when I entered first grade, then we’re not just failing them.

We’re failing the future.

It’s fortuitous that someone like me wound up living and working in the city where Dr. King spent his last days helping its sanitation workers fight for equity and dignity.

Fortuitous that I — a Black woman whose mother taught fifth and sixth grades and whose father was a high school dean and coach who admired Dr. King so much that he made me memorize “I Have A Dream” when I was 8 — am here working in a space designed to continue that equity work.

Fortuitous that my journalism journey took me from the 904 — Jacksonville’s area code — to the 901 — Memphis’ area code.

But being at Chalkbeat is an opportunity for me to turn that serendipity into action by guiding education coverage that centers on what King, my parents and others fought for: educational equity and opportunity for all children.

Especially those who look like the future.

Tonyaa Weathersbee is a multiple award-winning journalist, proud University of Florida Gator and Jacksonville Raines High Viking. She joined Chalkbeat Tennessee as its bureau chief last August after a 26-year career as a columnist at The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida, and at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

My parents’ journey to the U.S. paved the way for my career as a journalist

2023-01-04T21:44:57+00:00

My parents’ commitment to a better future saved me from a life of poverty and oppression – and led me to journalism.

My dad was a curly-haired boy and my mom was a curly-haired girl who met in their homeland of Nicaragua as the country’s revolution unfolded and extreme poverty was the way of life. They were in grade school and quickly fell in love, bonding over their drive to be the best in school.

Their love flourished during their teenage years and grew even stronger as my mom dealt with the passing of my grandma. By the late 1980s, Nicaragua’s revolutionary war was flaring and my dad had to choose between leaving the country or being drafted into the military.

They fled to Guatemala. The young couple was then in their early 20s, and in the coming months, would soon learn they were expecting a baby. My dad knew the only option to provide for his family was to get to the United States.

So, he crossed rivers, slept in the desert, and traveled on “La Bestia,” a freight train migrants use to get from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. Once on American soil, he was able to apply for Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Nicaraguans at the time, which allowed my dad to stay in the country legally and bring my mom.

I was born in Miami, Florida in 1994 — their curly-haired daughter — and my parents were one step closer to their “American Dream.” Their sacrifices allowed me to become the first in my family to graduate college.

But as a first-generation student and later, the oldest sibling, I faced my own set of challenges as my parents were trying to understand a new country, a second language, and an unfamiliar school system.

I spent most of my elementary school years in the Jersey City Public School system before I moved with my mom to Southern California. It was a major cultural and social adjustment for me. I went from an East Coast school where the majority of my classmates came from Indian or Italian families to one in California where most of my peers identified as Mexican-American. It was hard to leave my friends, but my bicoastal experience exposed me to different communities and cultures.

Chalkbeat Newark reporter Jessie Gómez takes a picture with her siblings during her college graduation.

My parents always dreamed that I would become a doctor or a scientist, even though I struggled with math in school. Their dream ignited my own drive to become the best student, which often meant staying an extra hour or two after school for tutoring or calling on friends for help when I didn’t understand something. Although I was an honor student in middle school and took advanced placement courses in high school, I struggled to keep up with my schoolwork while juggling my home life.

My parents’ dream inspired my own dreams

I got my first part-time job in high school to help my mom, a hairdresser and single parent at that time, support my two siblings. Just before my 16th birthday, I got my driver’s license to help drive my siblings to school and meet my mom at parent-teacher conferences, where I served as her interpreter.

I was often the secondary parent listed as my siblings’ emergency contact, and I learned to advocate for them in the school system. Between helping my mom, being a high school student, and juggling extracurricular activities and work, I was stretched thin.

Still, I managed to graduate with a 4.2 grade point average and pass advanced placement exams.

Like my parents, I was proud of all that I accomplished but staying on track to go to college was hard because my family and I were unfamiliar with the process.

We managed by asking my friends for their advice, talking to counselors and teachers, and spending countless hours googling colleges and their requirements. It was a tough journey but with the help of my parents, my educational support system, and three jobs, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Azusa Pacific University.

I eventually moved back to New Jersey where I got a job as a reporter at a local newspaper, covering the affluent, predominantly white suburban towns of Morris and Bergen Counties. The people and the issues they faced were nothing like my own and I often felt out of place in those communities.

Like my parents, I had moved to pursue my dreams and I was scared. But my mom always reminded me why I chose this profession in the first place: “Para ayudar a los demás.”

To help others.

At that newspaper, I reported on protests, political races, immigration, inequities, and community issues. Now, as a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, I’m combining my personal experiences and journalism expertise to tell the stories of Newark students and help their families navigate New Jersey’s largest public school system.

Chalkbeat Newark reporter Jessie Gómez takes a picture with her parents during her college graduation.

It took a village to get me to college, and I am thankful for the teachers that supported me along the way and believed in me when I didn’t. I am grateful to my parents who were a constant source of encouragement in my life. Without them, I would have never developed the drive to be the best student — and person — I could be.

A fair education is the right of every child in this country. My parents gave me that opportunity by moving to a new country. Now, my goal is for my reporting to contribute to a better learning environment and experience for students in Newark Public Schools.

As we settle into the new year, I look forward to connecting with more parents, students, and teachers as I work to highlight the victories and challenges faced by students in this district.

Your story matters, and I hope you can trust me to tell it.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

How Chalkbeat’s reporting impacted schools and local communities in 2022

2022-12-27T15:00:00+00:00

COVID and the pandemic’s many effects continued to disrupt education in 2022. School communities are grappling with mental health challenges and the broad impact of longstanding inequities. Families are dealing with homelessness, food insecurity, and other challenges.

How do we know? Because you told us.

In 2022, Chalkbeat’s reporting had an impact on schools and families across the U.S. because the teachers, students, parents, and communities in these places were willing to help us tell the story of education in this moment.

Here are eight Chalkbeat stories that made a difference in school communities in 2022 — impact that would have been impossible without the people who support our work.

A Chicago reporter’s award-winning work highlights education gaps for boys of color

Since the outbreak of COVID, Chalkbeat Chicago senior reporter Mila Koumpilova has dedicated herself to documenting the experience of students and families through a lens of exposing inequity. This year, her work was recognized by the Education Writers Association with the Beat Reporting award for a midsize newsroom. Judges cited her in-depth series on the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black and Latino boys as particularly impactful. (Mila’s reporting was also published in USA Today.)

“Three Black and Latino teens, Leonel Gonzalez, Derrick Magee and Nathaniel Martinez, took my breath away, and [I] even got teary-eyed in this extraordinary story by Mila Koumpilova,” one judge said.

Only one reporter covered this virtual charter school in Indiana. It made a difference

Chalkbeat Indiana’s Aleksandra Appleton was the only reporter to write a story on a virtual charter school offering cash stipends to families who enrolled their children .

The payments would have violated a state law that bans schools from offering enrollment incentives. But after Chalkbeat’s story, the school received overwhelmingly negative responses at its public hearing and ultimately withdrew its application.

We were the only publication covering the school.

Asking the right questions leads to school funding accountability in Pennsylvania

Sometimes, data is wrong, as Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum found in reporting on a high-stakes school funding court case in Pennsylvania. State officials used data from the Urban Institute to argue that funding in Pennsylvania is fair. But this data differed from what appeared in other research.

After Chalkbeat asked about the discrepancy, the Urban Institute “updated a national study of school funding patterns to fix how it accounted for funds flowing to charter schools,” we reported in April. “The results now show that students from low-income families in Pennsylvania have received slightly less funding for their schools than wealthier students for many years.”

“Researchers acknowledged … that an analysis used by Pennsylvania officials to argue that the state’s funding system doesn’t shortchange poor students was flawed — and the revised version comes to the opposite conclusion.”

Colorado students narrowly missed being taught Holocaust misinformation

“A Republican State Board of Education member who believes socialism poses grave dangers at home and abroad has put his stamp on how Colorado students will learn about the Holocaust,” Chalkbeat Colorado Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer reported in October.

What happened next changed the way Colorado students would learn about history going forward — in a good way.

Chalkbeat’s reporting drew attention to how Republican board member Steve Durham had shaped the state academic standards related to the Holocaust and genocide to connect Nazis to socialists, and had overridden expert recommendations in the process.

The Colorado State Board of Education ended up changing its academic standards, adopting language describing the Nazi Party as fascist and restoring references to genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan.

Multiple people told Chalkbeat that our reporting made a difference in this decision and in spotlighting the importance of State Board of Education races and academic standards.

Funding for restorative justice programs saved in New York

New York City was planning to cut funding for restorative justice programs, Chalkbeat reported in August. Less than a month later, that was no longer the case.

“After intense pushback from dozens of advocacy groups, New York City’s education department is no longer considering cuts to restorative justice programs,” Chalkbeat New York’s Alex Zimmerman reported in a follow-up in September.

An official said that Chalkbeat’s coverage of those planned cuts played a role in influencing the city to keep funding for restorative justice programs steady.

Shedding light on a controversial charter school partnership in Tennessee

Chalkbeat Tennessee’s intrepid senior statehouse correspondent, Marta Aldrich, was the first to report the details of Gov. Bill Lee’s intentions to bring more charter schools to Tennessee after he announced during his annual state address that the state was “formalizing a partnership” on civics education with Hillsdale College, a small private Christian school in Michigan, without giving details.

Other news organizations followed our report with their own stories, and the ACLU of Tennessee later called for the state to release all records related to the partnership.

Marta tracked the story as outrage over remarks by Hillsdale’s president disrupted the charter school plans. But the saga isn’t close to done.

“A group linked to Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College is formally exploring opening schools in five Tennessee counties, just months after a controversial failed attempt to open its first charter schools in the state,” Chalkbeat reported in December.

Tutoring gets a boost in Michigan

In early May, Chalkbeat Detroit (along with our partners at Bridge Michigan) reported that Michigan was behind other states in the use of ESSER dollars to support tutoring programs that help students catch up from COVID-related learning losses. The report cited a lack of action from state officials and the governor’s office, and multiple requests for comment got no response.

But in late May, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a proposal to use $280 million in state funds to create a tutoring program. Only some of that made it into the school aid budget, but the governor continues to talk about tutoring as a potential recovery tool for Michigan students, even bringing it up on the campaign trail. Chalkbeat’s reporting also continues to draw media attention to tutoring.

The public learned how Newark failed students with disabilities

The New Jersey Department of Education found that Newark Public Schools failed to meet six responsibilities under federal law for students with disabilities. Chalkbeat Newark’s Jessie Gomez was the first to report this news.

“The findings are a fraction of the issues district leaders continue to face after the pandemic as they relate to students with disabilities,” Chalkbeat reported in August. “Previously, the district was cited in 2019 for failing to meet key mandates related to education plans for students with disabilities.”

The director of the district’s Office of Special Education presented the state’s findings during a September parent advisory council meeting where they addressed their failures and said they would work to fix those issues by providing additional training to staff.

The state’s findings would not have been presented to the public without Chalkbeat reporting.

Thank you, readers

None of this impact on schools, students, and communities would have happened in 2022 without the people who are willing to support our work through interviews, readership, and more.

Support our work today with a donation so we can continue bringing change to the education landscape.

Susan Gonzalez is Chalkbeat’s social media strategist. Connect with her at sgonzalez@chalkbeat.org.

From teaching about race to COVID and Rebuilding Stronger, here are our 5 most-read stories of 2022

2022-12-21T13:00:00+00:00

From Indiana Statehouse bills grabbing the national spotlight and a sweeping overhaul of Indianapolis Public Schools, to a high-stakes midterm election, 2022 was a full year for education news.

So as we look ahead to 2023, we’re also looking back at our top stories from 2022 to find the five topics that Chalkbeat Indiana readers were most interested in this year.

Below is a list of our most-read articles this year, plus a few related stories that you should check out too.

Statehouse debate on teaching about race

Several of our most popular stories were articles about bills in the 2022 legislative session, especially those that addressed how teachers approach race and racial issues in the classroom.

Most-read stories:

If you liked those, read:

What happens to my school under Rebuilding Stronger?

Rebuilding Stronger is an overhaul of IPS that aims to address pressing issues of enrollment, finances, and inequities for students of color. The school board approved the plan in November, and now district leaders are turning to a pair of referendums to help fund the overhaul’s changes.

Most-read stories:

If you liked those, read:

Election 2022: Voters chose school board members

For this year’s school board elections, Chalkbeat Indiana collaborated with WFYI to create voter guides for districts across Marion County, and also co-hosted a candidate forum for IPS candidates. Victorious candidates will start their terms in January.

Most-read stories:

If you liked those, read:

COVID learning recovery and virtual attendance changes

Nearly three years after COVID shuttered school buildings, data is showing the impact the pandemic has had on students and their learning. Plus, a state law changed how often students can learn virtually and guidance on COVID exposures continued to change.

Most- read stories:

If you liked those, read:

Accountability for state lawmakers

Aside from the legislation they proposed, lawmakers themselves made news too as they discussed race and education.

Most-read stories:

If you liked those, read:

How Indiana’s curriculum bill about racism motivated a new wave of statehouse candidates

Bonus: Charter troubles, special education staffing, and more

While the above topics were the most popular this year, there were a few more prominent stories that didn’t fit into a category. Read those and a few more below.

Most-read stories:

If you liked those, read:

MJ Slaby is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

We’re your Chalkbeat Indiana team, and we’re excited to be here

2022-08-31T13:46:22+00:00

Whether or not you’re headed back to the classroom, there’s something special about back-to-school season. It’s a fresh start to buy that new planner and start project planning and goal setting.

And this school year was also a new start for the Chalkbeat Indiana team. With the addition of two new members, our bureau is fully staffed and excited about the work ahead.

It’s never a dull moment covering schools, and we want to bring you the news you need to make your decisions about education in Indianapolis and Indiana overall.

Maybe you’ll read a story and decide to contact a local official to share your thoughts on a topic. Maybe what you read will inform your vote in the upcoming election. Or maybe an article will give you a glimpse into the successes and the challenges that students and teachers are having in the classroom.

And while we’re bringing you the news, we also want to get to know you.

Invite us to your events. Ask us to visit your classroom. Send us an email to tell us your story. Also, be sure to sign up for our newsletter here.

In the meantime, allow us to introduce ourselves with old photos and fun facts.

Aleksandra Appleton, pictured here in kindergarten, covers statewide education issues for Chalkbeat Indiana.

Aleksandra Appleton, statewide education reporter

Where I’ve been: Everywhere! I was born in Serbia before moving to the U.S. at 5 years old. I grew up in southern and central California and then moved to New York for grad school. I started as an education reporter in Fresno, California, and then covered schools in Las Vegas before moving to Indiana in 2021.

What I do: I write about education statewide. This includes covering education bills coming out of the legislature when it’s in session. During the off months, I write about how state policies affect schools and students across Indiana.

Fun facts to know about me: I have a very fun 4-year-old who knows more about cars than me. We grew our first vegetable garden this summer and it was a surprise success. I can’t tell you anything about sports, but I know the words to the musical episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” by heart.

How to reach me: aappleton@chalkbeat.org

What I’m looking forward to the most about the 22-23 school year: I’m looking forward to seeing the effects of the ideas Indiana has put in place to help students recover from the effects of COVID, like its multimillion dollar investments in tutoring and literacy instruction. I’m also interested in what schools are going to do with their federal relief funds this year.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis Public Schools, and as a student went through Montessori and International Baccalaureate programs.

Amelia Pak-Harvey, Indianapolis schools reporter

Where I’ve been: I’m from North Carolina but attended college in Boston, and from there covered Lowell Public Schools in Lowell, Mass. I later moved to Las Vegas to cover the massive Clark County School District. In 2020, I moved to Indianapolis to cover city hall for the Indianapolis Star.

What I do: I cover Indianapolis Public Schools and the other public school systems in Marion County. That means sitting through long board meetings so you don’t have to! It also means keeping tabs on the shift within IPS from neighborhood to choice or charter schools, and understanding how the pandemic continues to impact Indianapolis students.

Fun facts to know about me: I started on piano at a young age thanks to a strict Korean mom. My high school job was playing for churches in rural North Carolina, and I can tell you it’s not as cute or impressive as playing side gigs as an adult.

How to reach me: apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org, or at 919-619-8258.

What I’m looking forward to the most about the 22-23 school year: I’m looking forward to the students finally getting to enjoy their first truly normal return to school since COVID, and hoping to get acquainted with IPS and its stakeholders.

MJ Slaby runs down the driveway after her first day of kindergarten.

MJ Slaby, bureau chief

Where I’ve been: I grew up in northern Indiana and graduated from IU Bloomington. I’ve covered education for newspapers in Lafayette, Bloomington and most recently here in Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Star. In between, I’ve also worked as a journalist in Knoxville, Tenn., and Pittsburgh, Pa. I started at Chalkbeat in August.

What I do: As the bureau chief, I lead our Indiana team, helping to develop story ideas and edit drafts. I also work with the larger Chalkbeat team on photos, graphics, social media, our daily newsletter and ways to meet and engage with readers like you. My job is leading the day-to-day while also thinking about the big picture and goals for the team. Plus, I’m planning to do some reporting too.

Fun facts to know about me: I grew up near where the time zone changed in northern Indiana, so my school was on a different time than my house. I was a big Notre Dame women’s basketball fan as a kid and a few summers ago, I covered the WNBA as a freelancer. You can catch me at the farmers’ market most Saturdays because it’s my dog’s favorite place to visit (I’m a fan too).

How to reach me: mslaby@chalkbeat.org or 317-671-3376

What I’m looking forward to the most about the 22-23 school year: I’m excited to work with this group of journalists and the stories they will tell about what it’s like to be in school right now and the stories that explain all the complexities around education in Indiana. I’m also excited to meet readers and have events that bring us together.

Andrew Ujifusa (pictured behind a Komodo dragon) has previously worked as a journalist in Maryland and Mississippi, and taught English at two high schools in Japan.

Andrew Ujifusa, story editor

Where I’ve been: I am a New York native, and after I left college I worked in Japan for a year as an English teacher and as an occasional writer for a Japanese-English bilingual newspaper in Los Angeles. I also worked at local papers in Maryland and Mississippi. Before coming to Chalkbeat, I covered national education politics and policy for Education Week.

What I do: As a story editor, I work closely with bureau chiefs and reporters in Indiana and Philadelphia, Pa., on everything from story ideas and coverage priorities to editing pieces for clarity, newsiness, and style.

Fun facts to know about me: I’ve put a radio collar on a (tranquilized) African elephant, counted eggs as they were laid by a sea turtle on the beach in the dead of night, and I support the New York Mets, Utah Jazz, Washington Mystics, and Arsenal.

How to reach me: aujifusa@chalkbeat.org

What I’m looking forward to the most about the 22-23 school year: I’m intrigued to see how nimble and thoughtful schools are in dealing with such a daunting variety of challenges, from structural concerns like enrollment shifts and learning recovery, to the ways national politics are influencing state and local K-12 decisions. But I’m also excited to work with a new, smart, and hard-working Chalkbeat Indiana team that’s ready to deliver for readers.

MJ Slaby is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

A new community: Join ‘After the Bell: Teacher Advice’ on Facebook

2022-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Teaching is always tough. Teaching during the pandemic has been even tougher.

But, with our new Facebook group, “After the Bell: Teacher Advice,” you don’t have to face it alone.

This summer, we launched our new teacher-focused advice column, “After the Bell,” as a gathering spot for busy, overworked teachers. Each week, veteran educator Dr. Kem Smith offers advice about teaching based on her own experience in the classroom.

We know “After the Bell” can be more than a column; it can be a community.

As we head into the new school year, we want to ensure you have the resources you need to take care of your students and yourselves. That’s why we have created a new Facebook group, “After the Bell: Teacher Advice,” specifically for “After the Bell” readers.

This group is a place to share your teaching joys, frustrations, wins, challenges, questions, and everything in between. It is a space for teacher conversations.

During our research on current teacher needs, we found that teachers are more likely to trust advice they receive from each other. Teachers get it. They understand the universal challenges faced by fellow educators and know the best ways to support each other.

We hope “After the Bell: Teacher Advice” can be a place for that understanding and support to shine. A place to continue the “After the Bell” conversation, ask and give each other advice, celebrate your teaching wins, and share your classroom experiences. See you there!

Kary Perez is Chalkbeat director of program innovation and oversees the research, development, and execution of major new initiatives. Contact her at kperez@chalkbeat.org.

Introducing ‘After the Bell,’ a new community for teachers

2022-07-14T13:00:00+00:00

Today, Chalkbeat launches a weekly advice column for teachers, by teachers.

It’s been our mission since we started to report on the effort to improve schools for all children.

We’ve formed close relationships with those of you on the frontlines of these efforts — the teachers. We’ve listened to your stories, heard your joys and frustrations, and watched you advocate for your students, schools, and yourselves.

While education professionals are not our only audience, you are our largest. And we know you need more support, from us, from everyone.

Two years ago, we set out to better understand educators’ needs during a time of unexpected disruption to our nation’s schools. Our research sought to answer: What do you need that isn’t being met? What products already exist to help you? What product should Chalkbeat develop to uniquely help address those needs?

In February 2020, we began our research with a survey, “Educator Needs Assessment,” and conducted in-depth teacher interviews before the pandemic irrevocably changed the education landscape. Our updated survey in August 2021 received over 2,000 responses from teachers like you across the country.

Those survey responses made it clear there had been a large shift in what you have needed since the pandemic began. Teachers were no longer interested in new curriculum or professional development offerings — you expressed that those markets are oversaturated. Instead, you said mental health and advice from fellow teachers were your two biggest needs not being met.

To verify our new survey findings, we conducted interviews with teachers, education professionals, and journalists. These interviews provided a better understanding of your needs, especially around mental health.

We knew Chalkbeat could help.

We learned you are more tired than ever before.

“I am not appreciated, I haven’t felt that way [before]. The morale is so low, not just at my school, I made a comment on Facebook about how I love teaching but don’t love where teaching is right now and so many teachers commented that they were ready to quit.” — Chicago elementary school teacher with 20+ years of experience

We heard that you are seeking advice, and that teachers inherently trust each other.

Q: When you seek out resources, which of the following do you most often turn to?

A: 41.8% of teachers who responded said teacher forums, and 30.5% said in-school colleagues.

“The higher level people are so far removed from trying to help students. I find the best advice from other staff members, [I’ll ask them] ‘what would you do in this instance?’” — Chicago elementary school teacher with less than five years of experience

You continued to prioritize your students’ mental health.

Q: What do you need help with?

A: 33.5% of teachers who responded said advice on maintaining students’ mental health, and 31.1% said advice when there are problems in the classroom.

But things shifted during the pandemic, and you began to prioritize yourselves.

“If students’ needs are met and teachers’ needs aren’t met, there won’t be teachers — last year I might’ve said students’ needs are greater; this year teacher needs are greater because it dominoes on to students.” — Indiana middle school teacher with less than 10 years of experience

“When our students are unwell we’re unwell.” — New York high school teacher with less than five years of experience

In response to our survey findings, interviews, and the urgent needs you have shared with us, we are launching an advice column specifically for teachers, by teachers.

Starting today, veteran educator Dr. Kem Smith will respond to your questions based on her own experiences in the classroom. Meet Dr. Kem here.

“After the Bell” will become the go-to spot for you and your colleagues to share your joys, frustrations, and questions. “How I Teach” subscribers will receive it directly in their inboxes. Here’s how to subscribe to How I Teach.

The column’s name was inspired by Chalkbeat intern Katie Hetlage’s experience as a high school teacher.

“There’s a lot of teacher chit chat right after the bell rings, or even in between classes, because you stand in the hallways to monitor students and we would often stand with our neighboring teachers to talk,” she said.

Chalkbeat’s goal is to make this column useful, actionable, and shareable. We hope its focus on teachers will make it successful. We want it to become your place for camaraderie, support, and new ideas.

Now, we want to hear from you. Submit questions — the letter writer will remain anonymous — to Dr. Kem via this submission form. What have you been venting about with your colleagues? Are there areas of your work in which you’ve needed support, but haven’t received it? Is there a situation, policy, or decision at your school that you are having trouble navigating? Let us know!

Kary Perez is Chalkbeat director of program innovation and oversees the research, development, and execution of major new initiatives. Contact her at kperez@chalkbeat.org.

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We’re launching a free tool for journalists to track source diversity

2022-06-14T19:31:21+00:00

Chalkbeat and the Reynolds Journalism Institute are preparing to launch a free source diversity tracking tool, and now other journalists can sign up to be trained on it here.

About a year ago, Chalkbeat and RJI joined forces to help small to medium-size newsrooms that want to track the diversity of their sources. We had conversations with 58 journalists involved in this work and wove together best practices from what they shared. We also interviewed journalists in depth on their survey language choices and published recommendations on building an inclusive survey.

Some of our key learnings from the research stage were that continuous audits are better than occasional or retroactive ones, but that the work of constantly tracking sources can put a large burden on already busy reporters. We sought a developer to help us build a tool with some automation, and found a partner in 10up.

Now, we’re gearing up to launch a tool that draws from all of our research and lessons learned. Journalists will be able to log in to the tool, and enter the name and email address of a source. The source will get an automated email to fill out the survey, and after they complete it, journalists will be able to view and export the data. We found in our research that letting sources fill out the surveys on their own time and in their own words increased participation and generated more consistent data.

Individual journalists will be able to access the responses from the sources they sent the survey to, and newsroom leaders can look at the aggregate numbers and diversity breakdowns. RJI and Chalkbeat, as admins, will be able to view any newsroom templates, surveys or responses to help users with issues or questions.

The tool uses a simple interface to send a survey to the source.

We created this tool for newsrooms and journalists to use free — so we hope you reach out to us to learn more about it, whether you’re an individual reporter or a decision maker for your newsroom.

We also learned in our discovery stage that auditing is really only one of the first steps in the diversity effort. We want to empower journalists to use this tool within the workflow of their newsroom so the data collected spurs real, measurable progress in source diversity. We also want to encourage newsroom leaders to fit source auditing into broader diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging efforts.

We tried to make this tool as easy to use as possible for reporters and editors, but the real work of changing habits and inequitable newsroom systems takes time and effort. That’s why we’re partnering with 2021 RJI fellows Emma Carew Grovum and Sisi Wei to create a DEIB best practices and learning module for users on how to incorporate source auditing into your overarching equity work. It’ll include scripts, templates, best practices on language — and even some guidance on how to assess whether your newsroom is ready to start source auditing, or whether there’s some culture work to be done internally first. This will launch with the tool this summer.

For now, we want to hear from newsrooms and journalists interested in learning more about the tool. We’ll show you a demo and answer questions, and you’ll get a chance to be a part of the first group of newsrooms with access to the tool when it’s ready. We plan to continue to add newsrooms and journalists on a rolling basis, so don’t hesitate to reach out at any time.

How my grandmother’s response to her school’s racism has shaped my work

2022-06-07T20:02:17+00:00

In a small Colorado town in the late 1930s, Mary Okugawa earned the right to be called valedictorian. The child of Japanese immigrants, my grandmother worked hard in school — two schools, in fact, since she also attended nihongo gakko (Japanese language school).

But when local school board members discussed who would publicly receive the academic honor, they declared that no “Jap” would get to call herself the valedictorian. Nor would a “Jap” speak at “our” graduation.

No recourse was forthcoming. There was no newspaper or viral cascade of social media to turn the tide. So that was that.

Roughly two decades later, when she lived in a Wyoming farm town about 90 miles from the site of a World War II Japanese-American internment camp, a nearby pool refused to serve people of Japanese descent. Mary Ujifusa’s moral indignation in response to this bigotry burned too hot to cool off. She shamed the resort into serving her and people like her. She also fought to repeal the state’s anti-miscegenation law. During these fights, Grandma Mary must have thought: Oh no, not any more.

My grandmother’s struggles, far from making her cynical, made it only more important to her that her children would succeed in spite of such obstacles. She passed her passion for education on to my father, to me, and other family members.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when I knew I wanted to be an education journalist. But a big part of what’s driven my work covering schools comes from my grandmother, her belief in nurturing children, and her determination to do the right thing and do right by her family.

Reporters and editors discuss their duty to hold power to account. In a different world, perhaps a reporter would have heard about the high school and written a story that would have changed the outcome. I have an obligation to remember that at Chalkbeat.

Perhaps you’ve assumed that I learned about my grandmother’s experiences with racism and discrimination directly from her, in emotional conversations. Not so. I learned of them by reading about them in an oral history project involving my dad.

Self-restraint, modesty, and a desire not to relive the experience might explain why my grandmother never shared those stories with me. They underscore why journalists must be patient and careful when talking with those students, families, educators, and others who might fear telling their stories and how the world will respond.

But that aside, I’ve highlighted the detail of reading about a family experience to underscore that even as 15-second videos, podcasts, and cable news define much of the media landscape, the written word maintains a unique power to educate and sway us.

Just as people in the news business have an obligation to readers and the general public, as an editor, I have an obligation to reporters and the words they use (and don’t use).

I’ve had an eclectic career involving education. My first job after college was teaching conversational English at two high schools in rural Japan. From this work, I learned respect for what educators do, observed comical classroom moments, and realized what students bring to school often escapes notice or action.

My work covering education has taken me to small towns in Mississippi, Washington, D.C., and the aftermath of a hurricane in Puerto Rico. The diversity of these experiences enhances the ways in which I can turn that sense of obligation into helping our newsroom craft meaningful and captivating stories.

In a similar way, Chalkbeat recognizes that the story of education in America is not a monolith best told from a static perch. The story must be told from Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Nashville, New York, Newark, and all sorts of places in between. That’s Chalkbeat’s mission. I’m excited to be a part of it.

I hope Grandma Mary would be proud.

Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.

Introducing Votebeat in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas

2022-05-24T18:31:43+00:00

In 2013, Chalkbeat was founded with the mission to help provide high-quality education for all children. The theory then, and now, was that independent news laser-focused on education issues was a prerequisite for thriving schools, and that since schools are inherently local, then the journalism must be local, too.

Fast forward almost 10 years, and Chalkbeat now serves eight communities with a team of 48 journalists that includes Pulitzer winners and Fulbright scholars — but more importantly journalists who live within the communities they cover, working with our readers as well as for them.

Today, we reach a new, exciting milestone: Chalkbeat is officially launching Votebeat as a permanent, year-round newsroom, with a team of eight journalists who will provide regular local coverage of voting and election administration in four states — Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas. (You can learn more about the team at votebeat.org.)

Our work is staunchly nonpartisan, grounded in facts, not opinion — with a mission to help people understand our system of democracy so they can participate in strengthening it.

We are making history as the first news organization to focus on this topic, without attention on candidates or campaigns or the other traditional elements of election journalism. We know that election misinformation presents a threat to democracy, and Votebeat exists to address that threat. Read all about why and how we’re doing this journalism.

The journey to this moment began in fall 2020, when we launched Votebeat as a temporary pop-up newsroom covering voting access and elections administration. Reporters in eight states worked in partnership with Chalkbeat and local news organizations to better understand how local elections were run, as fears about fraud and misconduct spread across the political spectrum.

Since then, examples of impact abound:

In Potter County, Texas, we spotlighted Republicans’ plans — ultimately reversed under public pressure — to run their own primary election separate from the county, introducing an increased risk of voter confusion and fraud.
In Michigan, election officials regularly used our reporting and explainers to help answer the barrage of questions — fueled by misinformation — they were receiving each day.
In Pennsylvania, our reporters spotlighted the burnout and attrition of local election officials, an emergency that was cited in a legislative committee meeting and in a New York Times article.

The original Votebeat pop-up was such a success that we decided this valuable resource for voters should continue as an established news organization, which brings us to our launch today.

Like Chalkbeat, Votebeat will make our stories available, at no cost, to all local and national news outlets, and we are launching with formal partnerships with Bridge Michigan, Spotlight PA, and The Texas Tribune — three nonprofit news organizations that were among Votebeat’s original partners during its 2020 pop-up phase. Votebeat shares an operational infrastructure with Chalkbeat, and will adapt Chalkbeat’s local-first business model to election administration.

Thank you to all for supporting Chalkbeat as we approach this important milestone. In an increasingly fractured environment, our great hope is that empathy and nuance can serve as an antidote to polarization and can bring communities together to solve our toughest challenges.

Alison Go is Chalkbeat’s chief strategy officer and a co-founder of Votebeat. Sign up for Votebeat’s newsletters at votebeat.org.

Introducing the Local News Field Guide

2022-05-05T16:01:39+00:00

Four years ago, I joined the team at Chalkbeat because I knew this was a special place. At a time when most news organizations were shrinking, Chalkbeat was achieving the miraculous — steadily growing while holding firm to a public interest mission that served students, parents, and communities.

What I’ve learned since is that this success has not come instantly or easily. Instead, it follows years of crafting an approach that combines three remarkable things: A business model that marries mission with revenue, the courage to reject conventional wisdom, and the grit to double down on what matters most without getting distracted by the constant barrage of red herrings.

In partnership with the Google News Initiative, we at Chalkbeat created a Local News Field Guide to share these lessons we’ve learned since our founding almost ten years ago. The Field Guide is designed to help existing local news organizations that are looking to revitalize how they operate. It includes insights on strategic planning, developing a master narrative, diversifying your audience, tracking impact, collaborations, DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging), earned revenue, and fundraising.

Read the Local News Field Guide →

The through line for each of these lessons is that if something is truly important to your organization (impact, DEIB, sustaining revenue, etc.), it must be tackled from every angle, in every department, from leadership to entry level.

For example, take our approach to DEIB. DEIB is not just an HR statistic for us. Yes, we are proud of our progress — our staff is 46% BIPOC, women of color represent four out of six members of Chalkbeat’s all-female leadership team, and Chalkbeat’s board is made up of 50% people of color — but some of the hardest DEIB work involves building authentic relationships with diverse audiences to further our journalistic impact. We find as many ways to listen as possible. We send out surveys and callouts to learn what’s on teachers’ and parents’ and students’ minds. We continuously host community events, both in-person and virtually, to learn from each other. We have a Reader Advisory Board. Prior to the pandemic, we hosted in-person office hours at community centers and neighborhood events. We audit our own work — monitoring the diversity of our sources and contributors — with the aim to constantly improve. We proactively use people-first language in our news coverage, marketing emails, and grant applications. For us, DEIB is not just a committee (although we have committees, too!) – it’s embedded in what we do.

Our business model, too, represents an innovative approach that is woven into our very core. We are incorporated as a nonprofit because we are mission driven, but also because we have long understood that philanthropic dollars have massive potential to help restore the local news ecosystem. We’ve oriented our newsroom to care much more about impact (and less about, say, page views), and it’s paid off: Last year, 85 percent of our $12+ million budget was funded by foundations and major donors. We also focus our newsroom on a single topic, both because this generates excellent journalism, but also because it enables us to raise outsize philanthropic dollars for local news. We’re exceptionally good at working with local foundations that care deeply about education but may have never given to local news before: 83 percent of our funders were first-time donors to local news. And even better, these funders stuck around: In 2019, 75% of the grants that were up for renewal that year were renewed.

Chalkbeat is more than a decade into its journey to rethink how local news can exist in the world. We have stumbled frequently, but we always look to do better the next time. The Local News Field Guide codifies many years’ worth of lessons learned, and we hope it helps others build the local news organizations that our communities deserve.

Read the Local News Field Guide →

An end-of-year note from Chalkbeat’s CEO

2021-12-16T18:31:54+00:00

Dear readers,

Eight years ago, Chalkbeat formed with a single mission: to equip every stakeholder in public education with the information they need to make sound decisions. From administrators and lawmakers to young people and parents, every person touched by schools deserves to be included and informed about how those schools are governed, funded, and led.

While many other news organizations have been forced to cut back on this essential beat, we have been proud to grow. Chalkbeat’s newsroom of 46 now includes Pulitzer Prize winners and seasoned editors working alongside former teachers and graduates of the school systems we cover. Our coverage serves eight states. And our reach has grown to millions of readers across an ever-expanding list of platforms and mediums, from Chalkbeat.org to Apple News to text messaging and local community groups.

“Chalkbeat keeps local education topics at the forefront of discussions on how to improve our schools. Chalkbeat’s journalists are asking meaningful questions, and driving truthful conversations about local education topics that actually matter to, and directly impact, families and educators.” — Ben McKee, Chalkbeat member in Denver, CO

In the past year, amid historic challenges, our investments paid off.

In Chicago, Chalkbeat’s reporting spotlighted the ways COVID-19 disproportionately affected boys of color — and then chronicled actions taken by the new district CEO in response.
In New York City, Chalkbeat drew attention to gaps in information about school ventilation systems — and sparked the school district to respond by making the information public and searchable.
And across the country, Chalkbeat drew early attention to the mounting mental health crisis facing young people — and shined a light on how schools and communities are responding.

The decisions made about public education in 2022 could have implications for generations. The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, and its impact continues to reverberate across all aspects of our society. Chalkbeat’s coverage of America’s hard-hit education landscape is more important than ever. We are committed to giving communities the information they need to navigate this turbulent time.

But in order to do that, we need your help to raise $80,000 by Dec. 31. We’ve already raised $44,201 thanks to your amazing support, however, we’re pacing slightly behind our previous end-of-year campaigns. We need one final collective effort to meet our goal before December ends.

And to our readers and members who’ve already donated, I want to say thank you on behalf of our team. We are proud to serve you. And we deeply appreciate your commitment to empowering nonprofit education reporting, to ensuring this coverage is accessible to your fellow community members, and to using Chalkbeat stories to inform and improve your daily work.

Please consider donating now to invest in nonprofit public-service education journalism that keeps you informed.

With gratitude,

Elizabeth Green

Writing about Newark is a ‘privilege and responsibility’ for me. Here’s why.

2021-10-15T15:11:33+00:00

In my first job as a professional journalist nearly a decade ago, I was assigned to cover schools in wealthy North Jersey towns that looked little like the diverse, working-class cities I grew up in just 20 miles down the road.

I was born and raised in Passaic and Clifton, smaller, somewhat overcrowded cities brimming with vibrant culture, lively and loud. For a few years, I attended parochial and charter schools. But most of my education came from public schools.

In those schools, being Mexican American was nothing out of the ordinary. Both Passaic and Clifton boasted — and still do — rich cultural diversity, with many of the cities’ residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino. There were occasional blips of racism and prejudice, but a multicultural tapestry was part of my upbringing.

So, when I began covering the affluent, predominantly white suburban towns of northern Bergen County, I felt somewhat out of place. I had just graduated with my bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, another city where I felt at home and the Hispanic and Latino population make up nearly half of all residents. That was where I first dipped my toe in the education world, mentoring and tutoring young English Language Learners weekly through the “RU Pilot Me” program.

But soon, I found myself in school board meetings where I was the lone person of color, the only Latina in the room. Despite that discomfort, one that would ebb and flow, my mom — who had plenty of experience being the only Latina in her workplace — reminded me that I was there to do a job.

And it was one I was passionate about. I wrote about new curriculum and classes, school enrollment and pricey campus expansions, and more. I’d hear my coverage cited by parents, students, teachers, and board trustees during public meetings, reassuring me that the coverage was helping inform their decisions.

As a rookie reporter, it was a valuable learning experience that taught me the basics of how school districts operate, the crucial role of school board trustees, and the importance of public participation at meetings.

Yet, what I saw and understood more clearly than ever before, was that some of our children’s futures seem to be determined by ZIP code and that deeply rooted systemic educational inequities exist across the cities and small towns of New Jersey and beyond. I’ve repeatedly learned this in various roles since that first job, as a Trenton statehouse reporter, a higher education reporter, and a K-12 journalist in New York during the first year of the pandemic.

Back when Chalkbeat opened a Newark bureau in the spring of 2018, I remember feeling hopeful for the city where my friends are raising their kids and my family members have worked in the schools. A city where there were so few dedicated reporters to cover the happenings of the state’s largest public school system. Chalkbeat began planting roots just as residents were learning how dangerous the drinking water was in schools and their homes, and the state had just restored the district school board’s authority.

I remember thinking to myself, I want to be part of that — a team committed to covering this city full of spirit and diversity, where I can personally relate to the stories of its residents. To be part of the team that helps inform caregivers who want to be advocates for their children’s education and future. To help shed light on the stories of English Language Learners and students with disabilities whose voices might get drowned out by other issues. And to be there for families as they celebrate their successes, in the many ways those manifest.

Chalkbeat Newark Bureau Chief Catherine Carrera, posing for a selfie during Chalkbeat’s 2021 virtual retreat, says she feels a “sense of duty” in covering education.

When I became the Newark bureau’s first bureau chief this spring, it felt like a triumph for my family. I don’t come from a family of professional journalists, though I’d argue that my abuelas and tías are some of the best oral storytellers around. And as a first-generation college graduate, I don’t come from a family of academic degrees, though my relatives work harder and more diligently than anyone I know.

It was through my family’s support, encouragement, and constant nudging from my mom — “ponte las pilas, mija” she still tells me almost daily — that I was able to get to where I am now. So, a decade into my career as a journalist, this job and what it entails has brought with it a sense of duty. In my eyes, writing, reporting, interviewing, and connecting with the community of Newark is not just my job — it’s a personal privilege and responsibility.

I hope our readers see this column as an invitation to reach out and connect. As I settle more into this role, I would love to hear from you. Email me with your tips, community event announcements, story ideas, suggestions for our newsletter or for more Chalkbeat Newark events, or just to say hi. We’re always eager to hear you in your own voice in our First Person and How I Teach series. This year we’re piloting our first ever Student Voices fellowship, where we’ll feature personal essays from two Newark high school students who applied for the semester-long program.

As we look ahead, our mission is to tell the story of Newark’s comeback and show how the school community is fighting to rebuild after losing so much during the pandemic, from loved ones to time in the classroom. We hope you help us tell that story, because without you, there is no story to tell.

Growing up alongside a brother with disabilities inspired me to fight for education equity

2021-10-04T08:00:00+00:00

When my big brother was in first grade, my mom received devastating news from his teachers: that Alex, the best person I know, may never learn how to read.

It was the worst news my parents had gotten since doctors first told them three years earlier that Alex had intellectual disabilities, and he would never develop or learn at the same pace as his peers. “I just wanted him to be successful,” my mom recalled recently. “How could Alex ever be successful if he couldn’t read? He just couldn’t.”

For me, Alex and my family are the reasons I was inspired to join Chalkbeat Tennessee. I want to dedicate my career to reporting on educational equity and the teachers, administrators, and families who face outsized odds but refuse to give up as they teach children with a myriad of challenges.

My mom didn’t give up. She worked tirelessly alongside his teachers to ensure he did learn to read. Playing on one of Alex’s biggest strengths — an almost annoying near-photographic memory — she suggested using flashcards and other memorization techniques to get him started with reading. Day and night, at school and at home, Alex’s teachers and our parents spent countless hours working with him.

When teachers noticed he could read but that he wasn’t comprehending the content, she told them to stop timing him. Alex, being the competitive kid he was, was speeding just to cross the finish line in time.

Thankfully, Alex’s teachers were wrong about him. My brother, now 27, loves to read magazines and anything Disney-related. He even dreams up his own ideas for movies or television shows on pen and paper.

Alex is just one example of countless other people with disabilities whose intellectual potential was underestimated. Like Alex, they often succeed because of their family’s efforts to ensure their child’s academic, social, and emotional needs are met in the classroom.

Photographs of Alex and Samantha West through the years.

As far back as I can remember, I knew my family was not like most others in our quiet suburb just north of St. Paul, Minnesota.

In daycare and at the park at the end of our street, I noticed that other children often didn’t want to play with Alex. In elementary school and especially middle school, I saw how cruel and unaccepting my peers could be as they called him names and joked about his disabilities behind his back. At the grocery store, I observed how even grown adults, double or triple my age, would stop to stare at Alex and my family.

Back then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we didn’t often discuss these interactions with anyone else, and we definitely didn’t see articles about children like Alex in the news.

On the days I came home crying after seeing someone mistreat Alex, my mom would tell me that most other people would just never understand, and that was OK. We always had each other — even if it seemed our society either didn’t want to know or didn’t care about the pain those interactions caused my family.

But that never sat right with me. Why wouldn’t folks want to understand our experiences on some level, or at least treat us with kindness and empathy?

Luckily, over the years, journalists and advocates have started telling these stories. News organizations like Chalkbeat are dedicated to reporting about schools and how they serve children like my brother, who have historically lacked access to a quality education.

In turn, I’ve started speaking up about my family’s experiences. And that’s why I’m at Chalkbeat today. More than anything, I aspire to tell the stories of students like Alex and families like mine that have gone untold for far too long.

I know firsthand how isolating being the sibling of a person with disabilities can be. I’ve seen the hard-fought battles many parents must wage to get their child what they need in the classroom and elsewhere. I know it takes a village of family members, qualified educators, and trained professionals to raise any child, but especially those with disabilities or other extra needs. I know the frustration of seeing schools fail someone you love, and I know the fulfillment of seeing schools help them thrive.

Chalkbeat’s Samantha West poses for a photo with her brother Alex after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in May 2018.

I’m happy to report that Alex is as successful as my mom hoped he would be. He can’t live independently, but he’s now an adult with a part-time job and happily lives at home with my parents. I’m more grateful than ever to be his little sister. We don’t feel as alone anymore, as our society has become increasingly supportive and inclusive of people like Alex and families like ours.

But there’s always more work to be done.

I’m excited to keep digging into this essential beat here in Memphis. Already, in the month since I began covering education in this city, I’ve come to appreciate this community’s steadfast dedication to “reimagining” our public school system for all children.

From conversations about the importance of Black male educators at the Memphis Education Fund’s fall conference to activists’ emotional discussions about curbing gun violence and the trauma it causes children in the wake of a recent school shooting, I’ve rarely seen such a beautiful, strong communitywide passion for education.

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to be part of it. But I need your help to make real change.

Chalkbeat Tennessee readers, in Shelby County and across the state, tell me about your experiences with public education, and how the school system is serving your children with disabilities and other needs. Email me at swest@chalkbeat.org or tweet me @BySamanthaWest. My lines are always open.

The difference between quitting and graduating? Sometimes, it’s just one person who cares.

2021-09-24T20:06:08+00:00

When you join Chalkbeat, you’re asked to introduce yourself to readers and talk about why you do this work.

Since I began my journalism career as an intern at the Longmont Times-Call in 2007, I’ve only written about my story once. I was reluctant that first time and it took plenty of convincing. So it feels familiar that a Chalkbeat post about myself would take more than a year.

I wanted to become a reporter to tell other people’s stories. I loved being in a newsroom and observing history unfold. I chose to stay behind the notebook, and to be frank, I never figured I had a story worth telling.

What I’ve experienced, in many ways, never felt extraordinary like the stories of hundreds of people I’ve reported on in classrooms, college quads, town squares, and tornado and hurricane disaster zones. I’ve been blessed that others have trusted me to put words to tragedies, triumphs, and everything in between in North Carolina and Tennessee.

But Colorado is home. I returned here to launch the higher education beat for Chalkbeat, telling the stories of students who struggle to obtain a college degree. And inevitably, this work feels personal. Since joining Chalkbeat in spring 2020, I’ve seen myself often in the stories and statistics. I share many of the same struggles with the students I’ve talked to.

And I know I could have been part of the majority of Hispanic men who stopped going to college, instead of finding my way here to share this story.

During my sophomore year, I walked into a communications class final — and panicked. I tried to steady my shaky hand. I forced myself to concentrate. But 30 minutes later, with what felt like dozens of eyes on me for finishing so quickly, I turned in my test and left.

I couldn’t tell you what was on that exam and I can only assume the grade wasn’t great. I know I was mostly prepared. But the panic didn’t stem from school.

The previous year had been filled with worry for a sister whose health issues were a mystery to doctors (to this day they aren’t quite sure how to treat her) and the tumultuous end of my brother’s relationship with a significant other that threatened to keep me from seeing my nephew. At the time, I also was trying to help someone close to me with childhood mental and physical abuse.

When I walked out of the side door of the building that day, I breathed in the cold Colorado winter air. As I exhaled, I could see my life going in two directions — I could give up or I could press forward.

I decided I couldn’t quit.

Looking back, I realize a huge reason was David Martinez.

I’m the son of a factory worker and day care provider, raised just outside Greeley. My dad had joined the Marine Corps right after high school. My mom never graduated. But they pushed me to go to college to take advantage of an opportunity they never had.

When I arrived in Boulder 16 years ago, I brought their support but didn’t find too many other students like me on the University of Colorado campus. As an 18-year-old Hispanic man, I felt pretty much out of place in a sea of white faces. That year, in fact, just 6% of the students at CU were Hispanic.

My freshman year, I can’t recall seeing another Hispanic student on my dorm floor.

But Dave — as we called him — never let me feel alone. Dave’s job today is the coordinator of inclusive excellence and outreach at the College of Media, Communication and Information.

Back then, I didn’t know his title. I just knew he was a person who cared.

For students like me, it can be difficult to find a community that looks like you and shares your life experiences at CU Boulder. Dave, however, motivated me to excel and helped me connect to friends who encouraged me to finish school.

When I finished that exam — even though I felt terrible — I knew I couldn’t let my family, Dave, or those friends down.

Dave never once gave up on me throughout my college journey, even when he didn’t always know what was going on in my head. He was one of the first people I met on campus, and we hugged the day I graduated.

Not every student has a Dave. I might have made a different decision the day of that final if it weren’t for him. I might not be able to share this story, or the thousands of stories I’ve shared during my career, if it weren’t for Dave.

There aren’t many months that go by that I don’t think about him. When I accepted the job at Chalkbeat Colorado, he was one of the first people who came to mind.

He’s part of why I graduated. He’s who I thought about when I first started reporting on colleges. Because of Dave, I know that someone who cares can change a student’s trajectory, calm their fears, and propel them to become someone they didn’t expect.

Everyone deserves a Dave. And that’s why at Chalkbeat I want to continue to keep schools accountable to the students who need that extra nudge to get through college.

How to design your source diversity audit survey with inclusivity in mind

2021-09-15T20:37:57+00:00

Five months ago, Chalkbeat and the Reynolds Journalism Institute launched a project that will make it easier for newsrooms to track the diversity of their sources.

This project is designed to expand Chalkbeat’s existing source audit work, which centers on two of our recurring features: How I Teach and First Person. And we also have the lofty ambition of building a better system of source auditing that newsrooms around the nation can adopt. More on that in the coming months — and if you want to stay connected, let us know here.

We recently published our review of the audits — everything we learned about best practices in source auditing from leading U.S. newsrooms. We wanted to take that work a step further by analyzing the actual surveys and making recommendations for how newsrooms can best structure their survey language with equity in mind. WPR, MPR, KUER, KCBX, KQED, Inewsource, Reframe, and WHYY, the majority of which are public radio stations, graciously shared their auditing processes with us,

Our hope is this explainer, while not exhaustive, will give journalists food for thought on how to design questions that are inclusive and clear. We created this example survey on Google Forms incorporating all of our recommendations for a visual guide on what a potential source auditing survey might look like.

Here’s what we learned, and what we recommend:

Race/Ethnicity

The Question

We saw that when asking about race, newsrooms typically did so in one of three ways:

Race or Race/Ethnicity
What is your race?
How would you best describe your racial identity?

What we recommend: Option No. 3: How would you best describe your racial identity? The use of “best” gives acknowledgment to the fact that there probably won’t be a comprehensive list of every single race/ethnicity on a survey, but it will still encourage responses from sources.

Native American vs. American Indian vs. ...

There isn’t any one term used to describe the Indigenous people who live in the United States. Indian Country Today interviewed six prominent Native Americans, and all had different preferences in terminology. While the term used most broadly in recent decades is Native American, those who grew up with the term American Indian continue to prefer it over all others.

American Indian is the most widely used terminology among the newsrooms we interviewed. The U.S. Census groups the term American Indian with Alaskan Natives, as did three surveys.

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander should be its own choice, because Hawaii is geographically grouped with the Pacific Islands rather than the North American continent.

What we recommend: Create two choices for Native people who live in the United States: American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Asian

While nearly all surveys we looked at used some variation of Asia/Asian to cover the entire region, some broke it down further into different parts of Asia, with options such as South Asian, East Asian, Filipino, etc. Newsrooms could do the latter, being careful not to exclude any part of Asia.

However, we don’t typically see a breakdown of Asia in survey designs, which creates a question of how to analyze this later on when compared to U.S. population data. And it could also create confusion: Central Asia overlaps with the Middle East— should people who are from Afghanistan click both options? Should one be omitted in favor of the other?

What we recommend: The data will be simplest to analyze if newsrooms keep the choice as Asian.

Middle Eastern

The Middle East was listed as a separate option in half of the surveys we analyzed, and all referred to the ethnic identity differently: Middle Eastern/Arab-American, Middle Eastern/Arab, Middle Eastern, and Middle Eastern or North African. While the Middle East includes many Arab countries, it’s also home to non-Arab countries such as Israel and Egypt. The most equitable phrasing narrows down to either Middle Eastern or Arab or Middle Eastern or North African.

What we recommend: Because both are inclusive, we looked at what the U.S. Census does. It uses the term Middle Eastern or North African. We recommend newsrooms follow suit with this phrasing.

Multiracial

For the surveys that did provide multiple-choice options for race and ethnicity, all had some way of incorporating an option for people who described themselves as multiracial: making the choices multi-selectable, having a separate choice to denote multiracial, or a mix of both.

What we recommend: Multiracial can be covered by making the race/ethnicity question multi-selectable. We recommend against solely having an option on the survey that says Multiracial to prevent respondents from feeling like their race doesn’t actually matter. Having an option for multiracial on top of being multi-selectable will help in later analyzing the data, For instance, newsrooms will be able to make an assessment such as, 5% of all who responded as being white also chose multiracial.

Black vs. African American

Only one survey we looked at had Black as the only option. All the others also included the phrase African American. African American isn’t the sole option on any survey, though, which is all the better considering that using only African American omits Black Hispanics and Black people who are not from Africa.

What we recommend: While the term Black seems all-encompassing, newsrooms should be as inclusive as possible and write the option in their surveys as Black or African American.

Hispanic/Latino(a) vs. Latinx

Some newsrooms incorporated Hispanic, Spanish, or Latino Origin as a part of white — White (of Hispanic, Spanish, or Latino Origin) and White (not of Hispanic, Spanish, or Latino Origin). This, however, centers white as the main identity and excludes groups that aren’t white but do identify as being Hispanic, Spanish, or Latino. We decided to solve this by creating a separate choice for Hispanic, Spanish, or Latino, and making the question itself multi-selectable.

This way, those who identify as, say, Black Hispanics will be able to indicate as such by clicking Hispanic, Spanish, or Latino Origin and Black or African American.

Newsrooms also have the option of separating this into a separate question. As for the term Latinx, most Latino adults haven’t heard of it and few use it.

What we recommend: Keeping a separate choice written as “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin” is standard and inclusive to use in surveys under the question of race/ethnicity.

Gender

The Question

The best practice for asking about gender is taking the same approach when asking about race, “How would you best describe your gender identity?” One newsroom we looked at took it a step further by asking for current gender identity, recognizing that it might be different from the gender a person was assigned at birth. This is an important distinction to be aware of, and we will acknowledge it in our surveys going forward.

Some newsrooms also asked for pronouns, either to supplement the gender question or to replace it altogether. While it is an option for newsrooms, we believe asking solely for gender identity is sufficient when the purpose of the survey is purely for source auditing.

What we recommend: We believe the most inclusive way of asking this question is the following: “How would you best describe your current gender identity?”

Transgender

Overall, newsrooms tend to separate male and female identifiers to Female, Male, Transgender female, and Transgender male when they ask about gender identity.

We found two problems with this: People who identify as transgender want to be identified as the gender they transitioned to. For instance, someone whose current gender identity is female will want to indicate that they are female, rather than transgender or transgender female. Second, putting these options into a question about gender has the additional effect of treating cisgender as the norm.

What we recommend: Newsrooms should omit choices about identifying as a transgender person on the gender identity question. Instead, break it up into two: Ask first about gender identity, and then whether the respondents identify as transgender. (Note: Breaking up the gender identity question has also been supported by multiple universities that post best practices on their site — Vanderbilt and UCLA, just to name a few — as well as the CDC.)

Non-binary, gender-nonconforming, etc.

The key takeaway here is that having male and female as the only options just isn’t enough.

But similar to race/ethnicity, it’s difficult to be inclusive without incorporating a whole list of the various gender identities people can have. Including the most common genders in the U.S. while allowing for a write-in option is likely the most inclusive newsrooms can get in a limited multiple-choice question.

What we recommend: Non-binary should also be included as a choice. Those who identify as a gender outside of these three can use the Other type-in option if using Google Forms or a “prefer to self describe” section to write in their preferred term.

Unsure

While it wasn’t popular to include some variation of Unsure or Questioning for gender identity across the newsrooms interviewed, we felt that it was important to acknowledge that there are some people who still don’t know or are exploring what gender identity they are most comfortable with.

What we recommend: Newsrooms should include an option on the survey for people who are questioning. The choice itself can be written as Unsure, Questioning, or a mixture of both.

Conclusion

In reality, the most inclusive way to write a source auditing survey is by leaving all of the questions open-ended, allowing for complete self-identification by the respondent. For those analyzing the survey, one drawback to this is the time it will take to sort out responses at the end⁠ — the opposite of what we wanted our source auditing survey to do. Standard survey platforms like Google Forms or Typeform also don’t allow for write-in options within each choice, for example:

Which of the following best describes your race/ethnicity?

Asian: (Please specify here)

Middle Eastern: (Please specify here)

American Indian or Alaskan Native: (Please specify here)

There are, however, several ways to get around these obstacles:

To allow people the chance to specify their identity further, you might consider adding this question at the end of the survey: Is there any other demographic information you would like to share with us?
If you plan to use a platform like Typeform where there’s only one question on the screen at a time, programming in follow-up identifying questions based on what choice respondents pick is worthwhile.
By making choices multi-selectable, respondents don’t feel boxed into any one category and it gives them the liberty to choose the identities that best fit them.
The use of the Other write-in option will allow people to self-describe if the given options for race and gender truly do not describe any part of their identity. If newsrooms want to avoid listing an Other option, which can feel alienating, an alternative would be to create another question asking respondents to self-describe.

One year later: Reflecting on our commitment to antiracism

2021-07-13T16:24:26+00:00

Dear Readers,

A year ago, we announced that Chalkbeat was embracing antiracism as a core value. Today, I want to share what that commitment has meant for our work and our team.

Amid intensifying racial conflict — a white supremacist-fueled insurrection in Washington, murders of Asian Americans, and activism for racial justice that continues to spur defensive reaction — we leaned into a simple tool: listening.

Last June, we asked young people how they were reacting to protests against racial injustice and shared their answers of hope, determination, cynicism, stress, and inspiration. This April, we asked Asian Americans how they were making sense of a year of violent words and attacks, and published their words of fear, pride, rage, resolve, and alienation. As our editor-in-chief Nicole Avery Nichols shared in a personal reflection that same day, stories from real people, especially young people, can be healing.

That sense of possibility, of clearing a way through the raging fire, came when we gathered readers together, as well. In July 2020, we brought together Detroit students to speak about race and activism. In December, our Tennessee bureau created a platform to discuss how schools can foster meaningful conversations in the wake of the election. Following January’s Capitol insurrection, we hosted a student-moderated conversation for high schoolers to reflect on the violence. And in March, Chalkbeat Colorado organized a student-led conversation about mental health and racial injustice.

Within our organization, we worked hard to build racial diversity across all levels of Chalkbeat’s team, design equitable supports for staff members, and foster a sense of belonging. We are proud that this work has paid off in an increasingly diverse team, both staff-wide and among our leaders. Both our leadership team and our board are now comprised of at least 50% people of color, significant increases from when we launched Chalkbeat in 2013.

We have more work to do. We invite you to read Chalkbeat’s statement on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging here to learn more about what we value, the progress we’ve made thus far, and what we plan to do next. It’s important to us that we make our commitment public and our actions transparent, so we can hold ourselves accountable to each other and to the communities we serve. We’ll also be publishing a DEIB dashboard later this summer, with key strategies and performance indicators to track our progress.

I ended last year’s letter with gratitude, and I’ll do the same now. I want to thank Jennifer Bramble, our Chief People Officer, for leading us to make an abstract commitment concrete. I’m grateful to Chalkbeat’s DEIB Action Force, a group of staff members who have been convening regularly to make sure we are living our values and meeting our goals. Thank you to the leaders of our recently formed Employee Resource Groups for making space for team members with common interests and shared identities to connect. And as always, I’m so grateful to our readers, especially the many students who have shared their lives with us over the past year. Thank you for trusting us with your stories.

Elizabeth

Got questions or feedback about this letter? We’d love to hear from you — send an email to community@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s everything we learned about source diversity auditing

2021-06-21T21:01:52+00:00

Two years ago, Chalkbeat joined a growing list of newsrooms attempting to track the diversity of our sources so we could better understand whose perspectives we’re elevating in our journalism.

We started with a small swipe — two recurring series — and quickly realized we had work to do. We also learned that many, many newsrooms and individual journalists are doing this auditing work alone in silos. We wanted to learn from one another and to build a better system.

Over the last few months, Chalkbeat and Reynolds Journalism Institute student staffers Tatyana Monnay and Sara Dingmann collected source tracking information from 58 journalists and interviewed 14 of them.

The journalists interviewed represent newsrooms ranging from small startups to legacy radio stations. Some have audited sources for years, some were only a few months into their process, and some were running periodic spot checks every few months.

The majority of interviewees were from public media, which has dominated the field so far in building source audits. All newsrooms were evaluating the representation of the people they were interviewing and comparing those findings with their intended audience and communities.

The collected information will guide Chalkbeat and RJI in building a source diversity tracker that is efficient, sustainable, and replicable. Want to get involved or receive updates on this project? Let us know here.

What we learned:

Lesson 1: Newsrooms need clear direction at the beginning on goals for source tracking, data collection, and how to use the results.

An effective source audit system should fit into a newsroom’s broader plan to diversify its staff and coverage to better reflect the communities it serves. Many newsrooms launched source diversity audits in the past year (10 of the 14 newsrooms surveyed) — and many audits are part of larger newsroom efforts in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, or DEIB.

KUER in Utah, for example, launched its audit this year as part of a larger newsroom culture project. And WHYY in Philadelphia has paired staff training on cultural competency with expanding its source audits over three years.

But many audits lacked that kind of clear direction or tie to broader organizational initiatives, and subsequently, felt like one-off projects that didn’t have a meaningful impact on the newsroom. Source tracking work can be tedious and only matters if it helps us understand our own patterns and blind spots as journalists and helps hold ourselves accountable to more inclusive coverage.

Only a few of the newsrooms interviewed had been tracking sources for more than a year — and most were still struggling with how to benchmark their data. For instance, should newsrooms use Census data to assess findings? What’s the right benchmark?

Many newsrooms also are still developing systems for how to use the results internally and publicly: When do you review data with staff? Do you set goals for individual reporters and hold them to it? Will you share your results publicly?

Key takeaways: Articulating the why and how of any source audit project is critical to its success. Reporters should have input into designing audits or tracking systems and in analyzing the results. Newsrooms that had these conversations with reporters early in the process seemed to get more staff buy-in and support.

At the same time, newsroom leaders should develop a clear plan for how to incorporate findings into the culture and systems. (For example, will results play into reporters’ goal-setting? Who is responsible for driving results? How and when will newsrooms post publicly to inform their audiences?)

Lesson 2: Surveys should be short and auditing should be continuous.

These interviews confirmed that the shorter the survey, the better. Many newsrooms, including those working with America Amplified, started with long surveys then cut down to five to eight key multiple-choice questions. Retroactive audits took more time than did ongoing tracking, and usually provided less reliable data.

Some newsrooms enlisted interns or college journalism programs to design the audit. KQED worked with Impact Architects to establish a baseline, and The Philadelphia Inquirer worked with Temple University to analyze 3,000 pieces of journalism. While enlisting outside or temporary help can make retroactive audits less overwhelming, it can be difficult for newsrooms to continue work started by an outside entity after the initial audit.

Spot checks — or tracking sources for random periods — drew worse participation from reporters and spottier data. Because the checks weren’t baked into the workflow and regularly enforced, reporters would forget. And one news cycle could skew the data.

Key takeaway: A brief survey that tracks name, age, gender identity, race/ethnicity, source title or category, ZIP Code, and an option to opt into a source database provides enough data. (Note: Many newsrooms struggled with sources’ titles, which should be defined before launching a survey. For examples, check out the appendix of this study by the Institute for Nonprofit News.)

Key takeaway: Continuously track and audit as part of the reporting process. If newsrooms believe source diversity is important, they should strive to get the best data.

Lesson 3: Automation saves time (but doesn’t mean reporters are less invested).

There was a clear divide among interviewees of who should be in charge of this work and to what extent newsrooms should invest in automating their diversity tracking systems.

The vast majority of newsrooms interviewed used Google Forms to record survey data. Resolve Philly used Airtable. Most, like Colorado Public Radio, require reporters to collect sources’ demographic information during interviews then record it into the form.

Some interviewees felt strongly that reporters should ask demographic questions and fill out the survey. Rather than just providing email addresses, journalists then can take more ownership in diversifying their sources.

All the newsrooms relying on journalists to fill out Google Forms or separately query sources acknowledged that neither could last long term. Both take time, can be forgotten, and raise data security questions.

Wisconsin Public Radio’s demographic project embeds source data into its content management system. WPR said that doesn’t strain reporters and makes it harder for them to forget. Still, WPR staff spend time every month figuring out which sources have and have not been quoted before. The data comes from emailed surveys that about half of sources fill out.

Both manual and more automated processes raised security questions. Some newsrooms are moving away from Google Forms because they don’t trust Google to keep sensitive information safe. Others reported concerns about whether adding sources’ personal information into a CMS — the system that publishes stories — could allow that information to accidentally be published online.

Key takeaway: Newsrooms that rely on journalists to collect the data reported more issues with buy-in and with data collection — often reporters would forget or put it off. This speaks to the heavy load of reporters and why automation can help.

Key takeaway: WPR has come the closest to building an automated system that’s far more effective than manually updating Google Forms. But it isn’t seamless. It could be further automated to lighten the load on staff. Newsrooms also need to better assess the security risks of collecting and storing personal data.

Lesson 4: Newsrooms should design with a living source database in mind.

Very few newsrooms initially developed a source audit with the idea of also building a source database for future stories. Thanks to WPR’s influence, that’s becoming more of a trend. WPR uses Google Sheets for its newsroom Rolodex.

One WPR audit manager oversees the database and helps reporters find sources. The database prioritizes sources that identify in an area underrepresented in WPR’s coverage, but doesn’t include sources’ demographic information to protect privacy.

News organizations designing a lasting source audit might consider how to create a source list that elevates people historically underrepresented in that newsroom. In the same way audits help newsrooms understand who they are amplifying, shared databases will make it easier for journalists to expand beyond their usual sources.

Key takeaway: Newsrooms should consider investing in a source database for the long haul. Having one person or one team manage the source database could make it easier for journalists to use this resource, but editors and reporters would also need training and access to ensure the database is used well.

Want to read more?

Here are helpful field guides from across the industry, and some surveys you can copy: Wisconsin Public Radio, America Amplified, WHYY, KQED, INN - case study

What’s next?

Chalkbeat and RJI are taking all of these learnings into our next phase: Building a long-term system that will work for Chalkbeat’s newsrooms, and hopefully, for any other newsroom interested in this work. Questions? Suggestions? Want to get involved or say hello? Reach us at community@chalkbeat.org.

The pandemic brought me home to Memphis to expand my fight for education equity

2021-04-30T14:30:00+00:00

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last March, I did what teachers everywhere did: I scrambled.

I Googled distance learning, virtual learning, and asynchronous learning. I plugged into a digital village of educators in Facebook groups where we swapped lesson plans and fears. And I studied the educational series Crash Course, trying to tap into my inner John Green, even though my transformed basement studio was laughable compared to the author and YouTuber’s professional studio. When the pandemic hit, I scrambled, and then, with the help of my village, I shifted.

Photographs of Cathryn Stout’s basement from before and after she built the space into her own teaching studio.

I was in a well-resourced private school in Connecticut, with creative educators and a supportive head of school, and even still, teaching in a pandemic was frightening and foreign territory. Countless conversations with friends and fellow teachers in Shelby County Schools and other districts confirmed that the conditions in their public schools were doubly difficult, due to unstable internet connections, missing students, and endless other issues that stretched teachers’ bandwidth and hearts as they worked to reconnect the disconnected. I also knew that at such a time as this, I needed to strengthen my connection with the people and issues that matter most.

I knew I needed to come home.

For the last five years, I have flown regularly between Hartford, Connecticut, and Memphis, dedicating my summers and school breaks to my Whitehaven stomping ground and my hometown, but when the pandemic left me and millions of others grounded, I knew where I was called to be. I was humbled when Chalkbeat offered me the opportunity to serve as its Tennessee bureau chief, because my life’s work aligns with Chalkbeat’s mission of education equity.

Cathryn Stout, front right, and her family at Christ Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis.

For three generations, my family has worked in all levels of education, from the classroom to the school board. I began following the family path with my first job as a health educator with Girls, Inc. during my teenage years at Central High School. Later, I worked as a community editor and reporter at The Commercial Appeal, where I mentored aspiring journalists. I also taught college students while earning a doctorate, and most recently, I served as a teacher, history department chair, and assistant dean of equity and inclusion at Connecticut boarding schools. I saw inequality magnified, and I challenged my students to use their connections and resources not just for charity, but also for structural change.

I taught remarkable students with a wide range of talents, privileges, and challenges. Like teenagers everywhere, many of my students struggled with relationship drama, mental health issues, and learning disabilities. Many had good family support, but for those who didn’t — those with whom I often worked the most closely — the game changer was having a well-resourced school that provided the services they needed.

On campus, they could get unlimited tutoring, weekly therapy, daily health care, judgment-free contraceptives, free toiletries, three meals a day, fitness classes, evening homework help, and, importantly, a safe place to sleep. This model has been replicated for public school students by the SEED Foundation of Washington, D.C.

In the Bluff City, school, city, and county leaders have to work together to create urban villages that support and protect our students if we want to catapult our reading levels, ACT scores, and juvenile crime rates from near the worst in the state to the best in the nation. You can’t have strong schools in a broken village, and too many of our villages are suffering in this place that we once called “the city of good abode.”

Tennessee Bureau Chief Cathryn Stout

Memphis journalists have always been on the front lines of reform, from the anti-lynching activism of publisher Ida B. Wells-Barnett to the thought-provoking columns of writer and disc jockey Nat D. Williams. When we do our jobs well, journalists get beneath the spin and explain which initiatives work and which projects waste money, deliver poor results, or harm the public. We highlight the discrimination and the diversity double-talk that abounds. And we allow our pages and websites to serve as platforms for the changemakers in our community.

I invite Chalkbeat Tennessee readers to tell us about the tensions, trends, turning points, and trailblazers that are influencing public education in your community. Our email is open to your tips, story ideas, and event announcements, and our pages are open for you to contribute First Person and How I Teach columns. You can type, record, or dictate your thoughts, because writing levels should never be barriers to agency.

I look forward to working with all who are willing to dismantle the barricades to knowledge and education equity wherever they stand, so that we may make stronger schools and safer neighborhoods for Shelby County students from Voodoo Village to Parkway Village and every village in between.

Experiencing racism as a child was traumatic, but these young voices are helping me heal

2021-04-29T16:28:42+00:00

A note from Chalkbeat’s editor in chief: I’d like to give special thanks to the young people who found the courage to share their thoughts with Chalkbeat during this historic time of racial reckoning in America. Your experiences and viewpoints — published here on Chalkbeat — are so important. Please know that Chalkbeat will continue to provide a forum for you to express yourself in words, music, and art — your voices are helping all of us move forward. Thanks again. — Nicole Avery Nichols

Chalkbeat Editor-In-Chief Nicole Avery Nichols.

“I need you to be uncomfortable.” — Kayla Park, 17, Washington, D.C.

When I was in fourth grade, a classmate and his older brother followed me halfway home from school while calling me the n-word.

It wasn’t our first dust-up. But because every time he called me that word I would snap back “Yo Mama!” the boy’s mother joined the battle on this day. She glared at me from the window of her slow-rolling car as her sons threatened me and spat in my direction.

A classmate whom I distinctly recall looked just like Snow White joined me in my fight toward home. As the situation escalated, we tried to ignore the taunting, but we made it clear that we would stand our ground if it came to it.

“We are all the same, stop!” — Angel Peña, 14, Jamaica, New York

The boys eventually grew tired of their racist taunts and jumped into their mother’s car. Once they rumbled away, my classmate gave me a pep talk. She said that her older brother knew karate and that he would teach us to defend ourselves.

Next time, we would be ready.

As our fear began to fade, we started planning our defense. My classmate suggested that we could pick up sticks to keep the boys at bay. I wasn’t convinced, so she searched for a sample stick along the fence line.

My friend spied a piece of wood hidden beneath some leaves behind a row of small evergreen trees. She picked it up, but when the leaves fell away, a jolt of terror struck us both. The wood was a cross, with “KKK” scrawled across the front.

I bolted. All my classmate could do is trail behind me, pleading for me to believe that she was not a Klansman.

This incident happened in the 1980s in a mostly white Long Island suburb, vastly distant in time and space from Mississippi, where 14-year-old Emmitt Till was brutally murdered in 1955. But still, on that day as I struggled to tell my parents what had happened on the way home from school, the image of Till’s mutilated body was seared into my mind.

Would I be next?

Mourners visit and leave flowers at one of two spas across the street from one another in memorial for the lives lost during the March 16, 2021, shootings at the Atlanta spas.

“How scared and terrified, a victim.” — Jiaci, 17, .N.Y., N.Y.

You don’t outgrow racial trauma. It sticks, hovering just below the surface of awareness, poised to break your heart or spirit at any given moment.

I healed a bit from that fourth grade incident, and many others like it over the years, while I was reviewing the six-word stories Asian American students shared with Chalkbeat after their communities had endured a year of increased racial targeting, violence, harassment, and othering, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic.

Similar to the forum that Chalkbeat provided for Black students last spring after the videotaped murder of George Floyd and the racial reckoning that followed, we wanted to also amplify young Asian voices, particularly in the aftermath of the horrific spa shootings in Atlanta that left six Asian women dead.

In just six words, students of Asian descent and allies shared their thoughts about race, racism, culture, and the reparative conversations that are long overdue in America. Their mini-stories — some of which are embedded in this text — are heartbreaking, powerful, jarring, insightful, thought-provoking, inspiring, poignant, and all too familiar.

OJ Adeyemi and daughter Adenike listen to people speak before they march through the streets after the verdict was announced for Derek Chauvin on April 20, 2021 in Atlanta, Ga.

We deserve to live without fear. — Helen Chen, 17, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Last week, Americans of many races held their collective breath in anticipation of the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white officer who murdered Floyd, a Black man, last year.

On Tuesday afternoon, when a jury convicted the former Minneapolis police officer of murder on all counts, relief swept through much of the country like a tidal wave.

But after that emotional surge dissipated, many people (including the young people Chalkbeat interviewed) pointed out that the damage caused by racism, whether overt and violent or implied and silent, is ever-present.

Medical experts say that exposure to prolonged racism — experienced personally or vicariously — can negatively affect mental health, causing depression, low self-esteem, anger, and other negative health outcomes. Just this month, the CDC declared racism a public health threat, and the Department of Justice launched an investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department, in part to determine whether it engages in “discriminatory policing.”

Fourteen-year-old Adam Vu of Denver, Colorado, asks the right question:

“Why did it take that much?”

Why indeed.

In high school, I witnessed inequities in public education. Now, I want to write about it.

2021-04-23T17:56:20+00:00

I first learned the term “redistricting” over a bag of honey mustard pretzels in my high school English teacher’s office.

A budding journalist, my questions over inequities between my high school and the neighboring high school within the same district began with a simple set of questions: Why did they get to wear hats, when we couldn’t? Why was their course selection so much greater?

These were some of the differences between the wealthy high school blocks away and my less affluent school. Like any inquisitive reporter, I was curious about what was behind the disparities.

My teacher, Mr. Anderson, highlighted a red line across the map of Darien, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Like shattered glass, the zigzag pattern created by what he called redistricting made no sense to me. It was as if someone had haphazardly drawn a pattern to avoid the low-income housing apartments, keeping the mansions and traditionally wealthy on the opposite end.

On the map, I saw my small white house, where I lived with my family of six, along the border of the zigzag. I am the resident bookworm and youngest daughter of a stay-at-home mom and a landscaper. A line was the only thing separating me from an entirely different education at a different school with a different student body.

Much of my educational experience was shaped by the stark contrasts between the rich and poor. I was a lower-income student. I waited in the free hot lunch line and I filed for college application fee waivers.

I went on to attend private universities and even graduated from a prestigious graduate program at Northwestern University. But through it all, I was always one of the few people of color in the room, often unable to shake off the feeling of being an out-of-place poor kid.

A young journalist, Jessica (third from left) preparing for a statewide journalism competition in Illinois.

I went to Hinsdale South High School, a public school composed of a mixture of low-income students from those housing apartments, wealthy kids on the border of the zigzags, and everyone in between. Students from my high school attended community colleges, trade schools, and a handful of Ivy League institutions. But just a five-minute drive away, the neighboring school was wealthy, with a majority white student body and a pipeline to top-tier colleges.

I convinced my school’s administration to let me shadow a student at the neighboring school, in the name of journalism and in pursuit of my own curiosity. I walked through less crowded hallways and overheard conversations about ACT prep courses and students who had applied to over 13 universities. Students streamed in and out of the lunchroom without a school monitor yelling at them to go back inside. There was no free hot lunch line.

I realized there would always be extra steps I had to take to even get close to the kids from the other side of town.

Over the course of the school day, I recognized that inequity was more than students who couldn’t wear hats or leave the lunchroom. The district border had been created by people who would never look me in the eye and tell me why I hadn’t been on the right side of the town, the one with an aquarium sciences class and greater AP class offerings.

Now, years later, I’m excited to get to work and demand answers from state officials who have the power to address the funding inequities that exist. As the new Chalkbeat reporter covering the Detroit Public Schools Community District, I know that students in the city have experienced and seen the inequities between suburban and city schools. They see school buildings in wealthier communities in better conditions and students whose parents can provide extra tutoring or test preparation.

I want to hear about the inequalities in your schools and report on those disparities, many of which I experienced. I want to shine a light on these inequities and push state officials to take action, so students don’t have to continue dealing with these inequities year after year. Send me a note with your story ideas at jvillagomez@chalkbeat.org.

I can’t wait to dig in.

How we used data to tell the human stories behind Michigan’s high teacher turnover rates

2021-03-28T12:06:49+00:00

In report after report, experts have sounded alarms about the large number of teachers leaving Michigan schools.

When Chalkbeat obtained a trove of data about the teacher workforce in Michigan, we saw an opportunity to tell the stories of the humans behind the numbers.

To do so, we dug through nearly a million rows of data and spoke with more than two dozen teachers, students, and researchers. Here’s a closer look at our reporting process.

Want to double check our work? We’ve included more technical information and code at the bottom of the page.

What is teacher turnover, anyway?

Turnover is the percentage of teachers who leave during a given year. Teachers who leave might go to another school or district, or they might leave the classroom entirely.

Turnover, as it appears in most state reports, is measured from fall to fall. In this case, a teacher turnover rate of 50% at a given school would mean that half of teachers left the school between the beginning of the school year and the next fall. This includes teachers who changed schools during the summer.

To capture midyear turnover, which research suggests is especially detrimental to students, we calculated the percentage of teachers who left between the fall and the following spring.

Who is represented in the data?

Teachers who were assigned to a classroom in Michigan. This includes long-term substitutes, librarians, career and technical education teachers, and school counselors who were assigned to teach classes.

We did not include teachers who taught in multiple districts schools since accounting for their moves would be extremely difficult. These teachers were about 2% of all teachers, and they tended to be specialists, such as music teachers, or to teach in cyber schools.

Teachers who left due to school closures are included in the data and our analysis. We considered removing them from our analysis, but opted not to because closures are significant experiences for the teachers in question and because leaving them in didn’t substantially change our findings. About 1% of Michigan schools closed in 2019. While several Detroit charter schools closed that year, eliminating school closures from our calculations would have reduced the turnover rate for Detroit charters by just over 1%.

What did we learn from the database?

The data gave us a more detailed picture of turnover than current data published by the state. The database helped us answer questions like:

How many teachers left their schools midyear?
How many teachers remained at a given school throughout a five-year period?
How many teachers left the profession between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020, after the pandemic closed schools across the state?
How many students attended schools with high turnover?
What are the demographics of students who attend the schools that teachers are most likely to leave?

How much teacher turnover is too much?

The most recent national teacher turnover rate we could find was 16%, a figure that dates to 2012.

Over the last 15 years in Michigan, the turnover rate has typically been between two and four points higher than that.

In Michigan cities, the rate is substantially higher, often exceeding 30%, according to our analysis of teacher certification data.

Some turnover is normal, even healthy. But experts we spoke with mostly said that 20% to 25% turnover should be considered problematic.

To calculate the number of students enrolled in high turnover schools, we defined “high turnover” as 30%.

Where did the data come from?

The state keeps extensive records on teachers, which are housed by the Michigan Department of Education and Michigan’s school data provider, the Center for Education Performance and Information.

Chalkbeat obtained records of teachers who were assigned to any classroom in the state between 2015 and 2020 by submitting multiple requests through the Freedom of Information Act to the Michigan Department of Education.

The database is based on teachers who were assigned to classrooms in the Registry of Educational Personnel, which is maintained by the Center for Educational Information and Performance, Michigan’s education data provider. The data includes people with teaching certifications and substitutes or licensed school counselors who are leading classrooms.

As part of the request, we asked the department to create a unique identification number for each teacher. (These were different from the unique IDs that the state assigns to every teacher, which are an important part of their personnel files.) This allowed us to track and visualize the movement of teachers over time, which hasn’t been done before by a news outlet in Michigan.

Separately, Chalkbeat obtained a list of schools with teacher turnover rates calculated by the state. This allowed us to check our work with the other data. We also used this list to figure out how many students attend schools with high teacher turnover.

How did you calculate the number of students attending high turnover schools?

A key question we wanted to answer was: Which students attend the schools with the highest teacher turnover?

To find an answer, we used a state database that contains teacher turnover rates over several years for every school in the state. It’s the same data contained in the state’s online parent dashboard.

Turnover rates from that database are available through 2018-19. First, we linked the turnover data with school enrollment data from the same year. Then we added up enrollments for subgroups, such as English learners, Black students, and students from low-income families, in schools with turnover rates of 30% or higher.

The state only provided turnover rates for school buildings. To find rates for cities and charter schools, we did our own calculations using teacher certification data.

We’re building a better system for tracking source diversity — and we need your help

2021-03-09T15:49:32+00:00

Every news organization should be able to answer this question: “Does your journalism accurately reflect the communities you serve?”

Historically, we know that disproportionately white newsrooms and the journalism they produce have not been inclusive of Black, Latino, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities, among others. Industry-wide, we must diversify our newsrooms for the sake of our future and our ability to connect with the communities we report with and for. We also know we have to develop better systems to keep track of whose voices and perspectives we’re elevating. We need those systems to hold ourselves accountable.

How we started

Two years ago, our then editor-in-chief and a working group of Chalkbeat’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging committee embarked on a source audit of two popular recurring features: How I Teach, in which reporters interview educators about their best practices and lessons learned, and First Person, essays by parents, students, teachers, and other individuals on the front lines of efforts to improve public education.

We looked for source audit examples from other newsrooms, and we soon realized there was a problem: While many media organizations are trying to do this work, we’ve been doing so in silos and starting from scratch each time.

Some individual journalists, including Ben Casselman of the New York Times, are doing this on their own, while newsrooms such as WHYY, KCUR, Spotlight PA, Wisconsin Public Radio, and North Carolina Health News have made headway with systems ranging from low-tech spreadsheets to building forms into content management systems.

For Chalkbeat’s audit, we set up a Google Sheet and manually tallied the gender and race/ethnicity demographics of First Person authors and of the teachers, administrators, and school workers featured in How I Teach throughout 2018 and into 2019. We found that Chalkbeat was overrepresenting white voices when we compared to the makeup of the school districts we cover. We shared these findings with Gabrielle Birkner, the editor newly overseeing both features, to incorporate race and gender questions into the interviewing and editing process. And in our later analysis of 2020 data, we found that we increased the share of Black and Hispanic/Latina(o) voices. To continue making progress in this area, we need to seek out more voices of Native American and Latino authors and educators, as well as those whose gender identity doesn’t conform to the male-female binary.

While we’d love to expand this kind of audit to the rest of Chalkbeat’s reporting, we realized another problem: Asking our reporters and editors to track this data manually could prove time-consuming and inefficient.

Next steps

We want to create a system where we can efficiently track the diversity of our sources over time, and hold ourselves accountable for representing diverse voices from the communities we serve. We also want to build a comprehensive source database for reporters across our expanding network of bureaus.

We want to solve these problems — and share solutions beyond Chalkbeat. In partnership with the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, this year we’ll work to create a replicable resource that any journalism organization can use to track and improve source diversity.

First, we need your help: We’re starting this project with an audit of the audits, so to speak, to learn what’s worked well and what hasn’t in other newsrooms’ systems for source tracking.

Does your newsroom have lessons to share? Or are you thinking about creating a system of your own? Either way, let us know in the form below. We’d love to reach out and circle back with our findings.

Having trouble viewing this form on mobile? Go here.

What does a chief people officer do? Meet Jennifer Bramble.

2021-01-12T18:59:54+00:00

Kary Perez, Chalkbeat’s senior marketing manager, introduces Chalkbeat’s chief people officer

News organizations are not known for their investments in human resources. Performance reviews and professional development efforts are sporadic at best, and HR professionals often fall into the category of compliance police. In December 2019, Chalkbeat hired its first-ever chief people officer (CPO), a leadership team position at the same level as editor in chief and chief revenue officer. The principle behind the move was simple — a recognition that Chalkbeat’s people are its most valuable asset and that in creating a people-first culture, the organization will flourish.

Here we get to know Jennifer Bramble, Chalkbeat’s first-ever CPO.

Tell me about your role as CPO at Chalkbeat.

Taking care of people means everything from providing basic employee needs, such as competitive salaries and benefits, to more nuanced efforts such as ensuring entry-level employees have a voice and are treated with the same level of respect as more senior colleagues.

Chalkbeat has a unique networked structure, with bureaus in eight different states and a national desk. That can be a challenge, since each location has its own identity while adhering to the same organizational values and standards. Part of my role is to be intentional about creating one unified culture, where each Chalkbeat employee is held accountable to the same standards of behavior and cultural values.

Most recently you worked at a school district in Virginia, and before that your experience was in health care nonprofits. What do you find is the same and different about a newsroom?

The longer I work in my field, the more I realize at the end of the day people are people. And organizations share common themes and challenges, no matter their discipline. Here’s one: the tendency to become siloed and not focus on cross-functional lines of communication. Another challenge I’ve encountered at Chalkbeat is one I’ve dealt with at every job: strong performers being promoted to leadership positions without necessarily being provided with the training or tools to be successful in leading other people.

One difference about working with a newsroom is that journalists have a deeper level of commitment to their craft. Journalism is a calling rather than a job that people stumble into. I have to honor that.

As CPO, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) are a major focus of your work. Could you tell me about steering Chalkbeat’s DEIB efforts?

DEIB has always been part of Chalkbeat’s work, both internal and external. But Chalkbeat wanted to be more intentional about equity and inclusion, and decided to hire a CPO who would oversee DEIB efforts. To have someone whose job is focused specifically on DEIB makes it that much more meaningful for the organization. It’s not just virtue signaling.

Before I joined, well-meaning employees came together to create a DEIB task force, but it was an aside to everyone’s day-to-day work. Having a professional on the leadership team with DEIB in their portfolio means it’s no longer a tangential initiative.

DEIB plays a major role in how we think about recruitment and hiring at Chalkbeat. According to Pew Research Center data, 77% of newsroom employees are white and 61% are men. Expanding the team at Chalkbeat means hiring staff from newsrooms where these old-school cultural dynamics still exist. Dynamics such as managers and editors reinforcing a top-down organizational structure where women and marginalized groups are hired simply to beef up diversity numbers, and power rests in the hands of white males.

We know that simply hiring non-white journalists is not the answer. We are making every effort to strengthen Chalkbeat’s culture by adding diversity at every organizational level, starting with our board of directors and our leadership team.

What do you think people might find surprising about your role?

I am much more than compliance police. I help people navigate thorny issues. My job involves supporting folks because of where we are as a society today: the civil unrest, the pandemic. A lot of people are struggling. Folks are struggling, and it’s real, and it’s happening very quietly. A lot of my job involves giving people support, and if I can’t support them myself, I can direct people toward resources.

Being Chalkbeat’s CPO is about lifting people up and enabling them to do their best work by creating an environment that supports them in doing that.

Words matter: How and why Chalkbeat chooses the descriptors we use

2020-12-18T16:29:48+00:00

Chalkbeat reporters file thousands of words every day, and every single one of those words is carefully chosen. Our reporters take their time to think of the perfect phrase or description, writing and rewriting to tell accurate, trustworthy education stories.

As Chalkbeat’s managing editor for style and standards, I work with the team of outstanding story editors who shape each story and make sure it conforms to Chalkbeat style. Because we always want to be transparent with our readers, I thought I’d explain some of our style choices and why our style evolves as the news cycle — and society — changes.

You probably have heard of the Oxford comma — that’s the second comma in the phrase “red, white, and blue.” That’s one example of style, but style goes beyond grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Style also encompasses the language we use to describe the people we write about and for. Sometimes we need just one word to identify someone: “superintendent” or “student,” for example. We include race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender if it’s relevant to the story we’re telling, and it’s important we get all of that language right. We never assume — we always ask people to self-identify.

We are careful never to “other” anyone by using a description that separates or denigrates them. Instead of using a label to identify someone with a disability or illness, Chalkbeat uses people-first language. So instead of saying someone suffers from or is afflicted with Parkinson’s, people-first language describes them as a person with Parkinson’s. People-first language also applies to pronouns. If someone identifies as gender nonbinary and uses the pronouns they/them/theirs, we honor those pronouns and use them.

Like our reporting, the language we use is evolving as the world changes. A year ago, none of our reporters had heard of coronavirus or had written a deep dive on school air circulation. When we need to add terms such as COVID-19 or distance learning, the story editors discuss each one and often ask for opinions from throughout Chalkbeat. When we want to add a term describing race, ethnicity, or gender identity, we look to organizations such as NABJ, NAHJ, or NLGJA for guidance.

In June, after George Floyd’s death, Chalkbeat added antiracism to our list of core values, promising that by committing to antiracism we can “offer stronger, more honest coverage, and build more trust with our readers.” As we reflected on what that meant with respect to language, we decided to capitalize the word Black when describing race, people, and culture, giving the term and the people and culture it describes as much weight and respect as when we capitalize the words Indigenous or Latino.

The emergence of the term Latinx is another example of language evolution, but in this case, Chalkbeat has held back on adopting the descriptor.

The newish term is meant to be inclusive of all Latino/Hispanic ethnicities and gender identities. (The Spanish language has feminine and masculine words, and Latino is masculine.) But a recent Pew study found that only 3% of U.S. Latinos/Hispanics use the term, and we don’t want readers to be confused. If someone self-identifies as Latinx for a Chalkbeat story, we honor their choice and include an explainer.

As language continues to evolve, so will our style guide at Chalkbeat. And we’ll continue to tinker with every word in every story and have deep conversations — even healthy disagreements — about language choices. Those choices go beyond individual sentences or even stories. They reflect our culture and our values.

Meet Philadelphia’s bureau chief: What we’re watching as students learn remotely

2020-09-16T20:17:24+00:00

Since March, students in Philadelphia have been inundated with insurmountable obstacles, thanks to a pandemic that has altered the face of their classrooms. Safely reopening schools and connecting with students about the unrest happening around the killings of Black Americans, have become two of the biggest challenges for students and educators here.

Coming on board as Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s bureau chief, I see my top priority as reporting on a strained educational landscape for 200,000 students in district and charter schools, most of whom live near or below the poverty line.

One could say I have a multicultural background. I’m a native of Houston, Texas, and grew up in a predominantly white, Jewish neighborhood where I attended bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras. I was born, baptized, and raised in an A.M.E. church in the city’s Third Ward. I also attended Catholic school to later graduate from a public high school (one of the biggest in Texas) before attending an HBCU in Louisiana, where I switched majors from accounting to journalism.
I come from a family of educators. My late mother was a high school biology teacher with the Houston Independent School District. Mom loved her students and expressed sadness at times not seeing them grow into their full potential. My deceased maternal grandmother was a teacher and later a counselor at the Mississippi School for the Blind. Her husband, my late grandfather, was one of the first Black principals in Jackson, Miss. — this during an era when it was almost a death sentence for Black people to exhibit advanced academic skills in the South.
My upbringing and passion for community storytelling are reasons why I’m dedicated to education journalism.
As a resident of West Philadelphia for 21 years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how the classroom climate for our students has evolved dramatically. I’ve also worked in Bucks County and South Jersey and am well aware of the stark differences in the region’s academic offerings. Government funding of local education, school choice, teachers’ salaries, campus safety, disciplinary tactics, and immigration policies are also major topics of concern.

I recall a moment as city editor at The Philadelphia Tribune when I was confronted by former School Superintendent Paul Vallas, who was irate over the paper’s front page coverage of students not having enough textbooks. Vallas thought the reporting was personal. I assured him it was not and that our primary duty was addressing the many concerns of students and their parents – not him.
My commitment to the community will remain steadfast at Chalkbeat. Our coverage will be focused journalism driven to make an impact for our students. As you may know, The Notebook, which heavily covered equity in public education in Philly, is partnering with Chalkbeat. I’m still good friends with its former editor and publisher Paul Socolar and some former staffers and will continue its legacy of thorough reporting on education here.
For now, let’s take a look at what the Chalkbeat Philly bureau is watching as our schools operate remotely during this pandemic.

The students

During a time when social injustice has become a major point of concern, the emotional support of in-person learning will be missed by a student body that is largely Black and Latino. For many of our kids, the loss of guidance and hugs from teachers will have a significant effect on their learning growth.

The teachers

Aside from the students, those struggling the most with remote learning are Philly teachers. The stress of students not registered for class and skepticism of the district’s reopening plan top their concerns.

The superintendent

Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite, like other school chiefs across the country, didn’t ask for this crisis. His move to create an equity coalition and task force has been widely applauded. We will continue to watch the developments of his reopening plan.

Learning retention

A major worry for teachers and parents is learning loss. The hurdle here is to make sure students stay on track academically as they learn in an untraditional classroom setting that may not work for every student.

Student poverty

Philly has the unfortunate distinction of being “America’s poorest big city.” For some students, food and housing insecurity are a part of life.

Police distrust

Students like all of us are confronted by images of unarmed men and women beaten and killed by police. The district has already been criticized for not having adequate mental health counselors on site. But what about services at home as students continue to see these killings over the Internet?

Students will see a change to discipline in schools when they return to in-person classes. Hite made the choice to put school police under a forward-thinking police reformer who has led a move away from arresting students and working toward mentoring and providing social services. The school police are now called “safety officers.”

Safety of educators

The primary concern for principals and district officials is the rush for them to return to campus without a concrete plan in place that ensures their safety is paramount. Questions loom on the level of cleaning and maintenance of campuses already plagued by the district’s ongoing asbestos crisis.

Limited learning spaces

Free library branches have reopened since closing in March and have served as central locations for student access centers. These centers provide a space for students who can’t safely stay at home during days of digital school learning. There have been complaints of branch spaces being overcrowded at times with limited resources.

Broken technology

Equity and access are issues here. District officials announced they will loan Chromebooks to every student who needs them “to ensure all students have access to digital learning opportunities while schools remain closed.” But repair locations for these devices may be too far for parents, and hours of operation may not be compatible with work schedules of caregivers.

Mass transit worries

SEPTA will at times cut back on bus, train, and trolley services as it moves to accommodate a smaller number of commuters amid the pandemic. Affected routes along the Market-Frankford Line and the Broad Street line will indefinitely affect students’ ability to travel around town.

Though SEPTA says its services are clean, riders still say they don’t feel safe and more could be done to enforce riders to wear masks and adhere to social distancing guidelines.

These points should not be viewed as an attack on district leaders, rather a way of helping us at the Chalkbeat Philly bureau gauge the progress of remote learning for students as they prepare to return for in-person classes. The next few months will be critical for district officials, teachers and students.
If you have concerns regarding the remote learning environment for the city’s students, and they are not listed here, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Meet our newest story editor, Cara Fitzpatrick

2020-08-28T22:00:17+00:00

I moved nearly 3,000 miles from my home in Washington State to take my first job as an education reporter. I was so excited to cover education that I agreed to work in an office I had never seen, in a part of Florida I had never visited. I started the job just before Christmas, when all of the other reporters were on vacation. I was sitting in an empty newsroom, listening to the scattershot noises of the police scanner, when the door burst open and in walked one of the most colorful characters I have ever encountered in a newsroom: the gossip columnist.

He grabbed a desk nearby, and I listened with a mixture of horror and fascination as he spoke to a source. Every third word out of his mouth was profanity. Finally, he hung up the phone and introduced himself. When I said that I was the new education reporter, he scrunched up his nose and spit out words I’ll never forget.

“No one cares about education. Find the scandals. They care about scandals,” he said.

You might expect that attitude from a gossip columnist, but I have encountered it many times in my 18 years as a journalist, often from editors who had the power to shape news coverage of their communities. The idea that education is somehow less important, less interesting, or less relevant than politics, business, or crime has always been wrong. These last few months — as public and private schools across the country have closed their buildings and struggled to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic — have shown just how wrong. The vital and complex role that schools play in our society has been vividly demonstrated for the doubters. There has, perhaps, never been a more important time to invest in education journalism.

That’s why I am proud to join Chalkbeat as a story editor, working with our bureaus in Chicago and Philadelphia. As a growing nonprofit news organization, Chalkbeat has a mission about which I care deeply. Journalists here are “committed to covering one of America’s most important stories: the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education.”

When done well, education coverage is about race, gender, class, and politics. It’s about racism and sexism. It’s about housing and income. Covering education isn’t just worthwhile for news organizations that are invested in their communities. It’s essential.

During my career in journalism, I have sometimes had to fight to write stories about children who weren’t well served by the American education system, particularly Black students in under-resourced communities. At times, the message that I should focus on other students or other schools was conveyed subtly. Other times, it was explicit. And yet, some of my best work as a reporter was done in defiance of that message. At Chalkbeat, coverage is centered around equity and, in my short time here, I have seen how seriously the reporters, editors, and other staff members take that mission.

In Philadelphia, where Chalkbeat just launched its newest bureau, senior writer Dale Mezzacappa, explained one of the reasons that she has continued to write about education: “Bluntly, the American system doesn’t just tolerate racial and economic segregation and inequity, it is built on it. And it sucks all of us in. Without a second thought, individual families build their lives around the idea of ‘moving to a good school district,’ which most often means leaving one that has many low-income students (and usually, students of color) for one that has fewer.”

Chalkbeat also has a deep commitment to local news, with eight bureaus operating across the country. It’s both thrilling and bittersweet to join a news organization that is expanding. In the last two decades, I have worked at four local newspapers. All four have gone through devastating and repeated rounds of layoffs and buyouts, while closing regional bureaus and shrinking coverage areas. Every education team I have been part of has grown smaller, and the two bureaus I worked in years ago have closed. Like so many journalists, I have endured pay cuts, abysmal health insurance, and starting a family without the benefit of paid maternity leave.

The collapse of local news has been devastating, with so many of my former colleagues leaving the news industry. It is because of these experiences that I value what Chalkbeat has been able to build: a sustainable nonprofit newsroom with a diverse mix of funding that serves as a model for other news organizations.

Despite all of the changes in journalism, I have been fortunate to continue to cover education, first as a reporter and now as an editor. It is the easiest thing in the world to accept a job at a news organization I admire, with colleagues I rely on — first, as a reader — to tell one of America’s most important news stories.

Get to know Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s senior reporter

2020-08-18T19:43:42+00:00

Today we are proud to launch Chalkbeat Philadelphia, the latest community in our growing network of local newsrooms devoted to education journalism.

Typically on launch day, we introduce readers to the journalists who will be providing Chalkbeat’s rich coverage. But this is no typical launch, since Chalkbeat Philadelphia is opening thanks to our partnership with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, which has a 26-year history of education coverage.

And Dale Mezzacappa, our first Philadelphia senior reporter, needs no introduction to observers of the city’s schools. Dale is the Notebook’s longtime contributing editor, and before that she was the Philadelphia schools’ beat reporter and senior education writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

We asked Dale to reflect on her time covering this crucial beat and to look ahead at what she hopes to accomplish at Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

What makes covering Philadelphia schools special? Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own character, and a treasure trove of interesting stories.

On the school beat, a reporter can profile a great principal one day, write a complicated finance story the next, have fun in a kindergarten classroom after that, and unearth some juicy political intrigue before the week is out. I’ve covered test-cheating scandals and personal triumphs, inspirational teachers and union battles.

Philadelphia’s district was run by the state for 17 years — a takeover precipitated in 2000 when the then-superintendent suggested (correctly, based on the data) that the state funding system discriminated by race. He used the word “apartheid.” This insulted the then-governor, who responded by taking the district over. State control was sold as a rescue mission to pull the city schools out of financial and academic distress, but it was during this period that the district was so underfunded that one year it laid off all its counselors and nurses. In short: never a dull moment.

You’ve covered education for many years. Why have you stuck with this beat? At some point I realized that education ranks with the biggest and most important stories one could cover. For one thing, literally every person has a stake in it. But the governmental, economic, and tax systems are counterproductive to its mandate to educate all students to their potential.

Years ago, the big narrative was that America spent more on education than any other country in the world but still ranked below other nations in achievement. There was much hand wringing. At the Education Writers Association national conference around that time, Andreas Schleicher, a German education expert, looked at the American system with an outsider’s eye and pointed out why the country wasn’t getting its money’s worth. His reasoning holds up today, and it is not that low-performing districts waste money, as critics charge. It is that the country does not allocate its funds efficiently. Despite efforts to balance wealth disparities through state education aid, the tax and funding mechanisms in almost all states lavish resources on the well-off while denying crucial services to many who need them. This is not a recipe for success. Most other countries do what logic, good sense, and economic efficiency would dictate: they spend more money on those with the greatest needs, and they don’t tie education quality so closely to where a person lives.

Bluntly, the American system doesn’t just tolerate racial and economic segregation and inequity, it is built on it. And it sucks all of us in. Without a second thought, individual families build their lives around the idea of “moving to a good school district,” which most often means leaving one that has many low-income students (and usually, students of color) for one that has fewer. Teachers are paid relatively poorly compared to other professions, and then — again, by design — the least experienced are sent to do the toughest jobs. To top it off, when looking for ways to “reform” and “fix” poor performing districts, the system is absolved, racism is ignored, and instead the people who work in and run the “low-achieving” schools — not to mention parents and students themselves — are blamed for the disappointing outcomes.

This way of life is so entrenched that changing it in any substantive way has always seemed impossible. But maybe now, as people begin to confront the country’s original sin, there’s a chance that avenues of change might open up to make the system more fair, equitable — and, by the way, as Schleicher pointed out, more efficient.

What is a favorite story (or stories) that you wrote or a character from an article? I spent 13 years, on and off, following one group of West Philadelphia sixth graders who were promised a free college education by George Weiss, a wealthy philanthropist who was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. The Belmont 112. It was relatively early in my time covering the beat and, in retrospect, I had a lot to learn. The participants agreed to it, but in many ways the project was terribly invasive. The promise was viewed by many at the time (including some of my editors) as an automatic ticket to success. It wasn’t.

I tried to document as incisively and sensitively as I could the barriers these students faced despite the offer, but I fear that didn’t always come through.

Several of the boys went to prison. It was during one of the peak eras of teen pregnancy; the first girl to have a child gave birth at 13. Within the first few years six or seven of the boys were killed by gun violence, most caught up in the city’s vicious drug trade. I found myself at several funerals, but also attended the Tuskegee graduation of one student who literally became a rocket scientist with a career at NASA. He had an amazing mother, and that story ran on Mothers’ Day.

These students are now in their 40s, some are my Facebook friends, and whether they earned a degree or not, from what I can tell many went on to do quite well, establishing careers and families and becoming involved in civic life in their communities. Many are still connected to each other, to the staff who worked with them, and to Weiss.

The program still exists — it is called Say Yes to Education. Realizing that the godlike promise to randomly chosen individuals is not enough to truly change lives in such an inequitable system, Say Yes has evolved to work with entire cities to improve social services and school districts while offering last-dollar scholarships to all their public high school graduates.

What are some of the topics that are top of mind for you to cover in the coming months? Chalkbeat Philadelphia will continue the legacy of the Notebook, which was founded in 1994 by parents, teachers, and others who felt that the mainstream media (me, at the time), did not pay enough attention to the voice of people in the communities. The Notebook was “explicit about its belief that public schools play a vital role in a democratic society, its commitment to support greater quality and equity in public education, and its support for a strong voice for parents, students, educators, and communities in school improvement...a watchdog [that] monitors and questions educational officials and other public officials on their commitment to these same values.” To fulfill its mission, the Notebook always hewed to the highest standards of accuracy, fairness, context, and storytelling.

Chalkbeat’s mission is “to provide deep, local coverage of education policy and practice to inform the decisions and actions that lead to better outcomes for children and families, especially those in low-income communities.” I don’t see a lot of daylight between those two statements.

The story of education in the U.S. is one of equity, quality, and opportunity. I hope Chalkbeat Philadelphia will find stories that will make a difference for students, parents, and communities in the city. And we want to hear from you.

How can people get in touch with you?

They can email me at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org or follow me on Twitter: @dalemezz. Readers can sign up for our weekly newsletter here.

Chalkbeat’s newsroom staff forms a union

2020-08-18T10:00:00+00:00

Dear readers,

Earlier this month, Chalkbeat’s editorial staff reached out to let me know they wanted to form a union — the Chalkbeat Guild. They asked me to voluntarily recognize their decision. When I said yes, I felt the chill of making history together.

Will it be weird for our leaders to sit at a (virtual) bargaining table with people normally known for reporting about bargaining tables? Yes. Will it advance Chalkbeat’s vision of better, more equitable schools through excellent local journalism? My hope is another wholehearted yes.

The Chalkbeat Guild is a passionate group, deeply committed to Chalkbeat’s mission and values. We share the Guild’s optimism that this change will continue to strengthen Chalkbeat and our pursuit of the strong, independent local press that is required to ensure every child has access to a quality education.

Below is the Chalkbeat Guild’s full statement to form a union, which I am excited to share at this important juncture. We have a really big mission here. To fulfill it, we need the full commitment of our readers, our supporters, and our team. The new Chalkbeat Guild is one more way to formalize our team’s commitment, not just today but long into the future.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Green

Introducing the Chalkbeat Guild

The reporters, story editors, engagement team, and visuals staff at Chalkbeat are excited to announce that we have formed a union with the Writers Guild of America, East.

We are thrilled to take this step in concert with Chalkbeat management, which swiftly recognized our union. We believe that every child deserves an excellent education and that sustaining vital newsrooms is crucial to that mission.

As Chalkbeat continues to grow, it is imperative that those closest to the journalism we produce have a greater role in the decisions that affect us. Our decision to unionize and negotiate a contract reflects our desire to help strengthen this news organization.

We are grateful for the work Chalkbeat’s leaders have done to build a financially sustainable model as newsrooms around the country struggle. We are invested in Chalkbeat as a nonprofit that fills local news gaps and prioritizes meaningful education journalism. We seek to protect what makes Chalkbeat great and push our organization to fulfill its mission.

“We have a really big mission here,” said Chalkbeat CEO Elizabeth Green. “To fulfill it, we need the full commitment of our readers, our supporters, and our team. The Chalkbeat Guild is one more way to formalize our team’s commitment, not just today but long into the future.”

While Chalkbeat has invested in improving staff diversity, our bureaus remain largely unrepresentative of our communities. In a recent letter committing Chalkbeat to anti-racism, Elizabeth promised a serious effort to hire more people of color. As a union, we want to ensure this promise is fulfilled by establishing a stronger process to hire, protect, and retain employees from many underrepresented communities — including those who are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American and who come from a range of economic backgrounds.

As we grow our diverse workforce, it is crucial that pay be equitable and transparent. And while layoffs and furloughs are not expected in the immediate future, we hope to establish separation policies and equitable protections for our workers regardless of age.

Our teams have worked relentlessly during the COVID-19 crisis and our record readership shows how valuable our journalism is today. We recognize the need for flexibility in a field with unpredictable hours. But now more than ever, it is important that we establish reasonable protections so that employees do not burn out, but feel supported and stay long-term.

We are excited that Chalkbeat continues to pursue opportunities to expand into new communities. Our shared goal is to ensure that independent and powerful journalism remains at the forefront of all that we do. We look forward to elevating the voices of those primarily responsible for producing the news as we explore new bureaus, revenue streams, and ways we reach our audiences.

By developing our first contract, we are looking forward to building on our organization’s successes and having a larger role in solving our industry’s toughest challenges.

Contact the Guild at chalkbeatunion@gmail.com.

A call to action to Chalkbeat readers: Ask Congress to support local news

2020-07-31T09:00:00+00:00

In May, two months into this Covid crisis, I wrote to you explaining why Chalkbeat asked Congress for half a billion dollars. Since then, the importance of the local news we were advocating for has only increased, while the economic future of newsrooms like Chalkbeat remains in question. And so, along with a coalition of news leaders and community activists, we have continued to advocate that taxpayer dollars must support the work of informing and engaging citizens.

Last week, our coalition celebrated a breakthrough. Reps. Anne Kirkpatrick (D) of Arizona and Dan Newhouse (R) of Washington co-sponsored the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. The bill is designed to financially support local news organizations in three ways: (1) a $250 tax credit for news consumers to spend on a subscription or membership to a local news publication or outlet of their choice; (2) a payroll tax credit for news organizations to help cover reporters’ salaries; and (3) a tax credit for small- to medium-sized businesses to advertise in local news organizations, whether print, digital, or broadcast.

Here’s our ask of you, our readers: If you believe in reporting that works for communities, like the work we do at Chalkbeat, we ask that you reach out to your representative and senators to advocate for stimulus support for local news. Specifically, we want members of the House to support the Kirkpatrick-Newhouse bill, and we need senators to step up and sponsor a Senate version as part of a broader stimulus package. Go to the Rebuild Local News site for information on how to call, write, or tweet your members of Congress.

As education journalists, we will never make recommendations about how to shape education policy or funding. But in the area of local news, we have a duty to call for what is needed. We would not be asking you to take action if we didn’t believe it was important — for our work, for our communities, and for democracy itself.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth

Coming soon: Chalkbeat Philadelphia

2020-07-30T09:00:00+00:00

Dear readers,

I am so excited to let you know that Chalkbeat is adding a new community to our network. On August 17, we will open a new bureau in Philadelphia, thanks to a partnership with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.

Full disclosure: I’m biased about Philadelphia. It’s where I’m from, and my grandfather and his siblings credited the school system with pulling them out of poverty. Years later, my family remained committed to Philadelphia schools, making sure they served kids who grew up like they did. “I identify with these kids,” my Uncle Sydney, who served as principal of Kensington High School for Girls from 1971 to 1990, told the Inquirer.

I am so proud to carry their torch, and I cannot imagine a more important time to do it. The launch of Chalkbeat Philadelphia coincides with the start of a historic school year, in a city with unique challenges and ambitious plans to tackle them. Philadelphia is the poorest among the 10 most populous U.S. cities, with 35 % of children living under the federal poverty line. And yet, the story is not all bleak. The district is at the tail end of a bold five-year campaign to have all 4th graders proficient in reading; millions of dollars of investment has yielded significant increases in 3rd- and 4th-grade English language scores. We will continue to report on the largest, most comprehensive literacy push in the nation, ensuring other communities can build on Philadelphia’s successes and learn from their mistakes.

Chalkbeat plans to build on the 26-year legacy of the Notebook. Longtime Notebook contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa will continue on as the senior reporter for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Prior to joining the Notebook she was the Philadelphia schools’ beat reporter and senior education writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Dale will be joined by a soon to-be-hired bureau chief. (By the way, we’re hiring!)

And to our future readers of Chalkbeat Philadelphia — we won’t be able to do this without you. If you have ideas for us, feel free to reach out to us at philly.tips@chalkbeat.org. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth
Chalkbeat CEO and co-founder

I’m Chalkbeat’s social media strategist. Here’s how I’m helping us rise to the challenge of covering 2020

2020-07-10T15:03:15+00:00

My Christmas present from my parents my senior year of high school was getting to stay in our house. I knew we were poor — there was virtually no money saved for the elite college I had selected — but I didn’t know we were on-the-verge-of-losing-our-house poor.

This feels like a distant snapshot of life at this point, but it’s closely tied to where I find myself now.

As a student and later as an after-school technology teacher, I saw firsthand the inequities and challenges in education for people of color and low-income families. Now I’m here at Chalkbeat, a news nonprofit reporting on those inequities, during a pandemic that’s exacerbating them and a national reckoning with systemic racism. It’s an important time to be doing this work.

So how do I plan to use my skills to report on these inequalities?

Before joining Chalkbeat as its first-ever social media strategist, I was a digital producer covering national news. I wrote and produced breaking news stories for dozens of local TV stations, while using social media to keep our readers updated. It taught me to be quick and level-headed in high-stress situations. Most importantly, it taught me to be accurate and fair. (If you ever want to learn from mistakes, make them in front of millions of readers — I promise you’ll never do it again.)

These skills have served me well and I hope they’re benefitting you, too. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve prioritized steering our social media channels responsibly and with sensitivity. And while these last couple of months have been decidedly outside the norm, they’ve helped clarify some larger goals I have for Chalkbeat, our readers, and how we use our social media channels.

Here are four things I’m trying to achieve with Chalkbeat’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube pages:

Bring you breaking and big education news that is timely and accurate
Make sure our social media channels mirror our breadth of work
Create and share stories that are reflective of education in America today
Foster a sense of community between Chalkbeat and our readers

What this means is that I am trying to have more conversations with you in more places — something that has been made both harder and easier because of the coronavirus.

It seems like there’s more opportunity now to foster engagement with people online, because more of us are at home. But considering the circumstances under which parents, teachers, students, and more have found themselves homebound, I know this isn’t actually true.

Time is stretched thinner for many, so I hope you know Chalkbeat truly values the interactions we’ve had with our readers online during the coronavirus outbreak. We know you’re talking to us between teaching, distance learning challenges, taking care of kids and siblings, and many other worries and responsibilities.

To that end, Chalkbeat’s engagement team wants to be able to meet you where you feel most comfortable talking to us — on social media, over email, Zoom, via text message — to discuss what education looks like for you and your community.

I’ve talked with some of you before — I interned for Chalkbeat’s Colorado bureau as a fresh-faced college graduate five years ago. I wrote about some topics you and I both care about: student learning, college readiness, and English-language learners.

I’ve been thinking about why these topics matter to me and the only genuine answer I can give is that it’s because of my own education story.

I’m a Latina from an impoverished area along the U.S.-Mexico border, where breakfast tacos and tamales are abundant and everyone treats you like an old friend. I’m the daughter of a migrant farm worker who had Molotov cocktails thrown into her labor camp when she was a child and a man so poor he didn’t have his first bed until he was married.

The 2008 recession accelerated my family’s downward financial spiral, much like how COVID-19 is doing to families now. We almost lost our house right before I left for college. I amassed a lot of debt to get a degree, but I also received the higher education my mom was never afforded.

This is my story. I see it reflected in our coverage — and not just when there’s a pandemic. But I know there’s many more stories that need to be told, some that look like mine and some that look completely different.

What’s your story? I’m listening.

Announcing the Chalkbeat Student Takeover

2020-06-19T18:42:08+00:00

Dear readers,

Today, on Juneteenth, I am so proud to announce a new project to elevate the voices of young people: the Chalkbeat Student Takeover.

Since May 25, the day a police officer killed George Floyd, we’ve gathered several times as a team to reflect and share. One Black colleague talked about his fatigue at continuously seeing people like him unjustly killed. Another spoke about being the mother of a Black boy, and her accompanying emotions every time a George Floyd, or Trayvon Martin, or Michael Brown made headlines. Many of us agreed that our journalism’s focus on education and equity was more important than ever, but also not enough. One coworker made a powerful suggestion: What could we do to hear even more from students, and invite others to listen to them, too? Enthusiastic yeses filled our Zoom chat box.

Three weeks later, we are handing the mic over to young people, thanks to the 300 submissions we received in response to a callout asking how protests and conversations about racism are affecting them.

The students’ powerful stories express anger, convey skepticism, offer ideas for change, and demonstrate resilience.

We chose Juneteenth to announce this project to our readers after reading one historian’s description of the holiday: “a potent life-giving event … a joyful retort to messages of overt racism.” We can’t imagine a better description of the student voices we have the privilege of showcasing.

The project will launch on Monday with a 24-hour homepage takeover and continue with content throughout the week. I hope you’ll find the six-word stories, art pieces, social media commentary, and First Person essays as moving as we have. As always, we invite your feedback at community@chalkbeat.org.

Sincerely,
Bene Cipolla
Editor-in-chief

La promesa de Chalkbeat a nuestros lectores

2020-06-08T21:01:28+00:00

Read in English.

Queridos lectores,

Mientras lamentamos la muerte de George Floyd a manos de los mismos policías que juraron protegerlo; mientras presenciamos el sufrimiento desproporcional de comunidades de color en la pandemia de coronavirus; mientras el presidente intensifica la violencia racial, nosotros en Chalkbeat queremos decir que Las Vidas Negras Importan.

También queremos subrayar nuestro compromiso con los principales del antirracismo agregándolo a la lista de valores centrales que guían nuestro trabajo y gobiernan a nuestro equipo. Como ha escrito el profesor Ibram X. Kendi, no es suficiente no ser racista. Debemos ser antirracistas. Debemos, en el caso de Chalkbeat, hacer explícito este elemento implícito de nuestra misión y valores. Solo al oponernos públicamente y explícitamente al racismo podremos lograr nuestra misión de informar e involucrar a las comunidades menos servidas por la educación pública.

Yo sé que algunos podrán ver esta declaración como una traición a nuestros valores periodísticos, y hasta podría provocarles a que desconfíen de los informes de Chalkbeat. A estas personas necesito enunciar con toda claridad que nuestro compromiso con decir la verdad sin volvernos en activistas ni en ideólogos no ha cambiado.

Tomamos ahora este paso porque creemos que siendo transparente y claro sobre cuáles son nuestros valores, nos permitirá darles un periodismo más sólido y honesto, y además generar más confianza con lectores. Cuando escribimos sobre el sistema de escuelas públicas, sabemos que sigue manchado por el legado de los sistemas de opresión racial, como tantas otras instituciones estadounidenses. Sabemos que las escuelas también deben adoptar el antirracismo para servir a todos los niños. Sabemos que, históricamente, la prensa también es imbuida de racismo. Mientras construyamos un nuevo sistema de noticias locales, debemos desmantelar las prácticas y tradiciones periodísticas que respaldan la supremacía blanca: los dueños de las casas de publicación son mayormente hombres blancos; las salas de redacción y su liderazgo son desproporcionadamente blancas; y la tradición de objetividad silencia las voces y las perspectivas de la mayoría de los estadounidenses que son miembros de grupos marginados. No podemos alcanzar nuestro potencial para servir a los estadounidenses de todas las razas y orígenes con las noticias y la información que necesitan si los periodistas no adopten el antirracismo.

Este trabajo comienza en nuestra propia casa. En Chalkbeat, tenemos una sala de redacción que es más representativa de las comunidades a las que servimos, pero no lo suficiente. (Nuestra sala de redacción es 16% negra, 13% latina, 13% asiática y 58% blanca). Continuaremos invitando a más personas de color a colaborar con Chalkbeat. Mientras tanto, como muchas organizaciones que hacen crecer la diversidad racial de sus equipos, todavía tenemos trabajo por hacer para que todas las personas en Chalkbeat se sientan bienvenidas. Y aunque hayamos mejorado, los líderes de Chalkbeat aún no son suficientemente diversos. Estamos trabajando activamente para enfrentar esta realidad. Además, debemos seguir invitando y respondiendo a los comentarios honestos de nuestros lectores. Cuando se señala problemas, tanto en nuestra sala de redacción que en los espacios digitales donde publicamos, debemos ser reflexivos y estar listos para cambiar, incluso cuando el cambio nos incomoda.

Como periodista, conozco el poder y los límites de las palabras. Esta carta no es lo que importa; lo que sucede después, a causa de esta carta, es lo que importa. Las historias que escribimos, las verdades que contamos, las mentiras que destacamos, la esperanza que magnificamos. Honrar nuestro compromiso, ahora formalizado, de luchar contra el racismo es una gran responsabilidad, y requerirá trabajo y mucha contabilidad. No tenemos todas las respuestas. Tendremos que encontrarlos paso a paso.

Soy una líder blanca con mucho que aprender, y estoy agradecida por poder contar con mis compañeros de trabajo en este viaje. Estoy agradecida también con nuestra junta directiva, que nos responsabiliza por la defensa de nuestros valores y el cumplimiento de nuestros compromisos. Estoy agradecida con nuestros lectores tan leales. Muchos de ustedes trabajan y luchan en nombre de los niños (o son estudiantes ustedes mismos). Además de eso, al apoyar a Chalkbeat, insisten que la historia de la educación debe ser contada con honestidad e independencia. Espero que podamos contar con su confianza si la tenemos, y ganarla si no la tenemos todavía.

Sinceramente,

Elizabeth

¿Tiene Ud. preguntas o comentarios sobre esta carta? Nos encantaría saber de usted: envíe un correo electrónico a community@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat’s pledge to readers

2020-06-04T16:44:56+00:00

Leer en Español

Dear readers,

As we grieve the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police officers sworn to protect him; as we witness the disproportionate ravaging of communities of color in the coronavirus pandemic; as we watch the president escalate racial violence, we at Chalkbeat want to say that Black Lives Matter.

We also want to underscore our commitment to that truth by adding antiracism to the list of core values that guide our work and govern our team. As professor Ibram X. Kendi has written, it is not enough to be “not racist.” We must be antiracist. We must, in Chalkbeat’s case, make an implicit element of our mission and values explicit. Only by publicly and explicitly standing against racism can we achieve our mission of informing and engaging the communities least served by public education.

I know that some might view this statement as a departure from our journalistic values and may even trust Chalkbeat’s reporting less as a result. I need to state clearly that our commitment to telling the truth without consideration of ideology or advocacy has not changed.

We take this step because we believe and hope that we can in fact offer stronger, more honest coverage, and build more trust with our readers, by making our values transparent and clear. When we write about the public school system, we know it is founded on and imbued with the legacy of systems of racial oppression, as so many American institutions are. We know that schools must themselves embrace antiracism if they are to serve all children. We know the legacy press is another institution imbued with racism. As we recreate local news, we must dismantle the journalistic practices and traditions that uphold white supremacy, such as overwhelmingly white male ownership structures, disproportionately white newsrooms and newsroom leadership, and a tradition of objectivity that silences the voices and perspectives of the majority of Americans who are members of marginalized groups and eschews writing directly about uncomfortable truths. Only if journalists embrace antiracism can we fulfill our potential to serve Americans of all races and backgrounds with the news and information they need to participate in civic life.

This work starts at home. At Chalkbeat, we now have a newsroom that is more representative of the communities we serve, but not representative enough. (Our newsroom is 16% black, 13% Latinx, 13% Asian, and 58% white.) We will continue inviting more people of color to Chalkbeat. Meanwhile, like many organizations that grow the racial diversity of their teams, we still have work to do to make every person at Chalkbeat feel fully welcome. And while we have made improvements, we do not have racial diversity represented sufficiently in Chalkbeat’s leadership. We are actively working to address this reality. Additionally, we must continue to seek, invite, and respond to honest feedback from our readers. With our team and with our readers, when problems are pointed out, we must be reflective and ready to change, even when change is uncomfortable.

As a journalist, I know the power and limits of words. This letter isn’t what matters; what happens afterward — because we wrote this letter — is what matters. The stories we write, the truths we tell, the lies we highlight, the hope we magnify. Honoring our commitment, now formal, to stand against racism will take work and accountability. We do not have all the answers. We will have to find them step by step.

I am a white leader with a lot to learn, and I am grateful for my teammates on this journey. I am grateful for our board, which is holding us accountable for upholding our values and acting on our commitments. I am grateful for our loyal readers. So many of you work and fight on behalf of children (or are students yourselves). On top of that, you fight for education’s story to be told with honesty and independence by supporting Chalkbeat. I hope we can continue to earn your trust if we have it, and build it if we don’t.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

Got questions or feedback about this letter? We’d love to hear from you — send an email to community@chalkbeat.org.

Why Chalkbeat asked Congress for half a billion dollars

2020-05-08T16:04:41+00:00

On May 5, Chalkbeat did something we have never done before. We sent a letter to Congress asking for half a billion dollars — for Chalkbeat, and for other local news outlets like us. You can read the letter, which we signed along with nine other organizations, here.

Usually, this is the kind of campaign that Chalkbeat writes about, not participates in. We are independent journalists in the business of telling the truth, not telling people what to do about it. After all, how can we hold members of Congress accountable for their actions if we are also writing to them asking for money?

But while we will never make recommendations about how to design public education, in the area of local news, we are the designers. And so we have a responsibility to say what is needed.

The pandemic has made what is needed more clear than ever before. The commercial models that once made it possible for most voters to know what their city councils, school boards, and state legislatures were up to no longer work. Newspapers are shutting down and laying off or furloughing reporters in unprecedented droves, the culmination of two decades of persistent cuts in our nation’s reporting corps. Local television and radio news are also suffering.

Yet every citizen very much still needs and deserves to know what their local, state, and federal government is up to. And we need more than that: we need to have our opinions and experiences and voices seen and heard by the elected officials charged with serving us.

The way to make this happen is to replace the commercial business model we have relied on until now with a nonprofit one that draws its support from old sources like advertising, but also new ones like donations, membership contributions, and, yes, government support. The more diversified our revenue portfolio, the more independent we can be. Because the longer our list of donors, the less likely it is that any one donor can start to control us. That means that far from paving a path to government control, government support can actually strengthen the independence of local news.

We know that it is possible for citizens and taxpayers to decide we value an institution because of its independence, and give it dollars accordingly, with no strings attached, because we already do it. We do it with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports public radio and television stations across America, and we do it with Voice of America, which offers independent reporting on global issues.

We now need a new, more robust public media than what our beloved public broadcasters can provide alone. The support that news organizations including Chalkbeat are receiving from the Paycheck Protection Program, part of the CARES Act, should be seen not as a relief program for a momentary challenge, but as a bridge to a new way of strengthening one of our democracy’s classic public goods.

And yes, Chalkbeat decided to apply for the small-business support program in the CARES Act. We just received the deposit in our bank account, $1.1 million that will help us weather a period of financial uncertainty in which the work we do has never been more valuable. Like so many other nonprofit organizations, Chalkbeat’s financial security is threatened by the pandemic and its catastrophic economic consequences. We depend on donors, corporate sponsors, and our readers for support. Many have stepped up their giving to local news during the crisis. But unfortunately others are having to pause or contract their giving as the economy struggles.

We are optimistic that Chalkbeat can rise to the occasion as incredibly important decisions about the future of public education loom in all of our immediate futures. We have big plans. We would rather serve many more places, not fewer, and we would rather expand and deepen our offerings in the communities where we already work, not contract.

To make that possible, we need to work more closely with our communities than ever before. Every single source of support counts. So please, keep sending your donations, even if they have to be smaller. Keep sending your questions and story ideas, which we know are more urgent than ever. And if you want to, consider joining us in inviting members of Congress to support local news, too.

Meet Spock and Panda, classroom rats who needed a home during the COVID-19 crisis

2020-04-14T18:02:42+00:00

The text from my wife arrived shortly after 9 a.m.: “How do you feel about rats?”

It was Friday, March 13. I had just dropped off our 10-year-old son, Ben, at Academia Ana Marie Sandoval, his Denver school, for what would turn out to be the last time this year.

Back then, we knew he wouldn’t return to Room 153 for at least three weeks. The school district, like countless others across the country, had reached the painful decision to temporarily close school buildings and put learning on pause because of the coronavirus health crisis.

But before the 92,000-student Denver district went on what it called “extended spring break,” there was this one last day. At Sandoval, a dual-language Spanish/English Montessori school in the Highland neighborhood of northwest Denver, that meant self-directed learning time, watching part of the film “Life of Pi,” lunch, and recess.

It also included a call for volunteers: Would anyone be willing to provide safe harbor to the classroom rats, Spock and Panda, while schools were closed?

That’s what the text was about.

My son Ben is no amateur. He’s put in shifts as classroom rat-keeper, cleaning their cages and checking their food and water. But it’s one thing to look after animals at school and another to take responsibility for them 24/7. This request for at-home rodent care also came at a time when I already had been working long hours on a story that was only just beginning.

About two minutes after getting that text, I responded: “No (expletive) way.”

Ben’s teacher offered use of the school landline for students who were interested in contacting their parents about the adoption opportunity. I’m pretty soft. It didn’t take me long to flip.

Later that afternoon, I drove the few blocks to school to pick up Ben, Spock, and Panda.

They’re all living together in Ben’s room now, the rats in their three-story rat apartment near Ben’s bed.

We’ve learned a few things in our four weeks together. We learned that the rats are girls (only because Danette, the teacher, told us). We contacted her because Spock was breathing heavily and we were worried, but we learned Spock is older and always breathes like that. We’ve learned that Panda likes to run on her wheel in the middle of the night, and that it’s really loud.

We experimented with making rat food from dried fruit, Rice Krispies, and oatmeal, and we bought Kaytee Clean & Cozy Extreme Odor Control bedding (four-and-a-half stars on Amazon).

Taking in a classroom pet is an incredibly small gesture in the scheme of things. Health care workers and first responders are putting in heroic work to save lives and ease suffering. Teachers, principals, and administrators are hustling to reinvent school on a dime. Students and families are adjusting to a new reality with no idea of what lies ahead.

Last week, with spring break over and in-person school canceled for the rest of the year, Ben and his classmates began remote learning. Just after 9 a.m., when the kids normally would be sitting next to each other on the carpet to start the day, Ben was staring at a prompt on a computer screen asking him how he felt on a scale of 1 to 5.

We know we’re in it for the long haul with these rats. We don’t know when we’ll be able to return them to Room 153, or what school will look like across the country when that happens.

I’m sure we’ll miss having them around. We’ll miss Panda scurrying to say hello and sticking her pink nose through the cage when someone walks into the room.

But we’ll be happy to return them to their corner of the classroom because it will mean everyone is back where they belong.

Do you have a story about adopting a classroom pet during the COVID-19 pandemic that you’d like to share with Chalkbeat? Please send photos and a few words to pets@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Mila Koumpilova on learning English in Bulgaria and covering schools in the Midwest

2020-03-05T21:46:37+00:00

It has been a newsy year so far on the education beat in Chicago, but we’re taking a moment to share some news of our own: Chalkbeat Chicago is welcoming to our team two new reporters, Mila Koumpilova and Samantha Smylie. These new hires will allow us to broaden our coverage in Chicago and beyond.

Click here to read more about Samantha. And scroll down to read more about Mila, who previously covered higher education and immigration at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Here she shares how she plans to approach the education beat in a new city.

You just moved to Chicago from Minneapolis, where you covered higher education. How do you expect that experience will inform your approach to covering schools here?

I came to the higher education beat with years of experience writing about K-12 education. I had covered shrinking rural districts in northwestern Minnesota and growing districts in the Twin Cities suburbs as well as St. Paul Public Schools, the state’s largest and most diverse urban district. Everywhere, the overarching question is how schools are preparing students for what comes next, whether that’s a job, community college or a four-year university.

Writing about higher education really helped me see that long game and how education disparities for students of color and others persist long after high school graduation. At Minnesota’s state colleges and universities, for example, students of color make up about a quarter of all students but are almost half of those taking remedial classes — the basic skills courses critics call a “dropout sentence” for some students.

I feel I am returning to covering schools with a renewed sense of purpose and a sharper focus on how well schools are getting students — all students — ready for life.

Before writing about higher education, you reported on Minnesota’s immigrant communities and their experiences. Did that include education and schools?

Some of my favorite projects were essentially education stories. I followed a college-bound Somali-American teen during his senior year of high school at a time early during the Trump administration when young men in that community felt under intense scrutiny. Mohamed’s Minneapolis high school principal became a great supporter of that project, and I turned into something of a fixture at the school.

That school was practically home base for Mohamed’s family. His mom, a single mother of 10, shuttled her younger children there even after moving to a remote suburb because educators had made such a close personal connection with the family.

I also covered district efforts to serve the complex needs of unaccompanied minors from Central America and witnessed the first day of school through the eyes of the children in a newly arrived refugee family.

When you think about your own education, what is an experience that still resonates with you?

I grew up in post-communist Sofia, Bulgaria, at a time of much economic turmoil and political uncertainty. I got accepted at an English-language high school across the city of 1.2 million, and I rode two city buses for an hour each way to get there. My country had relatively recently opened up to the world after 45 years behind the Iron Curtain. Learning English and imagining a more globally connected future were important to me and my family.

I went on to attend the American University in Bulgaria, a tiny college that had opened in the former Communist Party headquarters in the town of Blagoevgrad. I remember the thrill I felt arriving on that campus with students and faculty from across the world. The emphasis on critical thinking and on questioning authority felt truly revolutionary in Bulgaria at that time.

Does your experience as a non-native English speaker inform your education reporting?

To an extent. Seeing strengths and possibility when looking at English learners comes naturally to me. I recall being overwhelmed by learning English on an ambitious timeline in high school. Little did I expect that some years later, as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Missouri, I would get paid (very modestly) to explain English grammar to native speakers.

I would love to explore the experiences of English learners in Chicago more in depth. I use Spanish in my reporting, and I am convinced my native Bulgarian will finally come in handy one of these days as well.

What questions do you bring to Chicago?

Minnesota has among the country’s largest gaps between the graduation and math/reading proficiency rates of students of color and their white peers. Any reporter who has covered schools there brings a sense of urgency to delving into how districts and schools work toward more equitable outcomes.

One such effort to attack disparities here in Chicago is the district’s bid to build a new curriculum. I am eager to learn more about the initiative and how district leaders foresee it will improve learning. Years ago, I covered a similar effort in St. Paul, which ended up generating a lot of pushback. It seems Chicago is taking a less top-down, prescriptive approach. I am also interested in learning more about how the district’s central administration works and how the power dynamic might shift if school board elections become a reality.

What on education beats often isn’t covered enough?

I believe we can all stand to listen more to students as they reflect on their education. I have found students to be quite savvy about how their schools can better serve them. I hope to bring more student voices to my coverage.

How can people reach you?

I am at 312-786-4631 and mkoumpilova@chalbeat.org. My Twitter direct messages are open at @milakoumpilova. You will find that I am friendly and accessible.

I’ve been asking ‘why’ since I was a CPS student. As a state education reporter I will continue to do so

2020-03-05T18:53:10+00:00

Meet Samantha Smylie, a Chicago native who started this week as one of two new reporters at Chalkbeat Chicago. Samantha will be covering the state school board and state education policy. Below is her introduction to our readers.

For high school, I attended John Hope College Preparatory in Englewood. It will close at the end of this school year — becoming one of dozens Chicago has shuttered, but the only district school to be shut down this year.

But while my school won’t exist anymore, my memories of it and of the teachers who worked hard to give us opportunities will.

When I think of my time at Hope, I can’t help but think about the times when it felt like the cards were stacked against all of us.

At the beginning of my senior year, conversation erupted during my advanced placement English class. It was 2012 and the Chicago Teachers Union was on the brink of a strike. Ms. Novak explained to us that she planned to walk out in part over conditions at our school.

What were they like? My classmates and I didn’t have up-to-date or even enough books. The heat malfunctioned so we wore coats in our classrooms in the winter. We did not have much of a world language program nor very many after-school activities.

It was the first time that any teacher had directly addressed the limited resources at our schools and how that lack affected my education. After our conversation, I realized that it wasn’t just my time at Hope where I’d been shortchanged. I’d spent my entire fourth grade year without a permanent teacher, instead enduring a series of substitutes and stand-ins who did nothing about the bullying that made it the worst year of my life.

When I would ask, “Why didn’t we have the resources we needed?” adults would say, “That’s just how things are.”

I plan to continue asking “why?” in my new role as an education reporter at Chalkbeat, and I promise to provide you with better answers to that and other questions than people gave me at the time.

As the state education reporter at Chalkbeat Chicago, I will be writing about K-12 education, what’s working, what’s not, and how the state can improve the classroom experience for its 2 million students. That means improving the teacher supply.

Thinking about the teachers who made such a difference in my academic career: My first- and second-year history teacher, Mr. Grigsby, designed an exchange program that let us talk to students about our culture and history with students at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen and William Howard Taft High School in Norwood Park. I never would have gone to Oberlin College without help from Ms. Novak, nor studied abroad in London without advice from Ms. Nelson. Neither would I have studied history and international politics at Oberlin without Ms. Hamilton.

Chicago is trying to ensure that all students benefit from inspiring and dedicated teachers like them. I want to report on how Illinois plans to recruit more professionals into its classrooms, retain the ones it has, and diversify its majority-white teacher pool.

I’m eager, too, to hear from readers about what stories you’d like to see on my priority list. Please don’t hesitate to email me at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org or message me on Twitter @sammie_smylie.

I’m building Chalkbeat’s community engagement strategy. Here’s why it matters – to us and our readers

2020-02-05T22:44:33+00:00

During my time as a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, the most gratifying moments often arrived when I least expected them.

Four years ago, I was standing in a dimly lit classroom inside a Memphis community center filled with parents looking for information about their children’s future.

I was in my first year as a reporter at Chalkbeat. After reading an analysis I wrote that examined where students went after their low-performing schools closed, a parent advocacy group invited me to talk about the story and answer parents’ questions.

I don’t remember specifically what they asked, but I do recall how nuanced and personal their questions were. They intimately understood the community-wide impact of school closures – many of the middle and high schools they’d attended were already boarded up.

I left that meeting with new story ideas and sources – and felt more grounded in a community directly affected by the issues Chalkbeat covers. And more than that, I left with the conviction that my evening with those parents – as much as the analysis I had produced – represented journalism in its highest form.

This kind of community work falls under the category of “engagement,” a widely used but often poorly defined term. At Chalkbeat, engagement means involving our communities throughout the journalism process, from story ideation and reporting to sharing and reflection, which (hopefully) leads back to more ideas and future reporting.

In other words, engagement is reporting with and for communities, not on or about them. Engagement is baked into the core of Chalkbeat’s mission to provide essential reporting on schools across America, especially those serving children who have historically lacked access to a quality education.

As we grow, our commitment to engagement requires a bigger team. You’ve already met Chalkbeat’s engagement editor, Caty Green. I’m joining her as Chalkbeat’s first community engagement strategist. I’ll be working across our network of seven bureaus to infuse reader input into our coverage, organize local events, and reach people through other offline methods like text messaging. Next month, you’ll hear from our new social media strategist, Susan Gonzalez.

Here is what my work might look like: a series of office hours in local neighborhoods, or helping to create questionnaires for a collaboration with another news organization, such as this reporting effort between Chalkbeat New York and THE CITY. My work will involve designing our annual listening tour and then helping Chalkbeat report out the stories that meet the needs of those we heard from.

That meeting three years ago with Memphis parents? It turned into a series called Book Club, where parents regularly read Chalkbeat articles and met to discuss them, sometimes with our journalists present and sometimes without. That’s the ultimate ambition – not to treat engagement as a box to check off, but as a way to build trusting and lasting relationships with our readers.

I know that engaged journalism doesn’t just magically happen – we need your help and input to produce it.

So, what kinds of Chalkbeat events do you want to attend? What community partnerships could we build? How else should we be reaching out to make education reporting available and accessible? I’m listening at cbauman@chalkbeat.org, or you can reach the engagement team at community@chalkbeat.org.

I can’t wait to learn from you.

New legal service will strengthen Chalkbeat’s ability to access public records in Tennessee

2020-01-22T00:10:40+00:00

Chalkbeat Tennessee is one of a half dozen media organizations in the state that will get additional legal services.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press announced Tuesday that it will launch its Local Legal Initiative this year in Tennessee and four other states to support local journalists and news organizations in pursuing enterprise and investigative journalism.

The national reporters committee will hire an attorney in each state to work with news organizations to bolster their efforts to obtain public records, gain access to hearings and meetings, and defend against legal threats and lawsuits.

“This will make a huge difference to journalists in Tennessee, especially as it relates to enforcing the law on public records,” said Deborah Fisher, executive director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government and a partner in the free legal initiative.

“The only way to enforce the law in Tennessee is to file a lawsuit, and that can cost thousands of dollars. It’s no secret to government officials who are wrongly withholding or delaying records that most news organizations don’t have thousands of dollars lying around to constantly go to court.”

Chalkbeat’s mission of covering educational change and equity in communities that need it most and holding decision makers accountable depends on our access to public records and data. It’s at the very core of what journalists do.

Public records are a way to ensure accountability and transparency in government and from public officials. They tell us about test scores, school attendance, and school discipline. They show us how much school districts spend on students and how much administrators make and teachers are paid. And they are a way for us to see who’s trying to influence public policy and who’s contributing to local and state campaigns.

We first published the results of lead testing in schools from our records requests. Most recently, we used records to report that more students were identified as gifted under Shelby County Schools’ new universal testing policy.

In an increasingly digital world, when access to records is easier than ever, reporters face more roadblocks than ever. Journalists must maneuver a labyrinth of rules to access records from different government agencies, broker deals with officials about what’s actually public and what’s not, and then negotiate fees to obtain these records. And there’s no clear path to appealing denials.

Public records were the basis of our reporting for our story on charter schools fueling the enrollment growth in Shelby County Schools. But getting the data wasn’t easy. We initially asked the district for the standard 20-day enrollment count — numbers that have to be submitted to the state and should be readily available. Halfway through the school year, our request was finally fulfilled.

All this is time-consuming and distracts from our mission. That’s why we welcome this new partnership. It’s not meant to create an antagonistic relationship with the public entities that we cover. It is our hope that this partnership will make it easier for you to get access, too. Public records aren’t just for journalists, they are just that — public. Any citizen has the right to request and access information on how their tax dollars are spent and monitor the actions of their elected officials. It’s the law.

Besides Chalkbeat, the participating groups in the Local Legal Initiative Tennessee include MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism, the Tri-State Defender, Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, Nashville Public Radio, and the Tennessee Press Association. The project is part of a $10 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced last year to strengthen local journalism.

8 don’t-miss Chalkbeat reads from 2019 to get you through winter break

2019-12-22T14:00:22+00:00

One of the most appealing things about this time of year — after the office holiday parties and when most of the gift shopping is done — is the yawning promise of free time that comes during winter break. For many of us, that means catching up on a backlogged list of stories and books we haven’t yet had time to sit with.

Allow us to add to that list with the stories below. These are some of the standout features, storylines, and investigations our team has published in the last year, in no particular order.

1. Colorado reporter Yesenia Robles brought us the story of William, and so many unaccompanied minors like him: “Every year hundreds of children are arriving in Colorado schools with uniquely challenging stories after crossing the border into the U.S. without their parents.” Some school districts have programs for newcomers like William, during which students spend time learning English and U.S. culture to settle into their surroundings. This plea from William is hard to forget: “We’re the same as everyone, we’re not bad people. And we are here because we had no choice. It’s not something we want.”

2. Chalkbeat New York has long been covering the entrenched segregation in the city’s school system. That storyline began to see real shifts this school year, as several districts began implementing integration plans. Reporter Christina Veiga covered those efforts for District 15 in Brooklyn, where a pioneering diversity plan has already shown encouraging results. Christina spoke with some of the 6th-graders who were the first to enter middle school as part of the district’s new admissions plan. Their feedback will be integral to the success of the diversity push, which, as Christina reports, rests heavily on families overcoming fear of the unknown.

3. The deaths of two children with asthma at the same Newark school just two years apart has drawn to light some startling statistics for the city. Newark has a rate three times the national average for children living with asthma, and averaged a death per year from 2010 to 2017 for children with the illness. Devna Bose told the story of grieving parents in Newark who are pushing the district to prepare teachers for the likelihood of having students with asthma in their classes. A day after Devna published her story, the Newark Teachers Union vowed to make sure all teachers, aides, and clerks receive proper training to help these students.

4. The first year of college can be tough for anyone. But the challenges are greater for graduates from high schools in disadvantaged cities. In our ongoing Ready or Not series, Detroit bureau chief Lori Higgins and Newark senior reporter Patrick Wall set out to unpack those challenges, and find out what colleges are doing to help these students thrive. Programs like the Charles Drew Science Scholars at Michigan State University offer academic and career advising, as well as a tight-knit community of support. In Newark, summer “boot camps” and online remedial courses have had mixed results. (Want to keep following this series? Sign up for the Ready or Not newsletter to get the latest from Lori and Patrick.)

5. The dangers posed by lead was a significant storyline in our markets this year. Elevated lead levels were found in the water at seven out of 29 schools in Newark, according to district data released in October, and two out of three tested homes had lead in the water despite their use of filters. Lead found in hundreds of water sources in Indiana’s Marion County schools prompted legislators to call for the state to mandate blood testing for children and require schools to regularly test the water. In Detroit’s school district, students started the academic year with brand new water hydration stations, a vast improvement over the start of the previous year, when drinking water was shut off across the district due to elevated levels of lead and copper. And in Tennessee, we dug into the first wave of test results required by a new state law, identifying nearly 100 schools across the state that had high levels of lead in the water. — ; Shelby County Schools later revealed that 39 schools had been flagged for high lead levels. Tennessee reporter Laura Faith Kebede captured this unforgettable moment on the campus of one of the flagged schools: “Bending to take a drink from a water fountain at Idlewild Elementary School …, Superintendent Joris Ray wanted to make a statement: ‘The water is fine. The water is fine,’ he said. Down the hall, a water fountain near the front door was disconnected and had a large ‘Please do not use’ sign. It was one of three at the Midtown school that tested for high levels of lead.” Chalkbeat Tennessee also published this helpful guide for parents of children at schools with contaminated water.

6. Our Chicago bureau did more than provide live, on-the-ground coverage of October’s 11-day teachers strike and another labor dispute with the union representing bus aides, custodians, classroom assistants, and security officerst. We also dug deep to explore major sticking points in contract negotiations: class size, prep time, support staffing, contract length, and teacher pay. Ariel Cheung’s piece on the district’s lowest-paid workers was deeply affecting: “I do this every day, faithfully, for 10 years,” bus aide Althea McCaskill told Ariel. “Why can’t I get paid what I’m worth?” Almost two months after the strike ended, Chicago educators and most support staff still hadn’t received the retroactive pay and full raises they agreed upon.

7. The nonprofit GreatSchools has created one of the most prominent school rating systems in the country — you’ll see its school scores on Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com. Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum and Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee found in their investigation this year that GreatSchools’ ratings effectively penalize schools that serve mostly low-income students or black and Hispanic students. And that’s despite GreatSchools’ own data that shows many schools serving low-income, black, and Hispanic populations are doing a good job helping students learn math and English. The result “is a ubiquitous, privately run school ratings system that is steering people toward whiter, more affluent schools.” If you haven’t already, read their deeply reported story — or watch the video produced in collaboration with Vox here.

8. Indiana reporter Dylan Peers McCoy investigated how a loophole in state law has allowed schools and districts to report dropped-out students as leaving to home-school, with little oversight to ensure these students are indeed learning at home. A Chalkbeat analysis found that of the 3,700 Indiana high school students in the class of 2018 that were recorded as leaving to home-school, more than half came from 61 of the state’s 507 high schools. Those numbers, Dylan writes, “suggest that Indiana’s lax regulation of home schooling and its method for calculating graduation rates are masking the extent of many schools’ dropout problems.” Following Dylan’s reporting, the state superintendent questioned the manager of Emmerich Manual High School, which had recorded the highest proportion of students leaving to home-school of any traditional high school in the state. Now, the for-profit operator of Manual and two other schools in Indianapolis may have to hand back the reins to Indianapolis Public Schools.

What we heard during Chalkbeat’s second annual Listening Tour

2019-12-16T23:42:48+00:00

“Show your work.” I remember that phrase primarily from math classes throughout my school career. Since I joined Chalkbeat almost a year ago, that phrase has taken on more meaning as I work with our network of local bureaus to take our journalism deeper into the communities we serve.

In our day-to-day reporting, we show our work by embedding a key source document, explaining data analysis on a story, or posting a Twitter thread with behind-the-scenes insight. For my part as engagement editor, showing our work means supporting what we call the feedback loop: the continuous cycle of soliciting community input before, during, and after our reporting on essential education stories, and reflecting what we hear back to the community.

We do this throughout the year using reader callouts — Google Forms that typically ask about a particular topic or news event, like education funding or an upcoming teachers rally — and, when appropriate, we publish what we heard.

But with our annual Listening Tour, we have more in-depth conversations. Now that the 2019 tour has wrapped up, I want to take a moment to show our work — both the work that went into the tour and the steps we’re taking to incorporate what we learned into our journalism.

What we did

In the Listening Tour’s second year, we narrowed our focus to parents in our bureau communities — Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Memphis, Newark, and New York. As we looked at past audience survey results, we saw an opportunity to serve parents better — folks without a professional tie to education who need to be able to make informed decisions about their children’s futures.

Our bureaus organized in-person listening sessions around the start of the school year. We weren’t aiming for ComicCon-sized crowds: We designed them for between 12 and 40 attendees to foster more intimate conversations.

Colorado organized a conversation around school choice, while Indiana let attendees talk more broadly about what was and wasn’t working in Indianapolis schools. New York and Newark both centered their events around special education; Tennessee talked with parents about literacy from pre-K through third grade. Because Chicago had already done strong engagement work with parents, the bureau organized a happy hour and story slam for teachers to find out what issues were front-of-mind for them. (Detroit had planned to talk to parents about school facility issues, but at the last minute, the event was cancelled due to logistical issues.)

To reach more parents than those who could attend our in-person events, we also designed an online information needs assessment. Again using Google Forms, with versions in Spanish and English, we asked parents in or near each of these cities about how they got their news, what information is hard for them to access, and what topics they were most interested in seeing us cover. The surveys were online from July through the end of September, and in October, we chose one lucky parent from each city to receive a $50 gift card — we know it takes time to answer these questions thoughtfully, and we’re grateful to those who did.

The results

Nearly 160 people showed up to our listening sessions.
On average, 50% of attendees were parents.
More than one-quarter were new to Chalkbeat.
Bureaus came away with more than 40 story ideas, drawing from the most pronounced areas of interest and biggest concerns of the parents and teachers they spoke with.

As for the information needs assessments, we received 452 responses over the course of those three months, 90% of the way to our overall target of 500. About 40% of respondents identified as people of color; like many news organizations, Chalkbeat is working to diversify readership and make sure we’re hearing from a representative sample of the communities we serve. While we’ve made progress, in part by partnering with local organizations on outreach, we have more work to do in this regard.

The top three topics of interest for survey respondents:

Curriculum and classroom instruction
School budgets and finance
Special education and students with disabilities

Many of these relate to additional topics parents indicated interest in across our bureau locations:

What’s working in schools when it comes to teaching methods, equity, and mental health
Transparency around decision-making, such as school finance, state and local legislation, and school board operations
Resources to help parents make decisions and advocate for their children
Learning trajectories for students not bound for college

What’s next

Our bureaus shared more details about what stood out to them during their listening sessions — read more from Tennessee, Colorado, and Newark. Now we’re starting the work of applying that input to our reporting. Our managing editors for local news, Eric Gorski and Carrie Melago, are working with bureaus to plot stories and projects that will cover some of these topics as they relate to local schools.

And along the way, it’s on us to show our work. On this page, we’ll be keeping track of the stories that emerge. We’ve already gotten started — see this school-tour guide from Colorado’s Melanie Asmar, and this report from Newark’s Patrick Wall and Devna Bose on the city’s failures to meet special education requirements. There’s more to come, so I hope you’ll read along and share your ideas when our next Listening Tour kicks into gear in 2020.

Following our 2019 Listening Tour, Chalkbeat bureaus will continue tackling topics raised during in-person listening sessions and responses to our online information needs assessment. See those articles inspired by community input here.

Introducing Chalkbeat’s new brand identity

2019-11-13T05:01:43+00:00

You may have noticed Chalkbeat looks a bit different today. Nope, we didn’t get a new haircut. We got a new brand identity!

As Chalkbeat embarks on our strategic plan for 2025, we recognized the need for a new visual identity that reflects who Chalkbeat is now — and for a design system dynamic enough to grow with us as we expand from seven locations to 18 in the next five years.

After talking with readers, we landed on four features that make Chalkbeat Chalkbeat: local, innovative, inclusive, trustworthy.

We are local. Each of our bureaus represents a community, and we wanted to design the site so that those communities could dive deeper into the issues that matter most to them. Throughout our site, you’ll find easier ways to find local stories and topics.

We are innovative. As one of the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the country, Chalkbeat is defining how to solve the local news crisis by reimagining what a local newsroom can look like. Instead of bundling multiple topics (sports, crime, education, classifieds) in one location, we report on a single subject across many locations, which has allowed us to connect local communities of parents, educators, and curious citizens who care deeply about education. To reflect this trait, our new branding has a modernized aesthetic. Our palette is still bold — just like our journalism — but we’ve chosen less bright tones that feel more mature. And we’ve simplified our layouts, so they’re easier to scroll through on mobile.

We are inclusive. At Chalkbeat, we believe every child deserves an excellent education, and through our journalism, we’re working to build an informed and engaged community that will improve schools for all children, especially those who have lacked access to a quality education. Each year, our local bureaus host listening events to hear directly from stakeholders. Our First Person series gives voice to diverse perspectives, so that we can have powerful conversations about challenging issues. And we are committed to hiring a diverse staff that reflects the students, teachers, and parents we report for and with. Like our journalists, our product team is committed to inclusivity. We tested our new colors to ensure they’re easy for readers with color blindness to distinguish and read — tests our old color palette failed time and again. We also optimized the reading experience on our article pages with larger fonts and research-backed optimal line-lengths.

We are trustworthy. Our newsrooms are nonpartisan and fiercely independent. That means we do not pick sides or have a predetermined position on how to achieve better schools. And our business model is built to safeguard that independence by creating a diverse array of revenue sources, being transparent about who supports us, and following a strict code of ethics. We’ve added new features, so that our journalists can highlight topics of interest for their local community, and particular stories that readers shouldn’t miss. And we chose a sleek, yet traditional serif font for our base text to give our stories gravitas.

While you see our reporters’ bylines every day, you don’t always hear about the folks behind the scenes who help make their work possible:

Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee, a digital Swiss Army knife, who thought about our readers’ needs in every decision she made while designing and building our new site
Chris Hickerson, our code master, who worked tirelessly to clean up our code and build new features to improve our internal workflows and highlight content for readers
Chris Schwing, the fantastic designer who helped us identify our unique personality and transformed it into our new brand identity
And a special thanks to Kary Perez, whose name you might recognize from our membership emails, for her thoughtful insights and for connecting us with readers to test our new website before launch.

Thanks to the team for bringing this work to life — and to our readers for holding us accountable to our mission. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

Applying for Chalkbeat’s 2020 paid summer internship? Start by catching up on our 2019 interns’ great work (and advice)

2019-10-11T15:24:45+00:00

When we introduced our interns to our readers back in April, we were optimistic about what would happen over the summer. But the seven up-and-coming reporters who joined our newsroom exceeded all of our expectations.

For 10 weeks, our interns nabbed scoops, brought issues to life, engaged with readers, and just plain made our newsrooms more fun.

Now, we want to share some highlights of their work — and some of the lessons they learned, including advice they’d give to future Chalkbeat interns.

The future is now: We’ve just opened applications for our 2020 internship program. We’re looking for student journalists who are talented, enterprising, and curious about education equity issues to join our local teams for 10 weeks of paid reporting experience.

Find more details and apply here. For now, here’s a recap of 2019, in our interns’ own words.

Camille Respess, National

A memorable story: I had the opportunity to build a cheat sheet for the 2020 presidential election, which includes highlights of what every Democratic candidate has said about education. Building this kind of resource was unlike anything I had done prior to my time at Chalkbeat and gave me the opportunity to grow in my understanding of government and politics as it relates to education.

A favorite moment: My editor entrusted me with covering an event the Gates Foundation hosted outside of Washington, D.C. I was working out of Chalkbeat’s New York office for the summer, so this event allowed me to go on my first solo work trip. I was fortunate to receive this opportunity, especially as an intern.

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: Take it all in and absorb what you’re learning like a sponge. The people who work at Chalkbeat have a level of expertise and understanding of education that is unlike anything I had ever seen before my summer in New York. Interns should certainly tap into that wealth of knowledge.

Caity Henderson, Chicago

A memorable story: I loved reporting and writing about Principal Elizabeth Meyers’ summer initiative. I got the chance to interview teachers, administrators and students as I shadowed Meyers for a morning. As I was writing the piece, my editors at Chalkbeat pushed me to connect what I had seen and heard to a larger story about principal retention and summer programming. Chalkbeat taught me to find the context for my stories beyond my interviews and sources. And I’d never pass up a chance to get into a school, especially in the summer.

A favorite moment: There was one day I spent reporting all over the city, first in Englewood in the morning, then in Hermosa on the West Side, and then I ended up in Ford City, right on the edge of the suburbs. I had never been to the southwest corner of the city before, and honestly I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I remember sitting at the bus stop and thinking how lucky I was to see new sides of Chicago every day at Chalkbeat. I’m in love with Chicago and I learned so much more about the city this summer.

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: Jump right in! There were some days when I felt overwhelmed by assignments and missed important details or lines of questioning. The more I set aside my exhaustion, stress or insecurity, the more I got out of my assignments. There’s so much to learn at Chalkbeat, and people are always there to support you.

Kati Weis, Colorado

A memorable story: I looked at a new air quality monitoring program going up in select Denver public schools. I had a chance to crunch state air quality data, which showed troubling air quality levels in the Denver metro over recent years. It was rewarding to inform readers about the ins and outs of this critical issue and delve further into why such a program could be useful to schools.

A favorite moment: Next to having a chance to report in the beautiful city of Denver — getting married! My husband and I had a lovely mountain wedding, and I’m proud to remain here as a resident of Colorado, now as an investigative reporter for CBS Denver.

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: Be persistent, be flexible, and take every assignment with stride. Every assignment will help you develop new sources and new understanding of important community issues. No matter how big or small the story may seem, embrace it and go for it full speed.

Imani Harris, Detroit

A memorable story: I appreciated covering how school leaders were working to find and retain teachers because it really got me out of my own mindset, out of my own misconceived notions and things I thought I understood, and into the heads of school leaders who are really battling with how to properly staff their schools in a timely manner.

A favorite moment: Definitely the student story slam! My hopes from journalism are, like most, ambitious in that I really want to make an impact on the communities I’m serving. That event, with everything from giving students the confidence to believe in the power of their own stories to seeing how the audience responded to the raw truths they heard, was truly one of the most empowering and inspiring moments of the summer. It was amazing.

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: I would encourage the interns to be more comfortable asking “stupid questions,” to avoid mistakes and confusion in the future.

Kathryn Palmer, Tennessee

A memorable story: I wrote about an out-of-work veteran teacher who couldn’t find a job that worked for her. I had been assigned to cover a teacher recruitment fair, which at first sounded like it would be pretty standard, maybe even boring. But when I showed up, school district officials didn’t seem to want me there, so I had to figure out how to get my story anyway. I waited outside the building looking for someone who would be willing to let me follow them around and write about the job fair from their perspective. I met Sandra Jenkins, who’d taught for 30-plus years before she got into a car accident. She’d been looking for job for almost a year with no luck and she was really open with me about her struggles. The story was not what I had envisioned, but it got a great reaction from the community and several people responded with offers to help her find work. It taught me about the power of narrative writing and being able to adapt my reporting to the situation around me.

A favorite moment: My favorite memory would have to be living in Memphis. Everyone I met, especially my Chalkbeat coworkers, was warm and friendly and there were so many new and culturally significant places in and around the area to explore. It was a great summer!

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: Do not be afraid to ask for help or advice. You only have 10 weeks to learn a whole new school system and city — and hopefully write some memorable stories about it all. Make the most of the resources around you.

Zipporah Osei, New York

A memorable story: My favorite story was the summer meals story because it was the first feature story I did for Chalkbeat. I’m especially proud of it because the original idea was to just write about the start of the program, but through my reporting I was able to turn it into a great accountability story. After it was published, the education department fixed the technology issues I’d discovered and outlined in the article.

A favorite moment: My favorite memory was visiting Mott Hall Bridges Academy to speak to staff and former students about how the school supports its grieving students. The conversations I had with the students were really inspiring and helped me create a portrait of the school that I believe did it justice.

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: Be proactive in finding stories that get them out of the office. Everyone at Chalkbeat is really supportive of going the extra mile for a story and I found that my best reporting came when I took the initiative to do on the ground reporting.

Erica Irish, Indiana

A memorable story: The story that challenged me the most as an education reporter was the narrative piece I wrote about Charie Gibson, a liaison for students facing homelessness and the foster care system in Indiana’s largest school district, Indianapolis Public Schools. By building a relationship with Charie and the IPS team over time, I gained access to her work and had an opportunity to shadow her as she helped families manage the weight of what would feel like an insurmountable challenge to many of us.

A favorite moment: I really enjoyed visiting Austin, Indiana, while reporting for my last story about social-emotional wellness and professional development initiatives geared towards attending high school at the heart of a county known for a widespread HIV epidemic. I’ve rarely visited small, rural towns in the past, and doing so for this assignment made me learn about life experiences profoundly different from my own. On a lighter note, at the office, I really enjoyed the Friday Nicey Treats our bureau chief, Stephanie, would always call for after a tough week (or just a hot day).

Advice to future Chalkbeat interns: You’ve probably heard this before, but don’t be afraid to dive into the stories that compel you the most. Your Chalkbeat editors and colleagues want to equip you with the tools you need to craft your own pitches and hone your craft. Never step away from a story that’s interesting to you just because of your intern status.

Here’s what Memphis parents told us they want to know about early childhood and literacy – and why we want to hear from more of you

2019-10-02T19:07:16+00:00

When more than 50 Memphians gathered to talk about early childhood and literacy with us, we heard a lot of concerns and hopes for Memphis’ littlest learners.

From confusion about the location of preschool centers and how many seats are open to story ideas on how socioemotional factors affect young students – the audience at our “Pre-K to Third-Grade Reading: Parents, what do you want to know?” event left our reporters with many story leads to track down and even more questions to answer.

Held at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library, our event in late August was part of Chalkbeat’s seven-city “listening tour” this summer and fall, allowing our reporters to convene public conversations and learn from residents in the communities we serve.

We shaped our talks around some of the biggest education issues affecting Shelby County today – a new retention policy aimed at boosting the reading acumen of third-graders and an unprecedented push to fund more prekindergarten classrooms.

Now, we want to hear from even more of you on how we can better report on these topics.

That’s because early childhood – especially how our youngest students learn to read – is one of Chalkbeat Tennessee’s main focus areas this school year. It’s important to us that our readers drive our coverage. So, read below the ideas that came out of our event and email us with your own thoughts and questions. We’re listening at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Attendees were divided into small groups to answer questions like “What issues do you think most impact a young child’s ability to learn?” and “Why do you think Tennessee and Shelby County have struggled to get their youngest students reading at higher rates?”

Throughout the evening, trauma and other factors that affect student learning outside of school came up over and over again.

“Family stressors are the biggest detriment to a child’s ability to learn,” said one participant, while another emphasized that parents and teachers need more training and awareness on how trauma can affect the brain development of young children.

Attendees were divided into small groups to answer questions like “What issues do you think most impact a young child’s ability to learn?”

This is a focus for Shelby County Schools, which is planning to pilot a restorative discipline program, where 30 schools will have a “reset room” with dedicated staff. With the approval of a teacher, students will be able to go there for support if they are struggling with behavior in class. Designed to help reduce suspensions and expulsions, it is part of Shelby County Schools stated efforts to become “a fully trauma-informed and trauma-responsive district.”

This year, our reporters are examining how adverse childhood trauma affects students and teachers and how schools are dealing with it. Researchers have tied stressful events such as divorces, deportations, poverty, neglect, sexual abuse, gun violence, and other traumas to lower math and reading scores, poor health, and behavior problems.

Do you have an idea for a Chalkbeat article on this? Email us at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org

Another major point of discussion was Shelby County Schools’ upcoming retention policy that will hold back second-grade students who aren’t reading on grade level. The policy will begin with second-graders in the 2021-22 school year.

Shelby County Schools is aiming to have 90% of its third-graders reading proficiently by the year 2025. But currently, only about 24% of them were proficient in reading on the state’s standardized assessment.

Parents, educators and community members attended Chalkbeat Tennessee’s listening tour on early education and early literacy.

“I want to be clear, it starts in pre-K,” district Superintendent Joris Ray told Chakbeat in a previous interview. “At the end of the day, it’s about our students really understanding and knowing how to read. The incoming kindergarten students will be the first class impacted by the policy. So, we have two years to really look and see what we need to do to make adjustments and get better.”

Attendees at our Listening Tour also said that a more effective prekindergarten curriculum could lead to stronger readers. Others pointed to a need for skilled teachers who stay in classrooms, and still others said more parental involvement would make the difference in boosting literacy rates.

Participants were mixed on whether or not the district’s new retention policy was the best way to build better readers.

One parent, who had also taught second grade for eight years, said it would be unfair to move students forward if they cannot read. She said she had held students back, and some of them went on to be honor roll students after receiving another year of instruction.

Another parent asked what Shelby County Schools would do in addition to the policy.

“Does SCS have strategies in place now for kids before they get to the second grade,” she asked. “Do they have a plan to remediate students who fail?”

Read more about the 2019 Listening Tour here, and see stories that tackle topics raised during the tour here.

Chalkbeat 2025: How we built our five-year strategic plan

2019-10-01T17:01:49+00:00

In 2008, in one of my first full-time jobs as a reporter at the New York Sun, I stood with a newsroom full of reporters while our editor told us our newspaper had one month to rally or fold. This was at the height of the financial crisis.

The first thing I thought about was the readers who relied on that newspaper to devote deeper coverage to public education and the dramatic changes it was undergoing. I was lucky not to have to worry too much about myself: I was 24 years old and colleagues at other papers were generously stepping up to help me find another job.

I also started to worry about newspapers beyond New York City. The rules of public schools were being rewritten all across the country. We needed reporters to cover that. Eleven years later, I can see that I was right to worry. Sadly, I wasn’t worried enough. Between 2008 and 2018, the number of newsroom employees at U.S. newspapers declined by 47%.

Meanwhile, with fewer reporters watching, the education world was going through dramatic change. Education philanthropy with lofty and also aggressive ambitions exceeded $58 billion annually. Teachers across America saw major changes in how they are evaluated. Nineteen cities tipped from “what is a charter school?” to more than 30% charter enrollment.

The colliding trend lines were not healthy for democracy. In our schools and beyond, we got the polarization, fear-mongering, and mistrust that we’ve now learned is inevitable when high-quality news is not available. But one development was good: Reporters, readers, and citizens refused to accept the new status quo.

In the same year that the New York Sun folded, I joined the founding team at GothamSchools, the New York precursor to Chalkbeat. Since then, GothamSchools merged with Ed News Colorado in 2013, and has grown into the Chalkbeat you know today. As we explain in our new Chalkbeat 2025 plan, in the past six years, 1,300 donors, 1 million readers, and 200+ sponsors have come together with our amazing team to create the careful, caring journalism public education deserves.

Our readers know why that matters. It’s because we are able to do everything from the day-in, day-out stories that you tell us every year are essential reading for you to understand your local school districts and beyond to more in-depth projects like, just this month, Ready or Not, our series this month, in which our reporters in Detroit and Newark are following students who desperately hope to become the first in their families to graduate college.

Public education is a $700 billion enterprise, with 10 million employees and 70 million students. Investors in any business of that size would demand independent reporting to hold the business accountable. The investors in public education are all of us. We need to continue to demand better.

At Chalkbeat, we are ready. We have spent the last eight months plotting out our course for the future. Our plan: By 2025, we will grow from seven bureaus to 18, accelerating the pace of our expansion to three new bureaus a year (to date, we have launched one every 18 months). We will expand our breadth of coverage, adding stories from swaths of America beyond our founding bureaus. By growing, we will serve more local communities while telling a powerful national story of how public education is being reconceived and remade across America.

I hope you will read the full plan here: Chalkbeat 2025: A Five-Year Plan to Build the News Our Democracy Demands. No one is more important to this plan than our readers, and as always, we want to know what you think.

Parents, what do you want to know about Indianapolis schools? Share your thoughts with us

2019-09-30T20:41:05+00:00

Calling all parents: What questions do you have about education in Indianapolis?

We at Chalkbeat Indiana want to hear from parents — you and your family are at the center of our school systems, and your input can help inform our coverage. That’s why we’re holding our second annual listening tour event Thursday night to introduce ourselves and get to know you.

The theme of our event is “What do you want to know about Indianapolis schools?” So come with your questions and concerns, and we’ll do our best to answer them or include them in future coverage.

Come to the MLK Center, 40 W 40th St. in Indianapolis, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., for our free event. We’ll serve dinner and discuss what’s important to you and what you need to know more about in education. Child care is available, too.

Please RSVP here.

We’re excited to connect directly with more parents. If you can’t make it, you can read up on the stories we plan to follow this year, and please drop us a line anytime at in.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Read more about the 2019 Listening Tour here, and see stories that tackle topics raised during the tour here.

Here are the Indiana education stories we plan to cover this year — and how you can help

2019-09-13T19:39:15+00:00

The school year roared in like a lion, yanking us from our summer daydreams and thrusting us into the thick of the perennial controversy over test scores. But as the cooler weather ushers us calmly into fall, we wanted to take a moment to share our goals for the year.

We at Chalkbeat Indiana want to be transparent about our coverage plans to hold ourselves accountable and seek your input, too. This year, we plan to connect more with students, families, educators, and community members who have a stake in our public education systems. Your perspectives help inform our work.

If you have questions, ideas, or insights to share, you can reach us at in.tips@chalkbeat.org. We will also hold a listening session Oct. 3 at the MLK Center in Indianapolis to hear what parents want to know more about and how we can be a better resource for families.

We also welcomed a new reporter this summer, Emma Kate Fittes, who is covering state education issues and has a particular interest in special education. You can get in touch with her directly at ekfittes@chalkbeat.org.

Here are some of the key storylines that we’re following this year.

How will a new leader steer Indianapolis Public Schools, and what is the future of innovation schools?

Indianapolis Public Schools is undergoing a dramatic transformation that is redefining the role of a traditional public school district, and its new leader appears poised to continue the change that has captured national attention. But new Superintendent Aleesia Johnson has taken over at a critical time, and she’s going to face a number of tough decisions about the future of the state’s largest district.

First, it’s time to start evaluating its innovation strategy of turning to charter operators to run district schools. Five years into the innovation experiment, Johnson — who oversaw the partnerships in a previous role — will have to decide whether it’s proven to be an effective turnaround model and whether to stick with the strategy. The results at innovation schools vary: Some showed early progress, but test scores remain low at many campuses.

Johnson answers to a divided school board, and it’s not clear how new members will fall on these biggest decisions. So far, the personable Johnson appears to be winning over many local stakeholders, but she’ll also have to handle innovation school critics.

Johnson also faces monumental budget problems, and she will likely need to make tough decisions about closing schools.

Plus, she has made it a personal priority to address long-standing racial gaps in the district, pledging to have more conversations about how to better serve the district’s black and brown students.

Reporter Dylan Peers McCoy will continue covering the district. Contact her at dmccoy@chalkbeat.org.

How have charter schools changed the Indianapolis education landscape?

In the spring, the executive director of the state’s charter school board raised a question: Are there too many charter schools in some parts of the city?

Nearly two decades after the creation of charter schools in Indiana, some education leaders say Indianapolis has hit a saturation point, where there are too many schools and too few students — an equation for under-enrolled, financially strapped schools. And yet educators still want to open new charter schools in Indianapolis, with leaders saying not all students across the city have access to high-quality schools.

How will the changes to Indiana’s graduation rules affect students and schools?

To shift emphasis to career and technical education, Indiana recently changed its requirements for graduation to allow more ways for students, particularly those who aren’t college-bound, to earn their diplomas. Education leaders are hopeful that this will set up more Hoosiers to be successful after high school. This means high school — and what students learn — could look a little different.

How far will Indiana advance on early childhood education amid a growing advocacy effort?

Once among the last in the nation for early education, Indiana took a big step this year by making its pilot prekindergarten voucher program available statewide. But expanding hasn’t been easy — raising awareness of the pre-K opportunity has taken time, and the program hasn’t hit capacity. Those challenges pose hurdles to the political fight by businesses and early childhood advocates to build the program and win more funding from the Republican-controlled legislature.

Here are the New York City schools stories we plan to cover this year, and how you can help us

2019-09-04T21:11:33+00:00

This spring, the controversy surrounding the education department’s anti-bias training for New York City teachers had reached a boiling point.

While some educators and administrators bashed the sessions and Chancellor Richard Carranza for creating a culture that felt unwelcoming to white staffers, others gathered on the steps of education headquarters in an unusual show of support.

We at Chalkbeat wondered, outside of the extreme headlines and protests, how did people who took the training really feel? So we asked and heard from nearly 100 principals, teachers, administrators, and parents whose answers offered the clearest picture yet of how Carranza’s push was playing out in the place that matters most — inside schools.

With 1.1 million New York City school children returning to classrooms Thursday, Chalkbeat will continue turning to readers and being transparent about our work as we try to understand the city education department amid these promises of massive change. As Carranza calls attention to longstanding issues of inequity, to what extent will his rhetoric be accompanied by action? How much support does he have across the system — and in City Hall? And will the bold rhetoric and proposals change the realities in most classrooms, especially given the entrenched nature of segregation and the furious pushback from many quarters?

As we explore these topics, we’ll continue relying on you, our readers, to find answers to our burning questions and guide our reporting. So introduce yourself, send a tip, give us feedback or even propose a First Person essay by emailing us. Here are the storylines we plan to follow this year, and we promise to keep you updated about our progress. Stay tuned for information about in-person events and other opportunities to connect with our reporters.

School segregation, SHSAT, and beyond

The release of the School Diversity Advisory Group recommendations — including a bombshell proposal to eliminate gifted and talented programs as we know them — grabbed headlines last week. The uproar was reminiscent of that over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s now-stalled proposal to scrap the exam used to determine admissions to the city’s specialized high schools.

We’ve long covered issues related to diversity and segregation in city schools that are now catching some New Yorkers by surprise. As the new year begins, we’ll continue exploring all angles of these stories, diving deep into the advisory group’s recommendations and their potential impact, as well as exploring the integration efforts already underway in several districts. We’ll hold leaders accountable for the promises they are making about equity in education but also always elevate the voices of teachers, students, and parents at the center of the controversies. Reach out to our reporters — Christina Veiga, Alex Zimmerman, and Reema Amin — if you have thoughts.

Special education students and English Language Learners

Carranza has been calling attention to racial inequities in city schools, but other barriers baked into the school system affect some of the city’s most vulnerable students: those with disabilities and English language learners.

Students in special education and their parents face many hurdles that Alex has been chronicling. Evaluations for special education services are often delayed or don’t happen at all. Mandated services go unmet. And the formal appeal process is overwhelmed with a skyrocketing number of complaints. We’re collaborating with THE CITY, the non-profit news organization, to delve even further into these issues. (We started this week!) And Chalkbeat New York will hold a listening tour event later this month to hear straight from parents.

The plight of students learning English as a new language is a topic we’d like to explore more. We want to understand how schools can improve their academic outcomes, whether families’ immigration statuses are holding them back from seeking services, and how school communities support immigrant-rich student bodies. Have thoughts on these or other areas we should look at? Reach out to Reema.

Pre-K

The past year has been a monumental one for the city’s universal pre-K program. De Blasio frequently touts pre-K as he travels the presidential campaign trail. Christina chronicled the effort by teachers in community-based preschools — largely women of color — to earn the same amount as pre-K teachers at education department schools. And just last month, the test scores for the inaugural universal pre-K class showed that students performed slightly better than their peers.

But test scores are just one measure. This year, we’ll continue paying attention to the quality of pre-K programs and the impact the mayor’s signature education effort is having on children. Let Christina know if you have ideas about this.

Charter schools, lead in schools — what else?

To be sure, the above list barely scratches the surface of the topics we plan to monitor over the next school year and beyond. We’ll also be paying close attention to charter schools in the wake of the state’s decision to cap the sector’s growth in NYC. We’ll continue following the remediation of classrooms found to have deteriorating lead paint. We will keep digging into changing school discipline policies and how they affect students. We’ll continue to follow state education policy and how decisions made in Albany affect New York City schools; this year, the state’s Board of Regents will launch a major discussion on what diploma requirements should look like and whether to scrap the vaunted Regents exams. We’ll watch out for curriculum news and important studies about teaching and learning. What are we missing? Let us know!

Happy first day of school, Newark! Here’s our plan for covering the city’s schools this year, and how you can help

2019-09-03T10:00:01+00:00

Welcome to a new school year! As journalists covering education, we appreciate having a chance to renew our coverage every fall — by building on what we learned last year and setting goals for the coming one.

We’re sharing our coverage plans here in part to hold ourselves accountable for carrying them out, and in part because we want you, our readers, to help us refine them.

The biggest difference from last year is that we’ve grown. We now have two reporters: Patrick Wall, who launched our Newark bureau last year, and Devna Bose, who joined the team as a Report For America fellow this summer. (Plus there’s me! I’m a Chalkbeat editor who helps oversee our Newark team.) That means we can look twice as many places for stories, and listen to (at least!) twice as many Newarkers about issues in their schools.

To get started, we’ll be holding an event about special education on Sept. 21 at 1 p.m. at our office in Newark’s East Ward. The event, co-hosted by the Newark Special Education Parent Advisory Council, is part of Chalkbeat’s seven-city “listening tour” happening this summer and fall as our local reporting teams try new ways to learn from our readers.

We’re also going to keep doing what we know best: producing news stories about the issues facing Newark schools that might not see the light of day without our reporting. Here are some of the big topics you can look forward to reading about on Chalkbeat this school year.

How the transition to local control is translating on the ground: When Newark regained control of its schools, the newly empowered school board chose a local career educator, Roger León, to become superintendent. In his first year, León has taken steps to restore elements of the traditional school district that preceded state takeover; drafted a short-term plan to overhaul the city’s schools; and won a contract extension that preserves his employment until at least 2023.

So far, we’ve covered León’s vows to reshape the district bureaucracy, revamp the enrollment system, and improve student achievement. This year, we’ll be monitoring whether and how those promises translate into reality, and tracking attendance efforts, the district’s curriculum overhaul, and what happens to special education (hence our listening tour event topic). We’ll also be keeping an eye on how León’s brash leadership style influences how much traction he is able to make, and how much support he is able to command from the public in Newark.

This topic is vast, so our whole team will be working on it. We welcome your thoughts!

How Newark students live: As Newarkers know well, the education world is filled with people who are invested in shaping the narrative about how well local schools are doing. (That’s why a recent study that showed long-term gains in the district’s performance ignited significant debate.) But that conversation has given short shrift to the often challenging daily experiences of Newark students, which do much to shape what schools and students can achieve.

Whether students in Newark are healthy, safe, and engaged can make or break their educational experiences, an idea that is baked into León’s Clarity 2020 plan, which calls for the district to help support students from infancy through college. As the school district seeks to play an increasing role in students’ lives outside of school, our coverage will follow. We’ve already started, with our coverage of the city’s approach to LGBTQ-inclusive education and the school district’s role in the city’s current lead crisis. We plan to stay on top of those issues, as well as efforts to enhance early childhood education in Newark, the effects of violence on students and schools, and the ways that the city’s “community schools” integrate academic and social support.

Want to talk about this topic? Reach out to Devna.

Changes to the city’s high schools — and what happens after students graduate: The Newark district has a mix of comprehensive schools that enroll any students who live in their zone and magnet schools that enroll students on a selective basis. The divide between those two kinds of schools is stark, in terms of who enrolls and how prepared they are for high school. León, a former high school principal, simultaneously is seeking to improve the neighborhood schools and to strengthen the screens at the magnet schools. We’ll be looking at what’s happening at both kinds of schools — and how changes to one might influence the course of the other.

That means keeping an eye on how leadership transitions are playing out at Newark’s most prestigious and lowest-performing high schools, what happens with the city’s effort to expand access to job training, and whether a curriculum overhaul changes what students are taught. It also means continuing to pay close attention to Newark’s enrollment system, and to showcasing high school educators through Chalkbeat’s How I Teach feature. (Know a teacher who might be a good fit? Let us know!)

Of course, graduating from high school is meaningless if students are unable to succeed in the colleges or jobs they head to next. Leon has vowed to get more students to and through college, which is part of a larger effort involving City Hall and local universities to help more Newark residents get college degrees. We’ll take a close look at what it’s like to be a graduate in Newark trying to make it after high school, and the many personal, academic, and financial roadblocks that can stand in the way of success. Stay tuned for an in-depth project from Patrick this fall, produced in conjunction with another Chalkbeat location that’s also examining life after graduation.

Want to share tips about Newark’s high schools? Email Patrick.

I’m Chalkbeat’s new audience engagement editor. Here’s how I think about community and impact.

2019-02-11T22:12:06+00:00

Technically my first day at Chalkbeat was January 7, but I hope you’ll forgive the delay in saying hello. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been meeting people left and right, bookmarking community organizations and movers-and-shakers in the seven locations where we operate, and getting up to speed on our audience engagement strategies. Now that I can catch my breath, I wanted to take a moment to share my own perspective on engagement and what I’m hoping to do at Chalkbeat.

A lot has changed since I started working in engagement six years ago, but plenty remains the same. Comment sections are still prone to devolving into petty fighting without rigorous moderation. News organizations are still sorting out which traffic metrics they pay attention to, and which ones define success. The role of “engagement editor” in newsrooms, unlike “City Hall reporter” or “editor in chief,” can still resemble an amorphous blob, containing as much or as little as an outlet cares to hear from its audience.

Chalkbeat lands on the upper end of the spectrum, and its engagement-centric approach is part of what drew me to work here. I first learned about Chalkbeat back in 2013, when I was engagement editor at Voice of San Diego.

What immediately stood out: Chalkbeat’s MORI system, which remains the most thoughtful approach I’ve seen for measuring impact in the communities a news outlet covers. This isn’t the case everywhere, but to me, and most importantly to Chalkbeat, engagement and impact are intertwined; journalists’ work doesn’t yield impact if readers aren’t part of the conversation. While growing our audience is important (have you told a friend about Chalkbeat yet? We’d appreciate the help!), and will be a significant part of my job, our bureaus are motivated by doing work that matters, that informs debate and spurs action that results in better schools — not necessarily work that will go viral.

Since then, Chalkbeat has grown to seven bureaus with national coverage on top of that, and there are plans to expand to even more cities around the country in the future. Though my career path had carried me away from mission-driven nonprofit newsrooms, I found myself checking back in on Chalkbeat.

I spent 2018 as a senior editor at The New Republic, focused on engagement; before that, I was assignment editor and managing editor for the website of The Atlantic. I’d spent three years at legacy institutions, and though I’d known going into those experiences that the audiences would be bigger, and the metaphorical walls surrounding the newsrooms higher, than they had been in the nonprofit world, I don’t think I appreciated how different the mindsets around engagement — and impact — would be.

In the last few weeks, I’ve heard about several Chalkbeat stories that came directly from community engagement. One in particular stands out in my mind: the story of Javion, a 16-year-old in Chicago’s public school system who reads at a second-grade level. Our reporter Adeshina Emmanuel learned about Javion’s difficulties during last year’s listening tour, a series of in-person events where Chalkbeat staff aimed to empower people in the community to share their own stories.

Here was the engagement I cared about, where journalists sought to report with and for communities, not just “on” them; here was the commitment to driving impact by working with our readers, aiming for results above and beyond a CNN chyron name-dropping our cover story or Donald Trump tweet-ranting against our work. Here was journalism as public service.

So what will I be doing at Chalkbeat? I’ll be making it easier for us to reach more people in our communities, in person and online. I’ll be fine-tuning our social media practices, establishing and maintaining partnerships with other media outlets and community organizations, and helping our bureaus pull off events that amplify diverse voices. Generally, I’ll be managing how we talk to and hear from our audience — which includes you.

As I get started, I’d love to hear from you. What do you want to see more of from Chalkbeat? What are you hoping to get out of the newsletters? If you live near one of our bureau locations (especially Indianapolis, where I’m currently based), I’d love your suggestions for potential partners: Who’s doing good work in your city to improve education and build a stronger sense of community? Let’s chat: cgreen@chalkbeat.org

Now hiring: Chalkbeat Newark is set to expand

2019-01-23T16:36:50+00:00

Chalkbeat Newark has some breaking news of our own to report: We’re expanding.

Less than a year after Chalkbeat opened a new bureau dedicated to New Jersey’s largest school system, we’re adding another reporter in June. We’re expanding through Report for America, an innovative program that places beginning journalists in communities that need — and deserve — more on-the-ground reporting, and we especially welcome applicants from Newark.

“We are thrilled to have support to add more reporting capacity to our team in Newark,” said Elizabeth Green, Chalkbeat’s co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief. The bureau is the organization’s seventh; Chalkbeat also has reporters in Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, New York, and Tennessee, and is continuing to grow.

“We launched coverage in Newark at the request of a diverse group of community members,” Green continued. “Since then, more and more members of the community have told us they value the work we are doing: holding officials accountable, keeping the conversation honest, and shedding light on the consequences of major decisions that affect public education.”

The new reporter will bolster Chalkbeat’s coverage at a pivotal moment for Newark, as the district completes its transition from decades of state oversight back to local control, and as a new superintendent begins to make his mark on the 36,000-student school system.

The reporter will be partly funded by Report for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening local news coverage. The group, which is modeled on Americorps, is helping this year to place 60 journalists in newsrooms across the country — from Puerto Rico to Wisconsin to California and now New Jersey. Report for America will split the cost of the journalist with Chalkbeat and local donors.

Report for America was founded by two media veterans, Steven Waldman and Charles Sennott, who worried that the downsizing of newsrooms across the country threatens democracy. The nonprofit organization receives funding from a number of donors, including the Ford Foundation, Facebook, and Google.

Newsrooms that host Report for America-funded journalists have complete control over their work; donors play no part in the editorial process.

“Like all support to Chalkbeat, this gift comes with no strings attached,” Green said. “Our ultimate responsibility is always to tell the truth.”

Journalists interested in covering Newark schools (or any of the other RFA-sponsored roles) have until Feb. 8 to apply for the position. Along with their normal reporting duties, Report for America hires must also participate in a community-service project, such as mentoring student journalists.

We especially welcome Newark-based reporters to apply. If you know someone who’s right for the job, please encourage them to submit their information.

Tour notes: What we heard when we listened to our communities in a new way

2018-11-16T19:55:24+00:00

As with many initiatives at Chalkbeat, the idea started in one location. Our seventh bureau had just launched in Chicago, and our first order of business was to introduce ourselves to the city. But our new bureau chief, Cassie Walker Burke, knew we had to listen as well as speak.

She proposed a listening tour — a roving set of sessions where our top priority would be empowering our audience to share with us. The launch went so well that our entire news organization took up the initiative this summer and fall, holding 14 events in six locations across our network.

A deep belief in engagement has been encoded into Chalkbeat’s DNA from its founding in 2013, and it was one of the aspects that drew me to join the organization last year as executive editor. Our core values include putting down roots in local communities, and working with and for readers. We track shares, retweets, and readership the same as any other publication, but we are most committed to driving impact: bringing stories, people, and stakes alive for readers so they can engage in informed action and debate.

Before our readers can go out there and make their voices heard, we have to listen — to their concerns, their questions, and their critiques of our coverage. We’ve heard from parents, teachers, counselors, administrators, education wonks, legislators, and policymakers since the beginning, and we have appreciated and used their insights. But it’s a constant work in progress. Especially because we report for people who have historically lacked access to a quality education, we always aim to amplify and empower new voices.

Setting off on a listening tour, starting in Chicago and spreading out across our other local markets, emerged as the perfect strategy to make this happen.

Our goals

Before we set out on our tour, we identified four goals for the project. This also helped us think through how to structure the “stops” on the tour, as well as how to measure success.

Generate story ideas
Build and diversify our source network
Deepen the understanding of the Chalkbeat brand as community-oriented
Deepen community participation

The planning process

We shied away from a one-size-fits-all approach, allowing each bureau to tailor the program to fit their needs. An action force that included at least one representative from each bureau met regularly to discuss progress. That group designed a worksheet to help teams organize their listening sessions: by topic, by audience, by location, or by some combination of the three approaches. In some cases, we decided to center listening sessions around topics we knew we wanted to focus enterprise reporting on in the coming year.

We invited engagement-minded folks from other media organizations to share their expertise with us, too. Alexandra Smith of Whereby.Us, Ashley Alvarado from KPCC, and Jesse Hardman from Listening Post Collective helped us mightily during the planning process, answering our questions and offering suggestions. We also partnered with community organizations on the ground to help with logistics, audience-building, and trust. By seeking out established organizations to co-sponsor events, we signaled to potential attendees — especially those who were new to Chalkbeat — that we were to be trusted too.

The results

Chalkbeat put on a total of 14 events across six out of our seven markets (one bureau sat out for logistical reasons), with most teams executing one or two events. Chicago went all-in with seven listening tour stops as part of the bureau’s launch efforts. Here are some other key results:

Nearly 400 attendees in total
84 percent hadn’t read Chalkbeat before
More than 70 story ideas
Close to 150 new sources
About 220 email subscribers

In our newer bureaus, we got a lot of questions about our organization: How are we funded? What do we cover? Why and how can our readers participate? In our more established markets, we were able to home in on audiences we wanted to reach in a more targeted way, and topics the community was passionate about.

Following up

Listening is great, but we knew that if we did not carry forward what we heard, we would be failing our readers. So we made sure to follow up by emailing participants to thank them and publishing posts after events when it made sense. Michigan Radio covered one of our Detroit sessions, our Newark bureau designed a survey to keep the conversation going, and Denver used a feedback form to solicit input on how the sessions went. We also used a text-messaging platform, GroundSource, to follow up with attendees in Memphis.

We’re continuing to sort through the 70+ story ideas we gathered, and using those to inform some meaty enterprise work. Whenever we publish stories that tie back to the listening tour, we’ll inform participants. We’re also planning to designate stories on our site that emerged from community conversations, so all our readers have proof that we’re not just listening, we’re acting on what we hear. And we know that listening isn’t a one-time event. We’re keeping up with our tour participants throughout the year to keep the cycle going, so we can report for their communities even better.

One powerful quote from a Memphis reader drove it home. It reminded us that the hard work that went into this project — planning, wrangling logistics, making it happen on a nonprofit budget — was all worth it, and intentionally listening to our communities makes our journalism stronger.

“It was really inspiring to be a part of this. It was also really empowering, like what we say doesn’t just go into some black hole. You’re here and listening.” — Chalkbeat Tennessee listening tour attendee

Chalkbeat’s launching a newsletter all about early childhood. Sign up here.

2018-10-29T19:40:11+00:00

Our newest newsletter is called The Starting Line, and it’s all about early childhood — those brain-building years from birth to 8 years old.

As the Chalkbeat team has grown over the last five years, so has our coverage of early childhood education. Now, we’re making an even bigger investment in the topic with a monthly newsletter that will feature key early childhood stories from Chalkbeat as well as other news outlets.

In recent months, we’ve written stories about new child care rules that could threaten funding for hundreds of Illinois providers, Teach For America’s efforts to mint preschool teachers in Colorado, and discussions among Indiana leaders about where to find the money for new preschool seats.

Our goal is to keep you informed about broad policy issues in the early childhood world while also sharing on-the-ground stories that provide a window into how it all plays out in the lives of real people.

Expect to see the first issue of The Starting Line in early November. And remember to let us know what you think as it takes shape. If there’s a compelling early childhood topic, trend or study you’d like us to dig into, or an early childhood leader we should profile, let us know.

If you’re interested in receiving The Starting Line, sign up below. Then, send this link to a friend or colleague who cares about early childhood issues, too.

Finally, for those of you who want even more Chalkbeat, we have a ton of other newsletters as well: local dispatches from each of our bureaus — Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York, and Tennessee — plus a national newsletter, one designed especially for teachers, and a Spanish-language roundup out of Colorado. Sign up for all our newsletters here.

‘If they know we regularly care’: Our New York bureau and its newest reporter are listening up

2018-10-19T23:44:25+00:00

A new name has been popping up at Chalkbeat as our organization continues to grow, and the byline belongs to Reema Amin.

This latest addition to the New York reporting team, which I began overseeing as bureau chief in September, was off to attend her first press conference — held by the mayor, schools chancellor, and teachers union chief — before her first day on the job had ended.

She was instrumental to our reporting on the teachers contract, announced last week, and has already visited Albany, where she will be reporting occasionally on state education policy. Like all members of the New York bureau, she contributed this week to our joint reporting project with ProPublica, exploring whether counselors in New York City schools can really meet students’ needs, especially as student homelessness has reached an all-time high.

Chalkbeat reporter Reema Amin

And most recently, she looked at how a proposed rule change by the Department of Homeland Security could, if adopted, discourage immigrant families from applying for benefits, such as Medicaid, which in turn could threaten the financial viability of the city’s school-based health clinics.

Reema grew up in Hoffman Estates, a suburb of Chicago, and has worked as a breaking-news reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She most recently covered the Virginia statehouse for the Daily Press, a newspaper serving communities in the southeastern corner of the state, and co-hosted a politics podcast for the paper.

In Virginia, Reema had just begun covering a rural county when she happened to attend a school board meeting and noticed a distraught mother, whom no one was listening to. Reema did listen. Jessica Leitch had been struggling to get her autistic son the special education services he needed — and qualified for.

Parents like Leitch, Reema said, “keep meticulous records” — they must to advocate for their children. Using this paper trail to start her own investigation, Reema sought out other parents and made public records requests and soon was combing through hundreds of pages of documents to uncover how the district led the region in special education complaints.

One of Reema’s key strategies as a reporter, she says, is to keep in touch with as many different people — parents, teachers, students, education officials and policymakers — as possible on a daily basis. “If they know we regularly care,” she says, “they’re more likely to share” their own experiences and concerns, a philosophy Chalkbeat also embraces.

Reema is joining a veteran Chalkbeat news team in New York.

Reporter Christina Veiga, who joined the bureau in 2016 from the Miami Herald, where she worked for more than a half-dozen years covering city government and later the Miami-Dade Schools, has kept Chalkbeat readers apprised of the latest news about the schools chancellor, the debate over the admissions process to the city’s specialized high schools, and the unfolding push for greater integration in districts on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and in Brooklyn.

Alex Zimmerman, who has written for the Village Voice, the Pittsburgh City Paper, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette among other publications, also joined Chalkbeat in 2016. He has reported on the specialized high school debate, on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Renewal and community schools program, the largest of its kind in the country, and whether heavy investments in wraparound social services in schools can really move the needle on students’ academic achievement. He has also provided occasional dispatches from the city’s charter-school sector and explored the challenges faced by students with disabilities.

Our story editor, Carrie Melago, works with me editing stories and helping guide coverage (as well as serving as story editor for our Indiana bureau). Carrie previously honed her sharp news instincts as a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Daily News.

My own interest in education began in New York and later Newark, cities where I taught taught for seven years. (I’m also the story editor for Chalkbeat’s Newark bureau.) Inequities I witnessed as a teacher inspired me to write about these experiences, which in time led to my reporting on education for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Atlantic.

Over these same years, the city’s schools — and education nationally — have experienced seismic shifts. In my first classroom in the 1990s, teachers still wrote with chalk, there was no school email or classroom computers. Now teachers can plan lessons — or marches — on Facebook; parents can vent about busing woes on Twitter, and students are regularly part of the online discussion. And some things we really wish had changed haven’t: rates of childhood poverty, homelessness and segregation.

In the New York bureau, we will be tackling some of these subjects anew or as part of our ongoing reporting. We will be making deliberate efforts to engage more with the communities we cover and to amplify their voices. Christina will be looking deeper into one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature education initiatives — his push to rapidly expand early-childhood education. And building on Reema’s and Alex’s past reporting on students with disabilities, we will be taking a harder look at special education in the city. And as classrooms remain the heart of any school, we will be spending more time there. We want to hear from you –whether you are a teacher, a parent, a student, or those responsible for imagining and implementing education policy. Stay tuned for news of our first listening tour, where we come to you to hear your concerns and questions, so we can then go out and address them through our reporting.

We welcome feedback — about the stories we’ve done, the stories we’re doing and those we’ve missed and should now pursue. You can always reach out to ny.tips@chalkbeat.org. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to one or all of our newsletters. We look forward to the continuing conversation.

Meet the talented people who will help us push Chalkbeat into the future

2018-08-27T14:00:00+00:00

As the new school year kicks off, we’re both looking forward and looking back.

This has been a significant year for us. We covered important stories, broke big news, and launched coverage in two new cities, Newark and Chicago. We also expanded our team. We’re now one of the country’s largest nonprofit newsrooms, and certainly one of the largest telling local stories — at a time when local coverage is shrinking across the country.

In the year ahead, we will continue to tell the story of education in America by investigating both local realities and the national trends that shape them. We kicked things off this summer with a listening tour (stay tuned for more of what we heard at those events). We’re also taking some big steps toward strengthening the other parts of our work. We’re going to further diversify our revenue so we can guarantee the very best and always entirely independent coverage of public schools for a long time to come. We’re going to invest in technology and design, to help us reach and engage more readers. And we’re going to chart a clear path for the significant growth we need to take on to step up to the challenges of the times.

To do that, we’ve brought on a new cohort of leaders in the news business. I am so thrilled to introduce Maria Archangelo, our new senior director of partnerships, who will lead the charge in diversifying and growing our revenue; Becca Aaronson, our new director of product, who will guide strategic investment in our core technology and internal capabilities; and Alison Go, who is working with us to design Chalkbeat’s growth plan.

We are also expanding our national team with the addition of Francisco Vara-Orta as a national reporter and data specialist for Chalkbeat. Francisco’s skills will give Chalkbeat the ability to more closely cover several organizations working to influence schools nationwide and enable us to better use data to find and tell stories in all of Chalkbeat’s bureaus.

Maria Archangelo

Photo: Alan Petersime

Maria comes to Chalkbeat after working as publisher and executive director of the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a 24-year-old nonprofit education news organization. Most of her 30-year career has been spent in traditional media. She worked as a reporter at the Baltimore Sun and an editor at the Sun’s community newspapers, and was editor of the daily newspaper in the capital of Vermont. Dismayed by the changes in the industry, Maria decided to devote herself to growing revenue for journalism and joined the business side. From 2006 to 2012 she served as publisher of the award-winning Stowe Reporter in Stowe, VT. She also helped lead an innovative international community magazine project and took a (brief) side trip into communications and marketing. She graduated from Temple University with bachelor of arts in journalism.

Becca Aaronson

Photo Alan Petersime

Before Chalkbeat, Becca spent nearly eight years at fellow nonprofit news organization The Texas Tribune, where she was their first-ever product manager. She was responsible for creating and managing the Tribune’s product roadmap, leading their website redesign, conducting user research, and ensuring that technology products aligned with audience and brand strategy. Over the course of her Tribune tenure, she wore many hats, including softball coach of The Runoffs. She co-founded the Tribune’s data visuals team, where she designed, built, and managed several award-winning investigative projects. And while covering health care from 2012 to 2014, she gained 5,000 Twitter followers on the day she live-tweeted the Wendy Davis abortion filibuster. Becca has a bachelor’s degree in cultural theory from Scripps College in Claremont, Calif.

Alison Go

Alison is working on growth initiatives across various teams at Chalkbeat. Previously, she was a product manager at Facebook, Amazon (Audible), and Rent the Runway, and in a former life, she was a journalist at U.S. News & World Report (covering higher ed!), the Boston Globe, and the San Jose Mercury News. Alison received her MBA from Wharton and undergrad degree from the University of Michigan.

Francisco Vara-Orta

Francisco joins Chalkbeat in September as a national reporter and data specialist. He was previously at Education Week, where he covered philanthropy and parent engagement and managed data projects, and an open records researcher at Investigative Reporters and Editors. Before that, he reported for the San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, and the Austin Business Journal, among other news organizations. He holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s University in his hometown of San Antonio, and earned a master’s degree in data and investigative journalism from Mizzou as a Thurgood Marshall Fellow. Follow him @fvaraorta.

More bullying reported at New York City schools, study shows

2018-06-19T02:28:42+00:00

More New York City students say there is bullying in their schools, a report released Monday showed. The findings also revealed that many schools reporting the greatest number of violent incidents on campus have no social workers on staff.

The report was commissioned by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Stringer also released an audit of how school safety matters are recorded, and concluded that the education department should provide more oversight and streamline incident reporting rules.

“The audit found clear breakdowns in communication in the reporting and tracking of incidents and actions taken,” according to a press release from Stringer’s office.

The education department disputed some of the comptroller’s findings, and in a written statement, spokeswoman Miranda Barbot wrote: “We have detailed protocols in place to ensure allegations of bullying are immediately reported, investigated and addressed, and are investing in both anti-bullying initiatives and mental health supports.”

But the pair of reports raises scrutiny of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s school discipline reforms, which favor “restorative” practices that emphasize mediation over punishment, and make it harder to suspend students.

Advocates of the de Blasio reforms say the shift is necessary because black and Hispanic students are more likely to be arrested or disciplined at school. Research has shown such disciplinary action can lead to higher dropout rates. Critics of the reforms, meanwhile, say the changes have created more chaotic schools.

The findings are also likely to add to a chorus of parents and elected officials who say more emotional supports are needed for the city’s most vulnerable students. Students who experience a mental health crisis during the school day may be handcuffed and shuttled to hospitals. The city’s latest budget, which was approved last week, includes an additional $2 million to hire social workers and guidance counselors in schools that currently don’t have any.

Here are some highlights from the reports.

More students report there is bullying in their schools — but the data comes with a catch.

Last year, the education department’s annual survey showed that 82 percent of students said their peers “harass, bully, or intimidate others in school.” That’s up year over year, and up significantly from 65 percent of students in 2012, which was the lowest rate recorded since at least 2010. (De Blasio’s discipline reforms started to take effect around 2015.)

A note about these numbers: Prior to 2017, the survey asked whether students harass, bully or intimidate other students none, some, most, or all of the time. The most recent survey responses were slightly different: none of the time, rarely, some of the time, or most of the time — a change that may have artificially inflated the bullying numbers.

That’s enough to render the survey data unreliable said Max Eden, a researcher who has studied school climate for the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute — a critic of the mayor’s discipline reforms. Still, taken with other findings, it’s reasonable to think that bullying is on the rise at city schools, he said.

Among the other evidence: A first-of-its-kind report, released this month under a new city law, that showed substantiated bullying incidents are on track to increase this year.

Schools that log the most violent incidents often lack mental health supports.

Guidance counselors and social workers are key when it comes to creating safe schools because they can help address the root cause of violent or troublesome behavior, advocates who want more mental health supports say.

But many of the city’s neediest schools go without that help.

Of the schools reporting the most violent incidents on campus, 36 percent lack a full-time social worker, the comptroller found. On campuses where there are social workers, caseloads are a staggering 700 to one. That far exceeds the recommended ratio from the National Association of Social Workers of 250 general education students per social worker — and it’s higher than the citywide average of 612 students per social worker, according to the comptroller.

The comptroller’ compares that to the ratio of New York Police Department school safety agents who are placed in schools: There is one safety agent per 228 students, according to the report.

“Our city is failing to meet the social and emotional needs of our students,” Councilman Mark Treyger, of Brooklyn, who has pushed the city to report more up-to-date bullying data and to hire more school counselors, said in an emailed statement.

Schools may be underreporting violent incidents, something the education department disputes.

In a separate audit, the comptroller compared logs kept by school safety agents to incident reports filed by school leaders. In 21 percent of cases, incidents that were noted by safety agents were not reflected in the school reports.

The school data, in turn, are used to report incidents to the state for its Violent and Disruptive Incident Report, or VADIR. The discrepancy could raise questions about the already-controversial reporting system. (VADIR has been criticized for classifying schoolyard incidents as serious offenses, and the state has tweaked its definitions in response to those kinds of concerns.)

This finding also comes with some caveats. The comptroller looked at only 10 schools — a tiny sample of the city’s portfolio of about 1,800. And the education department took issue with the methodology.

In its response to the audit, education department officials said that the police data doesn’t align with the state’s reporting categories, and that the information may not be comparable because of student privacy concerns and recordkeeping issues on campuses where multiple schools share a building.

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Adeshina Emmanuel on race, public schools, and “tough love” in CPS

2018-05-22T17:41:20+00:00

Last week, I gave you an overview of our plans for Chalkbeat Chicago and shared an inside look at our first community event in Washington Park. (Stay tuned: Several more community events are on the way.) Today, I’m excited to offer a deeper introduction to my first hire: Adeshina Emmanuel, an Uptown native who is a Chicago Public Schools grad. Ever want to talk public schools? Adeshina attended five CPS schools, graduating in 2007 from Friedrich Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center.

Adeshina has been plenty busy since then: staff jobs at the Chicago Sun-Times, DNAinfo Chicago, and the Chicago Reporter; writing for Chicago magazine, In These Times, Ebony, the Chicago Reader, and Columbia Journalism Review; and leading in-depth reporting projects through City Bureau, a Chicago civic journalism lab. His writing and reporting about race and class is insightful and honest, and I’m excited to be working alongside him to tell the complex story of Chicago public education.

Since he’s the new guy, I asked him to answer a few questions about himself and his approach to the education beat.

You’ve primarily been writing about race and class in Chicago. Why are you diving so deeply into education at this point in your career?

It’s a natural progression. This new role gives me the opportunity to examine race and class through the lens of education, while connecting the dots to politics, finance, and other forces shaping our public school and charter systems. We can’t have a serious conversation about American inequality without considering how these dynamics help shape and manifest in public educational institutions such as CPS, especially in an infamously segregated and racially problematic city like Chicago.

You’re a graduate of Chicago Public Schools. Looking back as an adult, how would you describe your experiences?

CPS was far from perfect—but I wouldn’t be the journalist, or person, I am today without a lot of the guidance, love, and tough love from the schools I attended. That includes students, principals, assistant principals, school disciplinarians, teachers, teachers assistants, security guards, school counselors, basketball coaches, and more.

I won’t get into my whole CPS journey. But there’s a crucial moment I’d like to share. It’s a story about how one selective-enrollment school in Lake View pushed me out and how a neighborhood school in Uptown took me in—and helped shape who I am.

Third grade was a rough year for me. I was an emotional and outspoken know-it-all who clashed often with his teacher and spent a lot of time in the office accused of disobeying authority. My greatest nemesis—if a third-grader can really have a nemesis—was a sixth-grade boy who was in my older sister’s homeroom and rode the school bus with us. He had a habit of making suggestive and demeaning comments to her. The bully and I had fought one-on-one at least twice, and he beat me up pretty bad both times. I never told my parents or anybody at school.

One day, he touched my sister—again—as we rode the school bus home. We confronted the bully with some friends, and, this time, our clash got back to officials at our school. We were pressured to find another school.

My mom decided on our neighborhood school, Joseph Stockton Elementary (now Courtenay, after a 2013 consolidation). At Stockton, I found a sense of family that had been lacking at my previous school. The teachers and administrators knew my mother, and many of the mothers at the school knew each other from the neighborhood.

At Stockton, I fell in love with the written word. I remember my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Simmons, who was one of the first to encourage my craft. My fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Zaccor, challenged me with books beyond my grade level like Native Son and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. My basketball coach, Mr. Yolich, taught me about hard work and self-discipline both in the classroom and on the court. Yolich, who grew up in Uptown like me and was very involved in the community, was well put together, respectful and laid back—but blunt—and I looked up to him as a role model.

These are just some of the people at CPS who have changed my life for the better and taught me the power of a loving and engaged school community.

What do you think is missing in the conversation about Chicago education?

I wouldn’t say these things are missing, just that we need them to be more prominent in our conversation.

We need to talk more—and with more honesty—about the ways that racism and other forms of systemic oppression have affected schools historically and today. We need more discussion about the link between poverty, trauma and violence in youth. We need to take a more intersectional view of the forces students face when they hail from various marginalized groups or identities, especially gender nonconforming people, immigrants, students with mental illness, and students with disabilities. We need more of a solutions approach to the conversation about Chicago education—and to not simply call out issues. We need more continuous focus on the resilience, imagination, and courage exercised by students and educators pushing for solutions to problems in education, not just when there’s a headline grabbing event like a walkout, a school closing or a hunger strike. Everyday efforts can be both empowering and instructive.

What is your philosophy about engaging the communities that you cover?

Be present, listen, collaborate, and report back.

I approach community engagement with an open ear for how people describe their relationship with institutions, their personal histories, and how their stories relate to both the history of their community and the history of the institutions that serve the area. I also want to take stock of what’s working, what’s not working, and what they feel they need to solve their problems. Each person’s perspective is like a thread. It’s my job as a journalist to help weave these threads into a narrative.

How can readers reach you?

On Twitter, @public_ade, and via email, at aemmanuel@chalkbeat.org. Or, if you see me, say hi. I’ll be out there.

What’s missing from the conversation about Chicago schools?

2018-05-14T21:29:54+00:00

Last week, I co-hosted a dinner for 45 parents, educators, students and community members at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts in Washington Park. Over some of the best chicken and biscuits I’ve had in my life, I posed this question. The list of responses was long and impassioned, but one answer, in particular, stayed with me long after we all went home.

“There’s a disconnect between the policy makers and the people on the ground. Too often, I have to bring my own chair to the table.”

I get this.

A few weeks ago, I dropped my son off at kindergarten and drove back to my home office to start a new job as bureau chief of Chalkbeat Chicago. Even in a district powered by school choice, landing a spot in a “good” kindergarten felt like a struggle: starting with testing in a hot, crowded room with other nervous parents and kids and ending with 11 waitlists.

It’s one thing to write about school choice as a journalist; it’s another to experience it as a parent.

I’m approaching this job as both. At Chalkbeat Chicago, we plan to cover early childhood education through K-12, which means assessing everything from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “diploma mandate” to the highly touted freshman tracking program To & Through to efforts to tamp down the district’s high debt. We will examine decisions made in the boardroom: on spending, school openings and closings, charter authorizations, leadership, and the like. But we’ll also be reporting from classrooms. As a parent, I can attest that you can’t really understand the district’s opportunities and challenges until you spend time talking with educators and seeing kids in school.

And as our dinner guests last week stressed, to get the full picture, you must engage the community, too. To get the Chicago bureau up and running, we plan to launch a Listening Tour that will take us around the city to better understand what’s working in public education and what’s not. We already kicked it off with our dinner at Dyett, which we hosted with the neighborhood schools advocacy group Generation All as part of the Chicago Community Trust #OntheTable2018.

Some questions participants raised in that conversation:

There are serious questions about who wields the power, from mayoral control of the district to concerns about Local School Councils. LSCs need to be supported, trained by the central office and promoted. Participants asked: Where is the accountability to the public?
More honesty is needed about how deeply racism shapes schools. Is school funding equitable? What does it mean when some schools have art teachers and librarians, and others don’t? Why does it seem like some neighborhoods have a say in whether they get charter schools—and others don’t?
We know that an overwhelming number of Chicago children suffer from trauma and stress. But suspensions, expulsions, and discipline have become the norm instead of counseling and kindness.
Schools used to be the center of community life. That’s why the stakes are so high when schools are slated to close. How can we return to that thinking? How can we invite the community and parents in? How can we develop more community leaders and partnerships that build up neighborhood schools?
Wanted: better ideas for parent engagement. How do we bring in parents into a child’s educational life?
The public narrative of Chicago schools is overwhelmingly negative. Let’s figure out exactly what’s working and, first, replicate it. Then celebrate it.

People kept talking, and our list of participants’ questions kept growing—even after the dinner was over, the biscuits were gone and the school was closing for the night. I’m pleased to say, though, that this was just a start. As we host more conversations across Chicago, we pledge to make public what we learn. We also plan to use what we hear to help set our coverage priorities for the year.

Tomorrow, I’ll introduce my first new hire: Adeshina Emmanuel, whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Ebony, Columbia Journalism Review, the Chicago Reader and Chicago magazine. By the end of May, we’ll start publishing a weekly newsletter that summarizes what you need to know about Chicago schools. It will elevate some of the great reporting that’s already happening here and include our observations as well. Moving into fall, that newsletter will appear with more regularity. By June, we plan to start publishing stories on our site as we move about the city on our Listening Tour.

Getting started, I’m eager to hear from you. Tell us what you think is missing from the conversation about Chicago schools, find out more about our Listening Tour or send us a story idea or just hello: chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Since our dinner, I’ve been thinking a lot about the guest who spoke so passionately about bringing her own chair to the table. At Chalkbeat Chicago, we want to invite everyone into the discussion, from the power brokers to Chicago educators to community members, like her, who feel like they haven’t been heard.

Join us. There are plenty of chairs at our table for everyone.

As Chalkbeat Detroit grows (again), meet our newest reporter and hear how you can have your voice heard

2018-05-10T17:57:08+00:00

Chalkbeat Detroit is growing again — and we’d like you, our readers, to help our team cover the story of Detroit schools in new and exciting ways.

Koby Levin, a Detroit-area native who comes to us after a stint at a newspaper in Missouri, joined us as a reporter this week. He’ll be bringing you more of the in-depth coverage of Detroit schools that you’ve come to expect from Chalkbeat.

And, his arrival heralds the start of a new push we’re making here at Chalkbeat Detroit. We are making a more deliberate effort to engage with our readers and the communities we cover. That means Koby will be actively seeking out new ways to elevate the voices of educators, parents and students in our city. He’ll be out in Detroit neighborhoods, and will use social media and text messaging in sophisticated ways to make new connections. He’ll be taking the lead on a partnership we’ve begun with another local journalism start-up, Outlier Media, that finds new ways to deliver information to busy people.

Kimberly Hayes Taylor, who first joined us at the end of January, will continue to dive into critical issues facing Detroit schools and early childhood education, but she also will devote more time to making connections in the community. She’ll be planning events, finding ways to bring people together, and will be looking for stories about the people who work in our schools and rely on them.

Koby and Kim will both be working closely with me, Chalkbeat Detroit’s Bureau Chief, and with Julie Topping, our talented story editor. Please be in touch with all of us. You can find us on email, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Now, since Koby is the new guy, we thought we’d introduce him to readers with a quick interview.

Koby Levin

Welcome to Chalkbeat. Let’s get right to it. Why are you interested in reporting on schools?

My mom taught middle school, and I seriously considered becoming an educator myself. I spent my summers in high school and college working with public school students, often in Detroit. If I wasn’t going to be a teacher, I was going to be a journalist. During the school year, I’d work for the student paper. So education reporting always seemed a natural fit.

Which Detroit communities are you planning to cover?

All of them. But since I’m bilingual in English and Spanish, I plan to use Spanish to highlight the issues facing English language learners in schools. I’m looking forward to living and reporting in the same place. I live in Southwest Detroit.

What is your philosophy about engaging readers in your reporting?

Engagement works two ways. Of course there’s the engagement that takes place after the reporting is done. We have to use every tool available to make sure Detroiters are getting the information they need about their schools, from social media to collaborations with other news outlets. But that’s only the tail end of the process. Strong, engaging stories involve readers all the way through. They are for readers, but also about them.

What’s cool is that the two kinds of engagement benefit each other. My goal is to erase the line between reader and community member.

Will your stories based on community input be different than other stories?

Well, yes. Those stories are richer than anything that was cooked up in an office. Above all, they matter more to the people we’re writing about. But also no. All of our stories should be based on community input.

How can I get in touch with you if i have a story idea or want to share information?

Let’s talk! As I get up to speed, I’ll be leaning on people who’ve been around much longer than I have to explain how we got here and where we’re going. Our goal at Chalkbeat is to spur change by shedding light on inequity, but that’s a community-wide project. Please, share what you know — and tell me what you’d like to see covered. I want to hear from you. Find me on Twitter.

What I want to give teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week

2018-05-07T17:32:33+00:00

Appreciation is nice, but isn’t recognition better?

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, I want to reprise some of the strongest voices we’ve showcased in Chalkbeat so far this year: those of teachers. Nobody can tell the story of American education better than the people who create it every single day.

That was certainly the case for the following four teachers, who volunteered their time and, more importantly, their wisdom when they contributed to Chalkbeat’s reporting over the past year.

So here’s an idea: Thank one of them — or a teacher you know yourself — by making a donation to Chalkbeat in their honor. It’s a double-whammy kind of gift, because it’s easy (just click here) and meaningful (proceeds will go toward supporting our ability to tell more teachers’ stories in the months to come). We’re also sending an extra gift to the first 10 teachers to be honored, courtesy of our sponsor Yoobi, the very cool school supplies company. (By the way, check out their tear-jerking thank-you to teachers this week.) Plus, we’ll feature some of the honored teachers on Chalkbeat.

Oh, and one more thing: Thanks to a generous $10,000 matching gift from Rick Smith, one of my own incredible teachers, every donation will be doubled. (Rick was the longtime editor-in-chief and CEO of Newsweek, and I’ve learned a lot from him about leading a journalistic enterprise.)

Now, on to the teachers.

Quincy Stewart

Quincy Stewart was featured in a June Chalkbeat story about his innovative use of music to teach African-American history. He left Detroit’s Central High School this summer after learning he’d face a $30,000 pay cut.

We featured Quincy Stewart of Detroit’s Central High School because of his distinctive approach to teaching music, which blends African-American history with music theory. But it was the way he described a quintessential American teacher experience — being subject to policies outside your control — that made him unforgettable.

“It’s kind of like being…at the bottom of a latrine,” he said. “The biggest thud from what comes into the latrine lands at the bottom… Us teachers have really felt the thud of the crap.”

Sable Otey

Sable Otey, a 31-year-old physical education teacher for Shelby County Schools in Memphis, is a member of the U.S. bobsled team at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Lately, whenever I push myself to add a workout into my busy day, I think of Sable Otey. For the last year, Otey would teach for a full day at her Memphis elementary school — and then spend a second full day training for the Olympics.

She told us how she found her motivation: “I realized I have been an inspiration to so many people, so many kids, so many adults, even, in my community. Just coming from Binghamton, being told some of the things that some of the kids are being told now — that they’re not going to be anything. They’re not going to get a college degree. I’ve overcome all of those obstacles.”

When students share their challenges with her, she tells them her own life story. “I think it’s my job to do that because it’s a village. Back when villages were raising people, a village actually raised me: my principals, my teachers, people in my community. All of those people helped me become who I am today.”

Ilona Nanay

The author at her school.

You know “driveway moments,” when you stop what you’re doing to finish listening to a great radio story? I had one of those when I read teacher Ilona Nanay’s account of the pang of sadness she felt at her Bronx high school’s first-ever graduation ceremony. She was reading the graduation program, and all the students had notes next to their names sharing the college they planned to attend in the fall — except for two.

“These young women started high school as English learners and were diagnosed with learning disabilities. Despite these obstacles, I have never seen two students work so hard,” Nanay wrote. “By the time they graduated, they had two of the highest grade point averages in their class.”

“It would have made sense for them to be college-bound,” she continued. “But neither would go to college. Because of their undocumented status, they did not qualify for financial aid, and, without aid, they could not afford it.”

Jose Romero

I’m reserving this last entry for the person whose story gave me the most goose bumps. Jose Romero, a high school senior in Queens who is Mexican American, wrote about the perils of spending the first decade of his education never having a teacher who looked like him.

He framed his moving and beautifully written piece around two stories.

The first is of a moment in fifth grade when a classmate asked him whether he crossed the border from Mexico. Romero didn’t, but both of his parents did. Theirs is a powerful story of hope, challenge, love, and fate — and one that his classmate, sadly, never got the chance to hear. When the question came up, the classmate mixed it with a degrading slur about immigrants, and instead of creating an opportunity for sharing and learning, the boys’ teacher let the slur pass and shot down any further conversation.

The second story Romero tells is of his high school, the first place he’s ever had a teacher of color. He’s now part of an all-male mentorship group led by two African-American teachers. “It’s hard to explain the way it feels to have a teacher who looks like you,” Romero writes; “they’re like older brothers who become a huge part of our lives, even if it’s just for four years. They make it easier to connect and socialize and help me feel more like I belong.”

Here’s the part that gave me goose bumps: Romero’s own plan for the future is to pay his mentor teachers’ gift forward by becoming a fifth-grade teacher himself.

Special thanks to our partners at Yoobi for supporting this campaign.

Chalkbeat’s newest newsletter is made for teachers. Sign up here.

2018-05-03T23:01:20+00:00

We’re about to launch another newsletter over here at Chalkbeat, and this one is especially for teachers.

The newsletter is a spinoff of our interview series How I Teach. Over the past year, our reporters have already introduced you to a Memphis teacher who uses Facebook Live on snow days, a government teacher in East Harlem tackling debates about race and the presidency, a Colorado Springs teacher who helps students navigate parents’ deployments, and dozens of other educators from across the country.

Our goal is to share realistic snapshots of what life looks like in classrooms today, and make sure you don’t miss the tips and tricks those teachers have passed along to us. (Our goal is definitely not to provide any more professional development or pat answers about successful teaching.)

In the newsletter, we’ll also include stories we think might be especially useful to teachers, including our take on new research and thoughtful pieces written by educators themselves. And we’ll use this newsletter as another chance to bring you into our reporting — letting you know what we’re working on and how you can help by sharing your own experiences.

Ann Schimke, the Colorado-based reporter behind some of our award-winning coverage of early childhood issues and many How I Teach features, will be your guide.

Interested? Sign up below. And for those of you keeping track, we now have local newsletters for each of our bureaus — Chicago (where coverage is launching soon), Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York City, and Tennessee — plus a national newsletter and a Spanish-language newsletter out of Colorado.

Chalkbeat’s newsroom is now 30+ strong, and growing. Meet our team.

2018-03-26T13:00:08+00:00

We’ve added a lot of new people to our team here lately. I couldn’t be happier to tell you all about them!

First, a quick word on how we got here. Our hiring spree is brought to you partly by Chalkbeat’s expansion — hello, Chicago and Newark! — and partly because we’re beefing up the staff in existing bureaus.

Believe it or not (and some days I can’t), Chalkbeat is now one of the largest nonprofit news organizations in the country, with a newsroom of 30+ and more joining every month. We are really proud of the coverage we are adding as the country’s newsrooms shrink (or vanish). We are also acutely aware that it’s not nearly enough, which is why we’re determined to make sure that 30 is just the beginning.

I’m more confident every day we can do it — not least of all because of the talented team members who joined us in the past few months. They are journalists at the top of their field, from a mix of newspapers, digital startups, and magazines. They’re smart, they know a lot about their communities, and a ton about education. And they care. A lot. They represent the perfect Chalkbeat mix. Let me introduce them.

First, our bureau chiefs:

Jacinthia Jones began this week as Tennessee’s new bureau chief. Jacinthia comes to us from the Memphis Commercial Appeal, where she worked for 20 years as a reporter and editor and most recently oversaw a team of reporters including the education beat reporter. As a reporter, Jacinthia’s beats included City Hall, religion, social services, and education, and as an editor, she steered coverage of historic changes to the city’s schools. Jacinthia grew up in the Memphis suburbs, attended Shelby County schools, and knows the city inside and out. Jacinthia’s arrival means Marta Aldrich, who has led the bureau from Nashville, will now concentrate her firepower on covering the legislature and state issues as our senior statehouse correspondent.

We’re thrilled to announce Cassie Walker Burke as our founding Chicago bureau chief, starting early next month. Cassie is coming to us from Crain’s Chicago Business, where she has served on the senior leadership team as assistant managing editor. Before that, Cassie was a longtime editor at Chicago magazine, finishing her tenure there as executive editor. Cassie is a proven leader and strategic thinker who knows how to harness the potential of digital storytelling — and she knows how Chicago works. She began her career as an education reporter and is passionate about telling stories of how education policy plays out in neighborhoods and classrooms (read these stories for proof) and will bring no shortage of creative ideas to help us make an immediate impression in the city.

Jacinthia and Cassie join two other bureau chiefs who started at Chalkbeat this winter. In Colorado, Erica Meltzer came to us from the local digital startup Denverite and immediately began incorporating community engagement into our reporting practices. (This survey about Denver parents’ school choice experiences offers one example.) She’s also jumped into covering Colorado’s legislature.

In Indiana, Stephanie Wang joined our team from the Indianapolis Star, adding to our reporting power. She is helping our reporters explain the national context of Indiana’s embrace of public education options, as well as local insights into how schools and the city shape each other. She will also be reporting on the state’s expanding early childhood education efforts.

And in Detroit, Erin Einhorn is now leading a growing team of journalists after two years of solo (and award-winning) reporting as a senior correspondent.

We made the exciting decision to bring on more editors so that bureau chiefs can invest their time in team leadership, community engagement, and reporting and writing stories of their own.

This spring, we’ve hired two top-tier story editors to join a team anchored by Julie Topping, the Detroit Free Press alumna who joined Chalkbeat in 2016 and now works with our reporters in Detroit and Tennessee.

Our journalists in Indiana and New York have already started working with Carrie Melago, whose first day at Chalkbeat coincided with New York City getting a new chancellor. Carrie joined our team from the Wall Street Journal, where she was most recently the newsroom training editor. Before working at the Journal, Carrie covered New York City schools (and other topics) for the New York Daily News as the partner-in-crime to Erin, and thorn-in-my-side to me, with a constant stream of scoops. (See this incredible “where are they now” story about a 1994 Harlem kindergarten class.)

Starting next month, Sharon Noguchi will work with our journalists in Chicago and Colorado. Sharon recently left the San Jose Mercury News, where she covered the education beat for years. (Here are some highlights.) Sharon also has extensive experience coaching up-and-coming reporters, including through leading a summer training program for high school journalists.

Finally Patrick Wall, our newly minted Newark correspondent, is working with Sara Mosle, an award-winning journalist with an education focus, as he launches our coverage there. Sara, who has taught in and reported about Newark, recently wrapped up a Spencer Fellowship and is also teaching at Columbia University’s journalism school while working with us part-time. She’s written about education for many publications, including the New York Times Magazine, where we recommend reading this 1997 profile of New York City’s chancellor for a reminder of how much has changed, and how much hasn’t, in the education world.

Impressed? Me too. Now guess what: you too can join this A-list roster, because we are still hiring. We are seeking a director of product, a New York bureau chief, a second national reporter, and reporters in Chicago. Check out — and please, liberally forward! — our open positions here.

We can’t wait for you to hear these Indianapolis teachers’ stories — join us April 19

2018-03-20T16:23:13+00:00

Indianapolis teachers have more stories from their classrooms to share this spring.

Over the past year, Chalkbeat has brought readers personal stories from the teachers, students, and leaders of Indianapolis through our occasional series, What’s Your Education Story? Some of our favorites were told live during teacher story slams hosted by Teachers Lounge Indy.

The stories dealt with how a teacher grappled with coming out to his students, a class that organized to save historic trees in their community, and the unexpected lesson of a mouse in the classroom.

Next month, Chalkbeat is partnering with Teachers Lounge Indy, WFYI Public Media, and the Indianapolis Public Library to host a story slam. The event, 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 19, will showcase tales from across Circle City classrooms. It is free and open to the public — please RSVP here.

Event details:

5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Central Library, Clowes Auditorium
40 E. St. Clair St., Indianapolis, IN
Get tickets here and find more on Facebook

What are the Newark education stories you want to read?

2018-03-06T23:09:40+00:00

This is a historic moment for Newark’s public schools.

After 22 years of state takeover ended last month, the city school board is re-empowered and gearing up to pick a new superintendent. Candidates are lining up to vie for three board seats that will open next month, even as Mayor Ras Baraka — who as a former principal promised to usher in a new era for the city’s schools — runs for reelection in May.

And, just in time to help make sense of it all, Chalkbeat Newark officially launched this week.

I’m Patrick Wall, Chalkbeat Newark’s founding reporter. I hope to spotlight some of the city’s education movers and shakers, track the growth of Newark’s charter sector and the pressure it’s put on the district’s budget, and show what’s happening inside city classrooms. And that’s just this month.

To do all that, I need your help. At Chalkbeat, our readers are the people who shape the local schools and rely on them. They’re also our sources. As we start in Newark, I’m hoping you’ll not only read our coverage but also help steer it, suggesting stories and making sure we reach a wide audience. Here are three ways you can help:

Sign up for the weekly Newark newsletter. In it, I’ll share my reporting and round up the great coverage by other outlets so that you know everything you need to about Newark schools. The first newsletter goes out this Friday.
Tell me what you want to read. Which power brokers or inspiring students do you want to meet? What arcane policies or tangled politics do you want to understand? Which schools or programs do you want to see up close? Please send your questions, ideas, and tips to pwall@chalkbeat.org.
Come say “hi.” I’m planning to host regular “office hours” throughout the community to meet readers where they are. The first edition will be at the Springfield Branch library during their college fair from 4 to 7 p.m. on Weds., March 14. (Details here.) Say hello and share your story ideas as you pick up college applications and talk to recruiters.

As Chalkbeat Newark gets up and running, I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

These Teach-Off finalists unlock math for students with real-world context

2018-03-01T23:31:50+00:00

For Houston educators Terrance O’Neil and Tim Livingston, math is all about context.

Too often, they say, students give up on math because word problems feature information or elements students can’t relate with. One recent example that stumped students, Livingston said, was a math problem featuring a person purchasing an $85 thermal to go camping.

“Some of these kids have never been camping,” he said. “And they were confused. One girl asked what a thermal was and why would a person buy one for $85.”

So they say students, especially those from low-income families, often need context — or information they can relate too — to help them better connect equations to real-world problems.

“A student should be able to relate to the problem,” said Livingston, a math coach in the Spring Independent School District. “The context grants them access.”

Together O’Neil and Livingston represent one of the two teacher teams Chalkbeat readers chose to participate in the first-ever Great American Teach-Off. The live event, which debuts at the SXSW EDU conference March 7, is designed to elevate the craft of teaching and showcase the many decisions that go into just one lesson.

Each team of teachers will demonstrate a mini-lesson on stage in front of a panel of judges and a cheering audience. A lively discussion among judges, coaches, and the teacher teams following the lessons will help attendees “see” teaching with new, clearer eyes.

Before O’Neil and Livingston head to Austin, we caught up with them to discuss the Teach-Off and their teaching philosophy. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What inspired you to go into teaching?

TIM: I guess I always had a knack for teaching. When I was in the military, I spoke to my wife and said, “I think this is something I want to do.” I love children. They were always drawn to me. And I could always communicate with them in a way they understood. Once I finished up my second enlistment, I went forward. And once I got into it, I saw what I wanted to be true, came true.

TERRANCE: The initial push came from my parents. I grew up in one of the roughest communities in Houston. They continually pushed us to get a good education. It was a nonnegotiable. They believed it was key to escape the community we grew up in. Once I left the community — because of education — I knew I needed to go back to that same community to help. I went back to my former community as a teacher. I fell in love with the kids. I learned quickly how one teacher can change the perspective of a student who might not get any sort of positive reinforcement when he leaves the school.

How would you describe your teaching style or method?

TIM: When I first began teaching, I would give out all the energy. My students would point out how my armpits would sweat. It was high energy, 24/7. But as I matured as an educator, I’ve learned to let it not all come from me, but put it in the mathematical task.

TERRANCE: I try to demonstrate that I’m passionate about the content — math or science. I always try to start with some sort of real-world connections. And I feed into that. I want to see the students excited about what they’re learning. Depending on the demographics of your class, you learn to use different real-world connections. I want them to do the work. To get them do that, I have to demonstrate some passion first.

Why did you want to be part of the Teach-Off?

TERRANCE: Probably because we think we’re better than any everyone else. [Laughs]

TIM: Next question! Honestly, I was intrigued by the vision of what Chalkbeat was trying to do. It got me hook, line, and sinker. Teaching is an art. And to hear that someone understands it’s an art and craft, I said, “This is it.” And my heart is for mathematics.

How were your schools affected by Hurricane Harvey?

TERRANCE: We had well over 100 students that lost everything. Everything. The devastation affected us severely. It was dramatic for a while. But our kids are resilient. Some are still displaced. But the district has done an excellent job of serving these students. They’ve done things that I wouldn’t have expected them to do. Some students had to move to outside the district, into other suburbs. And our district sent buses to get them so they wouldn’t have to switch schools. Not to mention, the district and many campuses have developed grant programs to serve those families. Here at McNabb, we’re still helping families with food and clothes. It’s been something amazing to watch.

What do you expect the audience to see at the Teach-Off?

TIM: Everything! All of it! They should expect laughter, energy. I love impromptu. That’s one of my strengths. So the whole notion of the event that something is going to change, that doesn’t make me nervous. That brings me in.

TERRANCE: That genuine love for teaching. Sincerity. That passion. And of course that content. You have to be passionate, and you have to be teaching something.

TIM: They can expect a demonstration of the depths of what it takes to teach mathematics correctly. It’s more than just adding and subtracting. It takes effort to plan to teach and reflect, and that’s what I love about this.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received regarding teaching?

TIM: The issue is never mechanical, it’s adaptive. Meaning, there is no fix that someone can prescribe to me that does not consider my students, the school we’re in, the story that is our classroom. Every problem is adaptive. I can’t go find an answer. I have to collaborate with teachers and students. All those things have to be considered.

TERRANCE: My first superintendent would tell us all the time, “If you are really teaching how you’re supposed to teach and what you’re supposed to teach, it will be seen in the learning in students.” Your success is not what you do as a teacher, but what your students can do after they’ve been with you for a year. That difference there, that determines how effective I am as a teacher.

This Great American Teach-Off team thrives in a classroom of chatty students

2018-02-26T15:29:55+00:00

Eleanor Vierling and Kaitlin Ruggiero relish a boisterous classroom. And with more than 30 students in most of their classes, they usually get just that.

The two math teachers at Brooklyn’s High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology believe students learn best when they’re bouncing ideas, equations, and questions off each other.

“It’s important that the students recognize that everyone in the room is someone who has knowledge,” Ruggiero said.

Together Vierling and Ruggiero represent one of the two teacher teams Chalkbeat readers chose to participate in the first-ever Great American Teach-Off. The live event, which debuts at the SXSW EDU conference March 7, is designed to elevate the craft of teaching and showcase the many decisions that go into just one lesson.

Before Vierling and Ruggiero head to Austin, we caught up with them to discuss the Teach-Off and their teaching philosophy. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What inspired you to apply for the Teach-Off?

ELEANOR: I follow Chalkbeat on Twitter. And right after I saw the Teach-Off on Twitter, I texted Kaitlin and asked her if she wanted to do it with me. We both look for ways to make our jobs fun and challenging. You teach for 180 days — that can be isolating. It’s good to find ways to shake it up a bit. And we thought the Teach-Off would be a way for us to show other people all the decision-making that goes behind the scenes of teaching.

Plus, this is going to become a long-running reality TV show, right?

KAITLIN: You’d make such a great character.

How do you describe your teaching style?

KAITLIN: I think it’s really important for students to figure out strategies that work for them. That’s something I didn’t get to do a lot as a student. Back then, there was a lecture and just one way to solve the problem. I didn’t appreciate that as a student. So, something I’m conscious about as a teacher is to make sure my students have the confidence to try to solve a problem different ways.

ELEANOR: In a similar way, we have student-centered philosophies. If students aren’t understanding, I won’t plow through the lesson. I never say, “Just listen.” I won’t impose something that isn’t working. I’m always trying to be creative and come up with different ways to come at the same subject.

The Great American Teach-Off semi-finalists: Eleanor and Kaitlin
Like this video? Check out other submissions for the Great American Teach-Off here http://ckbe.at/2DDYzDb. And stay in the loop with all the education news that matters by liking Chalkbeat on Facebook http://ckbe.at/2DBd0Vy and signing up for newsletters here http://ckbe.at/2Dpe12N.
Posted by Chalkbeat on Wednesday, January 24, 2018

How do you two currently work together?

ELEANOR: We’ve pushed for our math department to meet on a daily basis. We’ve never co-taught, but we’ve gravitated toward each other because neither of us uses the exact same stuff from the year before.

KAITLIN: We also are conscious of what we’re doing in the courses that line up. This year, Ellie is teaching pre-calculus. So many of the students she’s teaching will move to my calc class next year. Being aware of what’s going on in her classroom is helpful.

ELEANOR: We’re both interested not just in what we’re teaching but how we’re teaching.

Describe your classroom?

ELEANOR: They’re packed full of students. I have one class with 34 students and one with 37.

KAITLIN: I have classes with more than 32.

ELEANOR: Both of our classrooms have lots of opportunities for students to talk. We’re the facilitators, not the deliverers of information. It’s not one-directional.

How do you manage that many students?

KAITLIN: It’s important that the students recognize that everyone in the room is someone who has knowledge. Just because I’m the teacher in the room doesn’t mean I have to be the expert. What my students bring into the room is just as valuable as what I bring into the room. We’re hanging on each others’ words.

What do you expect the audience to see at the Teach-Off?

ELEANOR: We don’t really know what’s going to happen. I can see moments where we’ll have to talk to each other and figure out which ideas we’re going to share out. There will be teacher-to-teacher talk, happening live.

KAITLIN: We’ll give students something to do and then circulate. Part of the instructional goal is to highlight misconception and highlight structure. It’s OK for there to be a misconception that’s shared with the whole room. That’s an opportunity for learning. Someone might say that’s wrong and it shouldn’t be shared. But it should.

What’s the best advice you’ve received about teaching?

KAITLIN: I remember my first year teaching: I was teaching two different classes. It was really isolating and overwhelming. My mentor, she basically said, “Every day isn’t going to be your best day at work.” She saw how much time I was spending planning every lesson. She said, “Set an alarm. Give yourself some time, and stop making changes and edits all night. Commit to something and try it. If it doesn’t go good in the morning, you change by the afternoon.”

ELEANOR: All assessments are formative. Any assessment is an opportunity to learn.

What else would you like to share?

ELEANOR: I’m 6’2”.

KAITLIN: I’m not.

Indiana education is evolving. Here’s how Chalkbeat is growing to keep you informed.

2018-02-19T17:00:18+00:00

When I first came to Indianapolis eight years ago, the failures of the city’s largest school district were on full display.

Indianapolis Public Schools was losing thousands of students to township, charter, and private schools. The continued dismal performance of several district schools put them on the brink of unprecedented state takeover.

Marion County was home to so many children living in poverty that they could fill the Indianapolis Colts’ football stadium, the local newspaper calculated, and then form a line outside it more than three miles long.

Among the first people I met in the city was an Indianapolis teacher who went Dumpster-diving at suburban schools for classroom supplies.

Still, the city was coming together in critical ways to support students and schools. Nonprofit organizations filled gaping needs, with school supplies, uniforms, and mentoring services. Education leaders searched for solutions as small-scale as targeted neighborhood initiatives and as big-picture as completely making over the entire school district.

Today, there’s a lot that has changed — and a lot that hasn’t. People across the state are re-thinking public education. Yet in many places, our students, teachers, and schools continue to face many of the same challenges.

I recently joined Chalkbeat as the new Indiana bureau chief to lead our coverage of the city’s schools and the state’s education policy landscape.

I’m coming from the Indianapolis Star, where I reported on education, politics, and diversity issues. I’d collaborated with Chalkbeat on stories about school integration and English-language learners.

I’ll be overseeing the work of our Chalkbeat Indiana reporting team: Shaina Cavazos covers state education policy, dissecting complex legislation and the politics that drive changes. Shaina has been investigating the underperforming Indiana Virtual School, raising ethical questions about its spending of public dollars, and revealing it hired few teachers and graduated few students.

Reporter Dylan Peers McCoy has been following the dramatic changes as Indianapolis Public Schools embraces charter partnerships, turning over control of some of its schools to outside groups.

I’ll also be contributing my own reporting, with a focus on charter schools and Indiana’s recent moves to publicly fund early childhood education, a topic that has gained greater attention with research showing how critical a child’s first years are to future academic success.

We’ll continue to do what Chalkbeat has always strived to do: provide strong, independent, in-depth coverage of efforts to improve public education for all kids, especially those from low-income families.

Please let me know about stories you’d like to see us write, or share feedback about anything our team has written. We’d love to hear from you.

Stephanie Wang can be reached at swang@chalkbeat.org.

Here are five Chalkbeat stories to read this Presidents Day

2018-02-19T11:07:04+00:00

Happy Presidents Day! We’re off today, and we hope you’re enjoying a three-day weekend too.

I’m planning to spend part of today catching up on Chalkbeat stories. Since last summer, when I started as executive editor, I’ve felt like a student again. I’ve never worked in education journalism before, so I’ve tried to read as much as I can — and there’s no better place to start than Chalkbeat’s reporting.

In honor of the holiday celebrating George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and our other past presidents, I’ve rounded up a special reading list — for myself and for you, our trusted Chalkbeat community.

Two stories that take place in schools named after U.S. presidents:

Why one Brooklyn high school is making a big bet on teacher training

Indianapolis needs tech workers. IPS hopes that George Washington will help fill that gap.

Two stories about local education leaders (even though they probably won’t ever get a national holiday in their honor):

Can this Detroit principal help her students learn quickly enough to save her school?

Meet the Memphis educator leading the charge to take down her city’s Confederate monuments

And one recent story that has nothing to do with Presidents Day but is so terrific I had to include it:

Tight-knit and tightly budgeted: Inside one of Denver’s smallest schools

-Bene

P.S. Got other education stories you think I should read? Send them my way!

Coming soon: Meet Patrick Wall, our reporter in Newark

2018-02-02T23:52:14+00:00

Elizabeth Green, Chalkbeat’s CEO and editor-in-chief, introduces Chalkbeat Newark’s senior reporter.

In 2011, I spent a lot of late nights reporting in Newark.

I was on assignment for a national magazine to write about the immediate aftermath of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift. As it turned out, the story never ran. But even if it had, it still wouldn’t have included half of what I learned in Newark.

Seven years later, I couldn’t be more excited to launch Chalkbeat coverage in Newark. We’re committed to doing a different kind of journalism, writing not just about but also for the community whose story we’re telling.

In Newark, we’re starting out as a year-long pilot launching March 1, with hopes to continue our work longer. We accelerated this pilot with a preview story — because this moment in time is once again significant for Newark schools, and our reporter just couldn’t wait to get started.

That reporter is the brilliant and dedicated Patrick Wall, who is in the process of setting down his own roots in Newark. Here he is, in conversation with me:

You started your career focused on one thing — teaching — and not too long after that pivoted to another — journalism. What drew you to education and teaching, and what inspired you to make the switch to writing about education rather than practicing it?

As I was graduating college I joined Teach For America, the organization that provides (brief) training to people who commit to teaching in high-needs schools. I’d actually majored in film, but I was drawn to the idea of trying to help give young people some of the same opportunities that I felt I’d been afforded through education. I strongly believed (and still do) that public education is central to everything America claims to stand for — democracy, opportunity, equality — and that the condition of our schools is a measure of our commitment to those ideals.

But I soon found that believing strongly in education and being a strong educator are two very different things. First at a charter school in Gary, Indiana, then at a district school on Chicago’s South Side, I experienced firsthand the extraordinary demands put on teachers, the limited support they receive, and how they’re forced to contend with the by-products of poverty that students carry into the classroom.

Eventually I decided I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. As I was figuring out what to do next, I briefly ran an after-school program at a public school in a wealthy suburb in my native Ohio. The contrast between what I saw there — the cutting-edge facilities, the calm and orderly atmosphere, the students and staff who seemed to have everything they needed to function at a high level — and the inner-city school where I’d recently taught was shocking to me. I decided I wanted to understand that inequity, and tell others about it, which led me to journalism.

Your first journalism job was at DNAinfo, the late, great neighborhood news source, where you covered the South Bronx. You hadn’t ever lived in the South Bronx, and you were relatively new to New York City at that point. How did you get to know a new neighborhood with a lot of history — and where most of the residents didn’t look like you?

I tried to attend every community board meeting, precinct meeting, church festival, and school hearing that I could. I didn’t have a car, so I took the bus or walked everywhere — real “shoe-leather reporting.”

I was always aware of my identity as a white, middle-class professional in a predominantly black and Hispanic community that’s part of the country’s poorest Congressional district. That meant constantly checking my assumptions and having a lot of humility. I was an outsider, so it was incumbent upon me to learn the local context, understand what issues mattered to the local community, and spot and try to correct my own blind spots.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it was also probably the most fun I’ve ever had in a job. I got to spend time with immigrant parents who’d banded together to improve their local schools, a food-justice activist who wanted to turn a school bus into a rolling farmers market, and a local rapper who performed in a psychedelic Darth Vader mask.

After working at DNAinfo, you came to Chalkbeat, where you covered New York City schools. What’s one of the most interesting stories you covered while on the New York City school beat?

Probably the series of stories about a low-performing high school in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The city had just launched a massive turnaround program that the mayor promised would transform long-struggling schools. We wanted to show what that looked like at the classroom level.

What I found were dedicated teachers and school leaders trying to move the school forward. But it sometimes felt like as they scrambled to meet an ever-growing list of demands from above, they were trying to improve everything at once but actually changing very little. All the while, their students — many of them brilliant, perceptive, and hilarious — nonetheless showed up to class tired, hungry, stressed, and overwhelmed.

The story left me daunted by the challenges facing high-poverty schools, but inspired by the people inside them.

You’re now planning to move to Newark, New Jersey, and jump onto the Newark beat. As soon as we mentioned the possibility of opening reporting in Newark, you made your passion for the city clear. What makes Newark’s education story so compelling to you?

Newark’s schools, like the city itself, have such a rich history. They’ve been subject to massive demographic changes, occasional mismanagement, and sustained efforts to improve them by civic groups and philanthropies, parents and educators, and, most recently, a hard-charging cadre of self-described reformers.

Now, the city is beginning a pivotal new chapter as it regains control of the schools after a 22-year state takeover. I’m eager to report on how the school board uses its new authority, how the charter sector continues to evolve, and how Newark’s families keep pushing for the best education possible for their children.

I couldn’t imagine a more exciting place to report on public education right now.

How can readers reach you if they want to get to know you?

My email is pwall@chalkbeat.org, and you can follow me on Twitter at @patrick_wall. Plus get all the latest updates from Chalkbeat Newark by signing up here.

I’m eager for your thoughts on stories I should write, questions I can explore, schools I should visit, and local spots I must try!

‘All eyes are on Newark’: As the city regains control of its schools, a look at what’s to come

2018-02-01T11:00:26+00:00

For years, votes cast by Newark’s elected school board carried mostly symbolic weight. On Thursday, as the board reclaims full control of New Jersey’s largest school district after a 22-year state takeover, even its smallest decisions will acquire new significance.

A preview of that transformation was on display at a board meeting last week, as members debated when to hold their next round of elections. Moving them from April to November, when other local elections are held, could save the school district about $250,000 per election. But doing so could also politicize the board race, discouraging ordinary citizens from throwing their hats into the ring.

As they weighed their options, board member Crystal Fonseca urged her colleagues to choose carefully.

“Every decision we make reflects on what this board is doing with local control,” she said, moments before the board voted to keep the elections in April. “We’re totally responsible for every penny at this point on. We can’t point the finger anymore.”

The return to local control marks a watershed for Newark, a vote of confidence more than two decades after a state judge decried “failure on a very large scale” within its schools and “nepotism, cronyism and the like” among its school board. It comes as a number of states pivot away from takeovers — an extraordinary intervention whose outcomes have varied — and allow districts from Philadelphia to New Orleans to reclaim authority over their schools.

In Newark, the state takeover had plodded on for years before a recent whirlwind of activity spurred by a $100 million gift from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2010 and a bipartisan political alliance between former Gov. Chris Christie and then-Mayor Cory Booker. The aggressive changes thrust Newark into the national spotlight while inflaming local parents and activists who opposed the closure of some neighborhood schools, the expansion of charter schools, and the hiring of expensive outside consultants.

Now, as Newarkers again steer the course of their school system, towering questions loom on the horizon.

Will the district maintain its recent academic gains under a yet-to-be-named superintendent answering to board members representing separate constituencies? Will it manage to shield school budgets from cuts even as more funds flow to charter schools? And will its school board avoid the type of scandals that precipitated the state takeover in 1995, when its members were accused of spending public money on expensive meals and conferences in Hawaii even as the vast majority of the district’s mostly poor students of color failed to pass basic proficiency tests?

“This is a monumental task,” said Tave Padilla, the board’s vice chair. “All eyes are on Newark.”

The board’s first order of business will be to choose a permanent replacement for Superintendent Christopher Cerf, who will step down Thursday, several months before his contract expires, to make way for a new schools chief. (His deputy, Robert Gregory, will act as interim superintendent through June.) Cerf, whom Christie appointed as Newark’s schools chief in 2015, had promised to help Newark regain control of its schools — a years-long process that culminated in September when state officials signed off on the transition.

What’s shaping the conversation: years of sweeping change

Cerf was previously the state education commissioner, where he joined Christie and Booker in devising an overhaul of Newark’s school system that Cerf called “whole-district reform.” Funded in part by Zuckerberg’s gift and a matching amount from other donors, the changes would eventually include performance-based teacher pay, a downsized central office, a single enrollment system for district and charter schools, and the shuttering of 11 district schools. (Last school year, Newark had 64 district schools.) The share of students in charter schools also doubled, with charters now enrolling about a third of Newark’s over 50,000 public-school students.

The changes ignited bitter opposition from the local teachers union and many community members. At one point, several students staged a sit-in at the district headquarters after Cami Anderson, the schools chief who enacted the new policies, stopped attending board meetings where she was drowned out by protestors.

Mayor Ras Baraka cut the ribbon on the Newark Public Schools’ new headquarters in January, along with outgoing Superintendent Christoper Cerf and members of the Newark school board.

During a press briefing Monday with Booker, now a U.S. senator, Cerf defended the changes made over the past seven years. He said that while officials could have done a much better job explaining the policies and listening to the public’s concerns, “sometimes change has casualties.”

“The measure of success here is not the degree of peace, harmony, or consensus,” Cerf said.

After the reforms began in 2011, students’ annual growth on state tests declined for three years before rising again in 2015, according to a recent study led by Harvard researchers, which tried to measure the impact of the changes. By 2016, students’ annual gains in English, but not math, were higher than comparable students across New Jersey, the researchers found. (A review of the study questioned whether the recent improvements can be linked to the reforms, and said that other New Jersey districts also made gains in 2015 after the state adopted new tests.)

Newark officials note the study did not include 2017 test scores, which went up in both English and math. They also point to other measures of recent progress, including the district’s 78 percent graduation rate — a nearly 20 percentage-point increase from 2011. The district is also retaining more of its highly rated teachers and fewer of those with poor ratings.

Meanwhile, Cerf has managed to ease some of the tensions that flared under Anderson, developing a cordial relationship with the school board and Mayor Ras Baraka, a former principal who was elected in 2014 after fiercely opposing Anderson’s policies. Under Cerf, the district adjusted the new enrollment system based on public feedback, and launched a “community schools” program with Baraka to bring extra social services to several schools in the South Ward, the city’s poorest section.

At a ribbon-cutting last week at the district’s new offices, Baraka said Cerf had done “awesome work.” But he also suggested that it is time for a change.

“Today marks a new day in the district,” he said. “Not just from an old building to a new building, but to a new perspective, a new journey, a new road that we all start out on here in the city of Newark.”

What to watch: the two-year transition ahead

As Newark regains control of its schools, it will be guided by a two-year transition plan created by the state with input from Newark officials.

The 73-page document details actions the district must take — including holding a public vote in November to determine whether the board will continue to be elected or appointed by the mayor. The plan also calls for a state-appointed monitor who will advise the district and track its progress until 2020. (The state selected Anzella King-Nelms, a retired Newark deputy superintendent, for that role.)

The plan also stipulates that several of the district’s current policies should remain in place for at least another year or two, including its approach to teacher evaluation and the joint district-charter enrollment system. “The details in the plan really dictate more of the same,” said Christopher Tienken, an associate professor of education administration at Seton Hall University who has been critical of the state takeover.

For now, while a firm hired by the school board conducts a national search for a new schools chief, the person in charge is Robert Gregory, Cerf’s former deputy.

The son of a Newark educator and the founding principal of American History High School, Gregory said he will devote special attention to recruiting and supporting strong educators. “I’m a people, not a programs, person,” said Gregory, who hopes to be considered for the permanent superintendent job.

The Newark Teachers Union negotiated a contract renewal with the district last year that maintains the performance bonuses while giving teachers more planning time. But recruitment remains a challenge, with fewer than two educators applying for each job opening. Teacher absenteeism is also high: Last school year, the average teacher missed nearly 17 work days, excluding family or medical leave, compared to an average of eight missed days due to illness or personal leave in most districts, according to a 2017 study.

But Gregory’s most daunting task may be helping the district set its budget.

State funding has been flat even as enrollment has grown in recent years, leading the district to sell off buildings, switch health-insurance providers, and relocate its offices to cut costs. The growth of the city’s charter-school sector has also drained district funds: During the current fiscal year, the district transferred $237 million of its $930 million budget to charters schools, a 160 percent increase over 2010.

As Gregory steps into his new role, he’s been meeting with regularly with the board, including at an all-day retreat Saturday. The test for him — and the permanent superintendent who will begin July 1 — will be to serve the board and partner with parents, the teachers union, civic groups and others without being distracted by conflicting demands, said Kenneth Wong, an education policy professor at Brown University who studies school governance.

“Oftentimes, it’s kind of a policy competition,” in districts with elected school boards, he said. “If you don’t have a clear vision, it’s very easy for the district to be pulled apart by all these competing interests.”

As they left last week’s school board meeting shortly before it ended around 10 p.m., Stephen and Tonya Outing seemed to grasp the enormity of the task facing Gregory — and all of Newark.

Two of their children attend the large Lafayette Street School and an older daughter graduated from American History High School while Gregory was in charge. (Stephen called him the “MVP” — most valuable principal.) While they feel the district is headed in the right direction, they ticked off a long list of improvements they hope to see under the new superintendent: better reading instruction, more teacher training, high-performing schools for families to choose from.

“He has a lot of work to do,” Tonya said.

Chalkbeat Newark is coming this March. For more Newark coverage, sign up for our newsletter — also coming soon — here. Finally, we’d love to hear what stories you’d like us to cover. If you have ideas, please drop me a line or fill out this brief survey.

Bill that would provide free lunch for more Colorado students moves forward

2018-01-26T01:36:22+00:00

A bill that would expand a state subsidy for school lunches passed the Senate Education Committee on Thursday.

Colorado already picks up the cost of school lunch for elementary-aged children who qualify for reduced-price but not free meals under the federal lunch program. This bill would expand the benefit to cover middle school students.

The five yes votes included two Republicans, state Sen. Bob Gardner of Colorado Springs, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, and state Sen. Kevin Priola of Brighton. That’s enough Republican support to get this bill out of the Senate and over to the House, where Democrats have a majority.

The state program supplements the federal school lunch program. The federal government picks up the whole cost for families who earn less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or $31,980 for a family of four, and most of the cost for families who earn up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or $45,510 for a family of four. For kindergarten through fifth grade students in the latter group, the state covers the 40 cents that children who qualify for reduced-price lunch would otherwise have to pay.

School nutritionists said they see a big drop-off in students eating hot lunch in middle school, when some low-income parents become responsible for lunch fees after having them covered when their children were younger. The Cherry Creek School District, which continues to cover those fees out of its own funds, doesn’t see the same drop off.

Fabiola Flores, a junior at DSST: College View and a youth member of Padres y Jovenes Unidos, told the committee about a time she lost the loose change she carried to elementary school for lunch and was handed a hard peanut butter sandwich instead of the hot meal her classmates got.

“This bill is bigger than me,” she said. “Every day, I see students not eat because they don’t want to add fees. This bill can be the difference between a student having a hot lunch or going hungry.”

The bill would authorize the state to spend between $500,000 and $750,000 a year to pay that 40 cents for middle school students who qualify. Legislative analysts estimated the state could provide 1.4 million free lunches for $564,000 in the first year.

“We want our kids to be focused on academics and not on ‘where is my next meal coming from?’” said state Sen. Rhonda Fields, an Aurora Democrat who co-sponsored the bill.

Two Republican senators, Owen Hill of Colorado Springs and Tim Neville of Littleton, voted no. Hill noted that school districts could choose to cover the extra 40 cents themselves if they saw a need.

“I support the idea, but when I look at the overall budget, the only thing that gives is K-12 education or higher ed,” he said. “In this case, if it comes out of K-12 education, it goes from one bucket to another.”

How to keep Chalkbeat in your Facebook feed and other ways to stay informed about your schools

2018-01-25T21:26:32+00:00

In the coming weeks, you could be seeing less of us on Facebook. That’s because the social network is changing the formula that populates what you see in your News Feed.

Facebook’s algorithm is devaluing updates from news organizations like Chalkbeat, prioritizing status updates and links from family and friends instead.

We don’t want Facebook to come between us, so we’re making sure you know all the different ways you can connect with us and our education coverage.

First, become a Chalkbeat subscriber and let us come to you.

The easiest way to stay on top of all the education news from Chalkbeat is to sign up for one of our newsletters.

Every location we cover — Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, New York, and Tennessee — offers at least one local newsletter. And our national team rounds up the latest in education trends across the United States — plus additional features such as the Chalkbeat research corner and our Betsy DeVos tracker — every Wednesday.

Second, tell Facebook you like us and want to see more of us.

Facebook doesn’t have to keep us apart. But you’re going to have to make that clear.

If you’re on a desktop go to your favorite Chalkbeat Facebook pages. Here’s a link to our main Facebook page, and here are links to Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, New York, and Tennessee. Click the “Following” button, which should appear on the center left of the page, just underneath our cover photo. Then select “See First.”

If you’re on an iPhone:

Select the three-line menu in the bottom right-hand corner of the app.
Scroll to the bottom of the menu and select “Settings.”
Select “News Feed Preferences.”
Select “Prioritize who to see first.”
Select your favorite Chalkbeat pages you want to see first in your news feed. A blue star will appear once you’ve correctly selected your choices.
Hit “Done.”

If you’re on an Android:

Select the three-line menu in the top right-hand corner of the app.
Scroll to the bottom of the menu and select “News Feed Preferences.”
Select “Prioritize who to see first.
Select your favorite Chalkbeat pages you want to see first in your news feed. A blue star will appear once you’ve correctly selected your choices.
Hit “Done.”

That’s it. Now, our posts on Facebook should regularly appear in your feed.

Third, follow us on other networks.

Find us on Twitter on our main Chalkbeat account or any of our bureau accounts: Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, New York, and Tennessee. You can also follow Chalkbeat on LinkedIn and read our stories on Flipboard.

Got an idea of other platforms where Chalkbeat should share its news and engage with readers? Send an email to social@chalkbeat.org.

Don’t forget, we always want to hear from you. So you can send feedback or news tips — we love scoops! — to tips@chalkbeat.org.

Thanks for taking the time to stay connected with Chalkbeat!

Get to know Chalkbeat’s new Colorado bureau chief

2018-01-18T01:33:31+00:00

There’s a new byline — and bureau chief — at Chalkbeat Colorado.

Erica Meltzer started in the role Jan. 8. As part of her duties, Erica will cover the state government beat for us, continuing a legacy that began a decade ago with the launch of EdNews Colorado.

EdNews founder Alan Gottlieb and statehouse reporter Todd Engdahl had no shortage of things to chronicle that year, including the passage of the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, a sweeping bill that has had a lasting impact on public education in Colorado.

What was once EdNews Colorado is now Chalkbeat, a national education news organization dedicated to covering efforts to improve education for all students, especially those from low-income families.

We introduced Erica briefly before, and explained how her arrival coincides with a number of exciting changes at Chalkbeat as we continue to grow. Now, with Erica officially on board and four stories already to her name, we thought you should get to know her a little better.

We talked with her about how she got started in journalism, her favorite stories, and how she’ll approach the job.

Let’s start with your journalism origin story. What inspired you to become a journalist?

When I was in sixth grade, we had an assignment to pick a job and research it and give a presentation. I can’t actually remember what prompted me to pick reporter, but by the time I was done with that assignment, I wanted to be a reporter, and I still can’t think of a better job. I’ve met so many people I never would have met otherwise and been privileged to hear and tell their stories. I get to ask all the questions I’d be too polite or shy to ask if I didn’t have a notebook in my hand. And every day is different.

I worked on my high school paper, where we took our job as the only journalists with access to the student community very seriously. We wrote about air quality problems in our school, and we wrote about how the administration responded when a student murdered his parents. Asking tough questions from the relatively powerless position of a student taught me a lot.

What are your favorite kinds of stories to tell?

I really like stories that combine human interest with policy issues. Fortunately for me, there are a lot of stories like this in education. I really believe in the value of journalism to help people be informed citizens. We can do that through stories that show how policy will affect ordinary people and through stories that put faces to these questions we all wrestle with.

And then sometimes I like to take off my policy nerd hat and do something weird and fun. At my last job, I interviewed an Elvis impersonator who serves as a kind of unofficial historian for Colfax Avenue. He had this crazy, stream-of-consciousness style of talking, and I just wanted to channel that for readers so they could enjoy him as much as I did.

In your introductory newsletter, you relayed an exchange you had with a local TV reporter of your acquaintance about joining Chalkbeat. This person said, “Chalkbeat, huh? You’re going to be getting into the minutiae.” And your response was: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Then you went on to explain that you’ve found some really good stories in small things. Does anything in particular come to mind, an example you can share?

When I worked in Tucson, I covered county government, and I would keep an eye on all sorts of lower-level board and committee agendas. At some point I noticed something like the fourth horse property coming before the Zoning Board of Adjustment in six months and called up a source who worked in the planning department to ask if there was any particular reason these horse properties all needed variances. It turned into a really good story about how the community was changing. All these properties with livestock had once been way out of town where nobody cared what they did, and now they were surrounded by subdivisions and all sorts of things that had never been a problem were suddenly a problem.

Sometimes journalism involves noticing a loose thread and pulling on it and seeing what happens.

You came to us from Denverite, a local news startup that has done some creative things inviting readers into the news conversation. Can you give an example of that working well, and maybe share some lessons you’ve learned about how to better involve readers in stories?

Denverite has an occasional feature called Readers’ Choice that involves asking readers what stories they’d like to see covered — sometimes we did this as a poll with a discrete set of options — and asking readers to submit questions on those topics. This served as the springboard for a lot of good stories — everything from why Denver has these flagstone sidewalks that trip us up to what’s so bad about gentrification.

Sometimes people who work in the policy realm bring certain assumptions to the table, and those assumptions bleed over to the reporters who spend a lot of time hanging out with those insiders. Hearing from readers provided this reality check about what people know and don’t know and what they’d like to see explored further. It’s a way of getting outside that “everybody knows” trap, and it opens us up to new ways to approach familiar topics.

And of course, readers know a lot of things that we don’t know. They live and work in the communities we cover. They’re teachers, or they have kids in school. So they’re a great resource.

You covered the legislative session for Denverite last year, and now you’ll be covering education issues under the dome for Chalkbeat. How would you describe your approach to covering the statehouse beat?

Covering any government body, I like to keep the focus on how people will be affected by what that body is doing. Sometimes that requires a turn-of-the-screw story on some action at the committee level, but more often, I’m going to be looking for the big storylines and themes of this session and trying to put bills into context with the larger discussion of school quality and equity in access to education. By nature, I’m more interested in policy than in political intrigue, but of course politics is how we get things done in a democracy, so sometimes the political story is the story.

Anything else you’d like to share with our readers as you begin this role?

I’ll be frank. I haven’t covered education in-depth in a long time, and a lot has changed. I’m reading a lot and trying to talk to as many people as I can get up to speed. If there’s something you’d like to see covered or if you have feedback — positive or negative — about something I or someone on our team has written, please get in touch with me. I want to hear from you.

Erica Meltzer can be reached at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org or 303-446-7635. Follow her on Twitter here.

The seven Chalkbeat stories from 2017 I’ll be re-reading this holiday season

2017-12-22T22:16:19+00:00

Holidays are about family, food — and best-of lists. As you step into your holiday, let me humbly suggest seven Chalkbeat reads from 2017 to make your break more delightful.

Step into Olga Montellano’s child-optimized home — and get to know a neighborhood that is much more than the “child care desert” label it’s earned — with this excellent longform piece by Ann Schimke and Yesenia Robles.
Get mad, but not in the I-just-spent-too-long-on-Twitter way. In that energized way, where you learn a lot at the end, with this lively and readable investigation by Shaina Cavazos, about a virtual charter school in Indiana. (Then read the sequel: the Republican governor’s response to Shaina in a one-on-one interview.)
Look at Detroit’s school district through the eyes of a new superintendent who is both one of the district’s toughest critics and, at the same time, perhaps its most optimistic defender. A great profile by Erin Einhorn.
Witness democracy in action, or maybe retreat?, with this story by Monica Disare — which helps you see why Monica finds the arcane-but-super-powerful governing board overseeing New York’s schools fascinating.
Get inside the heads of some of the nation’s most powerful philanthropists, who are increasingly coalescing on a single idea for what public education should look like. Spoiler: it’s pretty different from what we see today, and — signature Matt Barnum — it’s a story told with scrupulous fairness and care.
Follow educator Tami Sawyer on her journey from a buzzing cell phone as white supremacists marched in Charlottesville to Confederate monuments toppled this week in Memphis, a gripping, emotional story courtesy of our own Laura Kebede.
We resurfaced this 2016 gem after Charlottesville, so I’m saying it counts for a 2017 list. It’s a roundup of advice from teachers about how to talk about race, and you should just bookmark it forever. Because in 2018, we all need to keep getting better at having this conversation.

Enjoy. And don’t forget to donate to Chalkbeat if you haven’t already. You know this, but I’ll say it anyway: Even tiny donations make a big difference to securing our independence. The more supporting readers we can point to and say, don’t mess with them, the better.

Thank you, and happy new year!

Coming soon (and hiring now): Chalkbeat in Chicago and Newark

2017-10-30T15:03:17+00:00

Dear readers,

We have some exciting news: After hearing from community leaders across the country, we’ve selected the next two places where we’ll launch Chalkbeat coverage.

By early 2018 — just a year after launching in Detroit, our fifth city — we’ll have Chalkbeat coverage in Chicago and Newark, New Jersey.

The timing couldn’t be better. Both Chicago and Newark are in the midst of sweeping changes with far-reaching consequences for students and families, educators, and communities.

Chicago is living an education paradox: Poverty, violence, and deep segregation present steep challenges for students, their families, and their schools. After a last-minute budget deal, the city school district remains on the brink of financial disaster. At the same time, Chicago boasts one of the fastest-improving big city school systems in the nation, a conclusion so unexpected that a Stanford researcher double-checked his work before confirming it.

Amid these highs and lows, Chicago’s public schools face a slew of changes at every level of the school system. In the K-12 system, school closures and bureaucratic overhauls have made a complicated system more confusing for many families. City officials also want to lead the country by dramatically growing the number of children enrolled in public prekindergarten, and, controversially, by not allowing students to graduate unless they have a plan for what to do next.

In Newark, meanwhile, an effort to overhaul the local schools with performance pay for teachers and more charter schools — driven in part by Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation in 2010 — initially led to a three-year test score decline that has recently bounced back and turned positive in English, according to a new study.

Today, one third of Newark students are enrolled in charter schools, one of the highest percentages in the country. The school district, meanwhile, is returning to the control of a locally elected school board after years of being run by state-appointed managers. As we’re seeing in Detroit, where a similar transition is underway, the shift to local control comes with great optimism — and high stakes.

Both cities have important stories that the whole country can learn from. But while there are talented journalists producing great stories about education in both Chicago and Newark, both cities lack the depth of coverage they will need to navigate so much change.

Chicago recently lost a longtime news source dedicated to covering schools, Catalyst. And the two major Chicago newspapers have seen their reporting teams diminish significantly, in keeping with trends in newsrooms across the country. The local public radio station, WBEZ, has admirably stepped up to fill gaps, creating a dedicated education reporting team. But there is much more in-depth daily reporting to be done.

In Newark, the local newspaper, the Star-Ledger, has also seen its reporting resources diminish in recent years. And while a laudable nonprofit news organization, NJ Spotlight, has offered thoughtful and high-impact coverage of education across New Jersey, dedicated education coverage by and for Newark has been unsettlingly scarce, especially for a city that is so often in the national headlines.

Community leaders in Chicago and Newark asked us to launch Chalkbeat coverage in their cities because they want to change that. So do we. As we expand our coverage, our goal is to scrutinize and explain what’s changing, what’s working, and what’s at stake as the cities’ schools transform. Readers in Chicago and Newark also deserve to hear — and share — firsthand accounts of the parents, students, and teachers who are living through the changes.

For Chalkbeat’s readers in our five existing locations and across the country, the expansion means that we’ll be connecting even more local dots through our national coverage. Our new national newsletter — sign up now!— will be a great place to read the highlights from Chicago and Newark and learn how how they fit into the unfolding national story of efforts to improve education for poor children.

The growth also means that we’re hiring. We’re already looking to fill two new positions, story editor and Detroit reporter, and have some other roles open, too. Now, we’re opening searches for someone to lead our team in Chicago and a senior reporter in Newark, where we’re launching a one-year pilot as we explore more permanent coverage. If you or someone you know is a fit for any of these positions, let us know now. We are lucky to work with some of the most talented journalists in the country, and we can’t wait to expand our team.

And for our future readers in Chicago and Newark — we won’t be able to do this without you. If you have ideas for us, feel free to reach out now. You can also sign up here to to get updates about our launches in Chicago, Newark, or both.

This post has been updated to more accurately describe the findings of a recent study of Newark school reforms.

Aurora school enrollment continues sharp decline, but budget woes not expected

2017-10-11T02:07:57+00:00

The number of students enrolled in Aurora schools this fall dropped by almost twice as much as last year, part of a trend district officials have blamed in part on gentrification as housing prices in Aurora climb.

This year, as of Oct. 2, the district has enrolled 41,294 students from preschool through 12th grade. That’s 867 fewer students than last year — and almost twice the number of students lost between 2015 and 2016.

Last October, staff told the board that district enrollment had dropped by a historic amount. At the time, enrollment was 41,926, down 643 from 2015. By the end of the 2016-17 school year, the district had enrolled almost 200 more students.

But in Colorado, school districts are given money on a per-student count that’s based on the number of students enrolled on count day, which this year was Oct. 2.

The district expects to see a similar decline in students again next school year, but expects that new developments start bringing more children to the district in the future.

The good news, provided in the update given to the Aurora school board Tuesday night, is that district officials saw it coming this time.

“The magnitude of the impact is not the same as last year,” said Superintendent Rico Munn. “This kind of decline is now something we will predict and budget to.”

Because enrollment numbers are higher than what officials predicted, the budget that the board approved over the summer should not need adjustments for the current year.

Last year, Aurora Public Schools had to cut more than $3 million in the middle of the year. District officials also worked on gathering input and finding ways to shrink the 2017-18 budget by up to $31 million, but better than expected funding from the state meant the district didn’t end up cutting the full $31 million.

The district may look for ways to trim the budget again next year in anticipation of another anticipated enrollment decline.

Board members asked about other factors that may be contributing to enrollment declines, such as school reputations, and asked about how staff predict future enrollment.

Superintendent Munn told the board that the enrollment decreases are changing several conversations in the district.

“APS was not in the business of marketing our schools,” Munn said. But this year, the district launched an interactive map with school information on the district website to help feature all schools, their programs and their performance measures, and has been doing outreach to the approximately 4,000 Aurora students who leave to attend neighboring districts.

Three schools also received district-level help in creating targeted marketing.

One of those three schools was South Middle School, a low-performing school in the northwest part of the district where enrollment declines are especially drastic.

This year, after receiving some marketing assistance, South was one of few schools in the district that saw enrollment increased. The school’s Oct. 2 enrollment was 825, up from 734 last year.

Need classroom decor inspiration? These educators have got you covered.

2017-10-08T13:35:13+00:00

This school year, students will spend about 1,000 hours in school —making their classrooms a huge part of their learning experience.

We’re recognizing educators who’ve poured on the pizazz to make students feel welcome. From a 9th-grade “forensics lab” decked out in caution tape to a classroom stage complete with lights to get first graders pumped about public speaking, these crafty teachers have gone above and beyond to create great spaces.

Got a classroom of your own to show off? Know someone that should be on this list? Let us know!

Jaclyn Flores, First Grade Dual Language, Rochester, New York
“Having a classroom that is bright, cheerful, organized and inviting allows my students to feel pride in their classroom as well as feel welcome. My students look forward to standing on the stage to share or sitting on special chairs to dive into their learning. This space is a safe place for my students and we take pride in what it has become.”

Jasmine, Pre-K, Las Vegas, Nevada
“My classroom environment helps my students because providing calming colors and a home-like space makes them feel more comfortable in the classroom and ready to learn as first-time students!”

Oneika Osborne, 10th Grade Reading, Miami Southridge Senior High School, Miami, Florida
“My classroom environment invites all of my students to constantly be in a state of celebration and self-empowerment at all points of the learning process. With inspirational quotes, culturally relevant images, and an explosion of color, my classroom sets the tone for the day every single day as soon as we walk in. It is one of optimism, power, and of course glitter.”

Kristen Poindexter, Kindergarten, Spring Mill Elementary School, Indianapolis, Indiana
“I try very hard to make my classroom a place where memorable experiences happen. I use songs, finger plays, movement, and interactive activities to help cement concepts in their minds. It makes my teacher heart so happy when past students walk by my classroom and start their sentence with, “Remember when we…?”. We recently transformed our classroom into a Mad Science Lab where we investigated more about our 5 Senses.”

Brittany, 9th Grade Biology, Dallas, Texas
“I love my classroom environment because I teach Biology, it’s easy to relate every topic back to Forensics and real-life investigations! Mystery always gets the students going!”

Ms. Heaton, First Grade, Westampton, New Jersey
“As an educator, it is my goal to create a classroom environment that is positive and welcoming for students. I wanted to create a learning environment where students feel comfortable and in return stimulates student learning. A classroom is a second home for students so I wanted to ensure that the space was bright, friendly, and organized for the students to be able to use each and every day.”

D’Essence Grant, 8th Grade ELA, KIPP Houston, Houston, Texas
“Intentionally decorating my classroom was my first act of showing my students I care about them. I pride myself on building relationships with my students and them knowing I care about them inside and outside of the classroom. Taking the time to make the classroom meaningful and creative as well building a safe place for our community helps establish an effective classroom setting.”

Jayme Wiertzema, Elementary Art, Worthington, Minnesota
“I’m looking forward to having a CLASSROOM this year. The past two years I have taught from a cart and this year my amazing school district allowed me to have a classroom in our school that is busting at the seams! I’m so excited to use my classroom environment to inspire creativity in my students, get to know them and learn from their amazing imaginations in art class!”

Melissa Vecchio, 4th Grade, Queens, New York
“Since so much of a student’s time is spent inside their classroom, the environment should be neat, organized, easy to move around in but most of all positive. I love to use a theme to reinforce great behavior. I always give the students a choice in helping to design bulletin boards and desk arrangements. When they are involved they take pride in the classroom, and enjoy being there.”

Indiana education policy is shaping the nation. Here’s how we can cover it together.

2017-09-25T17:58:59+00:00

Indiana has been at the center of things in education lately.

Policymakers often point to the state as a model of how school choice can work across the country. U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos has mentioned Indiana many times since her appointment to highlight examples of how Indiana’s version of school choice is helping her shape her current education agenda.

But is Indiana’s system working? Who benefits, and who gets left out? What are the stories behind the legislative battles and inside the classroom doors — especially those that open to reveal students who historically have lacked access to good schools?

Those questions lie at the heart of Chalkbeat’s mission: to cover the effort to improve schools for all children, not just the privileged few.

Indianapolis is also a laboratory for some of the most influential ideas in education reform right now — especially the shift of power toward schools and away from districts. Powerful Indiana philanthropists are helping to lead that charge, and the rest of the country is paying close attention.

As Indiana is being held up by some as a national model of new strategies, our job is to add detail that can be seen only from up close.

We’d like to invite you on our journey by informing and supporting our journalism. Below you’ll hear from Chalkbeat Indiana reporters about the stories they’re focusing on this year, but as you read, know that we can’t tell them without you. So please — reach out! Introduce yourself, submit a story tip, give us feedback or propose a First Person essay by emailing us at in.tips@chalkbeat.org. (One of the best coffee shops in the city is half a block from our office, and we’re always game to meet readers there.)

All this work demands time and talent — neither of which are free. If every Indiana reader gave $10 right now, we could raise $260,000 to support our mission this year. That’d be enough for all these stories and more. We hope those who can will consider making a $10 tax-deductible donation here.

Dylan Peers McCoy: As Indianapolis experiments with school choice in many forms, I cover how it plays out for families and schools

Three months after I started covering Indianapolis, I heard about an unusual movement at a traditional public school.

On a Saturday morning in January 2016, hundreds of neighbors, teachers and families packed into the cafeteria of School 15. Also known as Thomas Gregg, the school had struggled for years on state tests. Indianapolis Public Schools was trying a new approach to turnaround — handing over management to charter operators. Community leaders feared that School 15 would be next.

If the school was going to be taken over, they wanted to be the ones in charge.

Almost two years later, their plan has come to fruition. This fall, Thomas Gregg became an innovation school. The same law that allowed the district to partner with charter schools to create innovation schools allowed them to give a community nonprofit oversight of the school.

The takeover of Thomas Gregg is just one of the stories that have captivated me as I have covered Indianapolis Public Schools’ effort to create a new system, where principals have more power over their schools, fewer teachers are unionized and the line between traditional public and charter schools is evermore blurry.

It’s an intricate story, and it’s easy to get lost in the fine print. The contracts for each innovation school matter, as do the decisions that oust unions from schools and the agreements with nonprofits that foster the growing collaboration between Indianapolis Public Schools and the city’s vast array of charter schools. It’s my job to live in those weeds.

Yet that thicket of discrete decisions contributes to a broader transformation. My aim is to show not only how much each innovation agreement will cost in dollars and cents, but also how district, city and state decisions are creating a new vision for the city’s schools.

The essential questions facing Indianapolis are the same questions in many cities that are embracing school choice — how to make choice work for families and create a system that gives principals freedom without creating chaos.

This year, I also aim to focus my coverage on a subject that’s often left out of school choice debates, educating students with disabilities. In a district where nearly one in five students have disabilities, it’s vital to cover the challenges facing educators and to help inform parents looking for an effective and consistent education for their children.

If my coverage is a success, I hope to kick-start an honest conversation about what kind of district we would like to see in Indianapolis in the years ahead.

Help me find the stories and conversations that are shaping our city. You can reach me by email at dmccoy@chalkbeat.org, phone at (508) 259-4809 or tweet @dylanpmccoy.

Shaina Cavazos: In my coverage of the General Assembly and state education policy, I dissect complex legislation and navigate the politics and lives behind it.

Here at Chalkbeat Indiana, we thought Indiana education policy was cool long before Mike Pence joined the 2016 presidential ticket, launching the state into a rush of national notoriety.

In July 2014, when I got to Indianapolis, Common Core had recently been booted. A new test was on the horizon. Teachers were reeling. Political tensions still ran high in an administration that came to be known for its spats and drama.

For a young journalist, it was heady stuff — and I came to Indiana by way of Illinois and Missouri, two states where politics aren’t exactly calm.

So I read. And I reported. And I read some more, talked to teachers and went to a bunch of meetings. I spent my first year learning everything I could about Indiana and its complicated history with education.

How, over the past decade, Indiana has been at the forefront of many controversial education changes seen across the country — switching to new state standards and tests, creating robust charter and voucher programs, and leading the way when it comes to school choice in general.

How, at this point, with a Republican, pro-school-choice supermajority in the state legislature and a Republican governor, the state seems primed to continue down its pro-school choice path, which could eventually take the shape of “education savings accounts” or expanded “course access” programs. Although, Republican state Superintendent Jennifer McCormick’s new administration could add an interesting twist, given how often she seems to deviate from the party line.

Three years later, I feel even more committed (if that’s even possible) to making sure Chalkbeat Indiana is meeting the needs of our local, city, and state communities.

Covering state policy challenges me to dissect complex legislation, navigate politics, and build close relationships with readers and sources. I want readers to understand how education is changing in Indiana and why. I want them to be armed with information so they can pick good schools and vote intelligently.

I want to be able to say, at the end of the year, that I held public officials accountable and that I did it in a way that was fair. I know I can’t do that without you. If state education policy and politics are topics that you are interested in, join me in my reporting by emailing tips, story ideas or questions to scavazos@chalkbeat.org. You can also follow me @ShainaRC.

It’s a new school year. Here’s what Chalkbeat Colorado is curious about — and how you can help us find the answers.

2017-09-25T12:00:36+00:00

When Jeffco Public Schools announced the possible closure of five elementary schools last spring, Chalkbeat reporter Yesenia Robles wanted to see firsthand what was at stake.

She arranged a visit to Pleasant View Elementary School in Golden, housed in a 1950s brick building in a neighborhood of apartment buildings, a mobile home park and aging stripmalls. There, she talked to a woman who runs an on-site pantry that hands out milk and eggs to needy families in a school building that lacks a full sprinkler system or adequate roof coverings.

Jeffco district staff at the time didn’t consider equity as a factor in selecting schools for possible closure. Yesenia’s coverage showing poor students would be disproportionately impacted by the proposal helped change the conversation. The school board voted to close Pleasant View but spare the four others, and new Superintendent Jason Glass cited Chalkbeat’s coverage and broader concerns about equity in his recent decision to put a moratorium on school closures.

These are the kinds of stories Chalkbeat is dedicated to covering — stories that inform, enlighten and make an impact, especially for students who historically have lacked access to a great education.

Now that a new school year has begun, we’re asking you to join us in informing and supporting our journalism. Below you’ll hear from Chalkbeat Colorado reporters about the stories they’re focusing on this year, but as you read, know that we can’t tell them without you. So please — reach out! Introduce yourself, submit a story tip, give us feedback or propose a First Person essay by emailing us at co.tips@chalkbeat.org.

All this work demands time and talent — neither of which are free. If every Colorado reader gave $10 right now, we could raise $650,000 to support our mission this year. That’d be enough for all these stories and more. We hope those who can will consider making a $10 tax-deductible donation here.

Melanie Asmar, covering Denver Public Schools

Melanie’s aim is to unpack what reforms the state’s largest school district is undertaking, explain the reasoning behind them and the backlash against them, and examine whether they’re having the intended effect, such as improving student learning or increasing school integration.

One of the big DPS storylines is right in front of us: This fall’s school board election. With control of the seven-member board hanging in the balance, this election could be a referendum on Denver’s reforms, which include giving families a choice from a “portfolio” of schools, including traditional district-run, charter and innovation. We’ll be profiling the races and following the money.

Melanie also will be digging into DPS’s work to tackle the impacts of gentrification and efforts to better integrate schools, as well as its experiments with granting schools more autonomy.

Melanie has a talent for rich, narrative storytelling, bringing classroom scenes to life with telling details and dialogue. The judges of this year’s Education Writers Association awards agreed: Melanie was a finalist in beat reporting for her work covering DPS.

You can reach Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org and 303-446-7625, and follow her on Twitter.

Nic Garcia, covering state education issues

Nic is all things state of Colorado, which means covering the state legislature, State Board of Education, Colorado Department of Education, and issues of statewide significance.

Nic is a product of Pueblo City Schools, which has seen its share of struggles, giving us a valuable perspective about challenges facing Colorado schools.

This coming year, he’ll be focusing on big conversations over how to best hold schools accountable for their performance educating kids, the eternal struggle over adequately funding schools in Colorado, and attempts to tackle teacher shortages in some areas and subjects.

Nic also will be mining education angles in the 2018 governor’s race — and there are many. A number of candidates, especially on the Democratic side, have long track records on education. We’re planning “education profiles” of the candidates, fleshing out their pasts and proposals.

We’ll be looking for more stories in rural Colorado, which is much more diverse than many rural areas in other states and faces its own distinct challenges, many centered on race and poverty.

Nic stands at an important intersection — explaining the goals of policymakers to educators, students and parents, and the realities of educators, students and parents to policymakers.

You can reach Nic at ngarcia@chalkbeat.org and 303-446-7624, and follow him on Twitter.

Yesenia Robles, covering suburban school districts and English language learners

Yesenia came to us a year ago from The Denver Post to flesh out a beat that is central to our mission — the suburbanization of poverty and how it is playing out in public schools.

As someone who was born in Mexico and grew up in Denver schools as an English language learner, Yesenia can relate to many of the students she writes about.

Yesenia will continue to invest significant resources in covering Aurora Public Schools, which has a high-needs student population and its own reform agenda under Superintendent Rico Munn. That will include chronicling this fall’s high-stakes school board election.

We’ve decided to turn more attention to a couple of high-poverty districts that haven’t gotten enough attention: Adams 14 in Commerce City and Westminster Public Schools. Both ran out of time last school year on the state’s “accountability clock,” and we’ll be paying close attention to how their state-approved improvement plans play out.

Both districts serve large numbers of English language learners. Are districts doing enough to help these students succeed? Who is failing and succeeding? We intend to find out.

You can reach Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org and 303-446-7622, and follow her on Twitter.

Ann Schimke, covering early childhood education and healthy schools

The early childhood years are getting more emphasis in Colorado and nationally as policymakers, educators and funders realize how critical these years are to brain development and learning. No reporter in Colorado owns this subject like Ann Schimke.

Our coverage focuses on the drive for quality and equity in early childhood, covering issues including finding qualified teachers, navigating funding disparities and addressing discipline.

This fall, look for a project from Ann and Yesenia examining life in a child care desert — a long-neglected Denver neighborhood where good options for early care are hard to find, and a variety of organizations and advocates are trying to change the narrative.

Ann also has taken a broader lens to covering how health intersects with schooling, expanding our coverage beyond traditional physical health issues (obesity, immunizations, and nutrition) to cover social and emotional learning, mental health, and childhood trauma.

Everyone is talking about social and emotional learning. One of Ann’s goals for this year is to take a thoughtful look at the growing arsenal of tools and approaches that help foster these skills.

You can reach Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org and 970-238-0179, and follow her on Twitter.

Here’s what Chalkbeat Tennessee plans to report on this year — and how you can help

2017-09-25T11:00:16+00:00

On a recent Wednesday, Chalkbeat Memphis reporter Laura Faith Kebede was immersed in a biology class at White Station High School, using her camera to capture what lab day looks like under an award-winning science teacher.

Meanwhile, community editor Caroline Bauman was typing up her notes from an emotional gathering of Latino and school leaders the previous evening in the city’s Binghampton community, where Chalkbeat was the only news organization in the room. President Donald Trump’s administration had just announced a wind-down of protections for the nation’s young undocumented immigrants, and folks were trying to get their heads around what the change will mean for some Memphis students.

In many ways, it was a typical day for Chalkbeat Tennessee, especially at midday when we learned that the superintendent of Tennessee’s school turnaround district was stepping down. Our team dropped everything to break the news.

These are the stories that make up our mission: to cover the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education. We’re convinced that Tennessee’s is one of the most fascinating education stories in America, and Memphis is at the epicenter.

Why Memphis? It’s home to Tennessee’s largest district and most of the state’s charter schools. It’s also the hub of the state-run district’s school turnaround work. As such, it’s a battleground city for education reform and influential in ways that even many Tennesseans don’t realize. Memphis schools serve mostly students of color who come from low-income families, allowing us to chronicle efforts to ensure that every student gets a great education, not just a privileged few.

As the new school year gets underway in earnest, we’re asking you to join us in our mission. Below you’ll hear from Chalkbeat Tennessee reporters about the stories they’re focusing on this year, but as you read, know that we can’t tell them without you. So please — reach out! Introduce yourself, submit a story tip, give us feedback or propose a First Person essay by emailing us at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org.

All this work demands time and talent — neither of which are free. If every Tennessee reader gave $10 right now, we could raise $460,000 to support our mission this year. That’d be enough for all these stories and more. We hope those who can will consider making a $10 tax-deductible donation here.

Caroline Bauman: Early childhood education and Tennessee’s Achievement School District

Earlier this year, I toured a new state-of-the-art pre-K center designed to change the face of early education in Memphis. It’s serving some 220 kids now, but its mission is really to train educators across the city to up the quality of pre-K instruction. Backed by $9 million in private funding, the center symbolizes shifting investments as local, state, and philanthropic forces coalesce around early childhood education as the way to get kids reading-ready. Chalkbeat will be at the forefront of covering the changes, exploring what quality pre-K looks like and what barriers exist for poor families.

I’ll also be chronicling school turnaround work as the state’s Achievement School District enters a new era with an overhauled structure, a new leadership team and a new superintendent. What are the lessons learned from the past five years, and how is the state adjusting its charter-reliant model of school improvement? What does successful turnaround look like? Who is missing out? What work is happening to close gaps and fix problems? I’m curious to hear what questions you have too. Find me at cbauman@chalkbeat.org, (901) 443-8995 or follow me on Twitter.

Laura Faith Kebede: Shelby County Schools, with a focus on discipline, secession effects and district debt

Five years after the historic merger of city and county schools, Tennessee’s largest district faces some serious challenges.

The quest to improve academics in Memphis schools can’t happen if students are at home instead of in the classroom. That’s the heartbeat behind Shelby County Schools’ ongoing disciplinary shift to restorative justice to reduce suspensions. State data clearly shows that black boys in Memphis are more likely to be suspended than elsewhere in the state, but educators are working to change that. I’ll be following the transition to see what’s working and what’s not, how teachers, parents and students are responding, and if inequities are actually reduced.

I’ll also be looking into the continuing effects of the 2014 exodus of six municipalities from the urban Memphis district. As school districts with more white affluent students continue to explore separating from mostly black cities in Tennessee and across the country, our coverage of the Memphis story will inform a national dialogue about the true cost of secession and its disproportionate impact on children of color.

Finally, one elephant in the room continues to be the ballooning debt for Shelby County Schools. Will Memphis avoid the big financial hurdles that tripped up cities like Detroit? I’ll be looking into the extent of the debt, who’s responsible, and what could happen if it’s not paid down—and I hope our readers can help me find answers to all these questions. You can reach me at Lkebede@chalkbeat.org, (901) 213-8656 or follow me on Twitter.

Here are the big stories Chalkbeat New York reporters will cover this year — with your help

2017-09-25T10:00:01+00:00

On a mild Thursday morning this month when more than a million students were returning to classrooms across New York City, Chalkbeat New York reporter Alex Zimmerman was hunched in the back of a press van, laptop bouncing on his knees, dashing out a report about the mayor and chancellor’s first-day-of-school tour.

Meanwhile reporter Monica Disare was visiting a Bronx “community school” where the principal had managed to bring in a health clinic and child-care center and was now cutting the ribbon on a new million-dollar playground. And reporter Christina Veiga was talking to teachers and counselors about a policy shift involving young undocumented immigrants that threatened to upend the lives of some of their students just as they were returning to school.

In all, it was a typical day at Chalkbeat New York.

Our mission is to explain the policies and tell the stories of the people who make up the nation’s largest school system — with a focus on efforts to ensure every student gets a great education, not just the privileged few. To do that requires countless phone calls, mountains of data, and regular school visits — occasionally by way of a city-chauffeured van.

Now that a new school year is upon us, we’re asking you to join us in that mission. Below you’ll hear from Chalkbeat New York reporters about the stories they’re focusing on this year. As you read, know that we can’t tell them without you. So please — reach out! Introduce yourself, submit a story tip, give us feedback, or propose a First Person essay by emailing us at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org.

All this work demands time and talent — neither of which are free. If every New York reader gave $10 right now, we could raise $700,000 to support our mission this year. That’d be enough for all these stories and more. We hope those who can will consider making a $10 tax-deductible donation here.

— Patrick Wall, Chalkbeat New York interim bureau chief

Christina Veiga: The city is paying more attention to instruction, the youngest students, and school integration — and so am I

Last school year, I visited a fifth-grade classroom in the Bronx. Students were huddled in small groups, vigorously but respectfully debating the answer to a word problem. The teacher floated from group to group asking probing questions — but never giving away the answers. The idea was to let students make their own discoveries, turning math from rote memorization into exploration.

This year, I’ll be looking closely at what’s happening inside more schools like that, especially when it comes to teaching, school diversity and early learning — areas where New York City is devoting special energy. I started covering education at the Miami Herald in 2014; since I’ve been with Chalkbeat New York, I’ve found that the issues schools confront here aren’t all that different from those faced by schools 1,200 miles away. Yet New York City’s efforts to address them are often on the policy vanguard, influencing districts across the country.

This school year, inspired by that scene in the Bronx, I’ll dig deeper into how the city trains the its 76,000 teachers. Are we setting them up for success? Under schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, the education department has placed a big bet on improving classroom instruction. Now that the de Blasio administration’s policies have had time to take root, it will be important to track whether — and how — teaching and learning have changed.

I’ll also be reporting on the city’s new “3-K” preschool program for 3-year-olds, its youngest pre-K class yet. Will New York City’s efforts to intervene earlier in children’s education help narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor students that emerges before they even start school?

At the same time, I’ll be following the city’s unfolding efforts to tackle school segregation. The de Blasio administration released a plan this summer that lays out its diversity goals, but advocates remain frustrated with the pace of change and the goals the city set for itself. In a system built on choice, can the city steer families toward integration?

Just like those Bronx students whom I watched debate concepts in algebra, I’m excited to uncover the answers to these questions and others — but I can’t do it without your help. If pre-K, teacher training and school integration are topics that matter to you, join me in my reporting by emailing tips, story ideas or questions to cveiga@chalkbeat.org. You can also find me on Twitter at @cveiga.

Monica Disare: I’ll be chronicling a new era in state policy and barriers on the path to college

As Chalkbeat’s state policy reporter, I’ve had a front row seat as New York’s approach to school improvement has veered in a very different direction.

Each month, I head upstate to cover the Board of Regents meeting (as a Buffalo native, it’s a trip I enjoy). At my first Regents meeting nearly two years ago, former Chancellor Merryl Tisch announced her resignation, marking the end of an era characterized by fast-paced changes and a desire to raise education standards — and setting in motion a retreat from what many perceived as a narrow focus on testing and an unreasonably high bar for needy schools and students.

Later on, I watched as officials sent shockwaves across the state by striking test scores from teacher evaluations, electing a new leader endorsed by the testing-boycott movement, and making it easier for students with disabilities to earn diplomas.

But besides unwinding policies of the past, top state officials must now set their own agenda and make the case that they’ve charted a better course. Will their decision to emphasize resources over harsh interventions pay off, or will low-performing schools backslide?

This year, I’ll also be paying special attention to whether New York City high schools are preparing all students for college or work.

Last year, I wrote a series about the barriers that keep many low-income black and Hispanic students out of the city’s top-performing high schools.

At a middle school on the Upper East Side, students told me about the countless hours of test prep, interviews, and school tours they devoted to getting into those top schools. Just a short subway ride away in the Bronx, students described a last-minute application scramble, in which they based potentially life-altering decision about where to apply on a list of recommended schools their guidance counselor had posted on the wall.

The vast differences pose urgent questions: How are students’ futures shaped by the high schools where they land? How can high schools catch up students who arrive many grade levels behind? And should students be encouraged to attend college even if they aren’t fully prepared?

These questions are especially timely since the state Regents are rethinking what it should take to earn a high school diploma and New York now boasts the nation’s largest free-tuition scholarship. Meanwhile, New York City’s “Equity and Excellence” agenda is meant to patch up holes in the pipeline between high school and college.

As part of my coverage, I’ll be moderating a Chalkbeat event next month on ways to improve the city’s high-school admissions system. Have questions about the admissions process you want answered at the panel? Email me at mdisare@chalkbeat.org or find me on Twitter at @monicadisare. I hope to see you in person Oct. 12!

Alex Zimmerman: With an eye toward equity, I’ll be writing about school turnaround and special education

The mood was tense in the auditorium of the High School of Fashion Industries this past March. Dozens of educators, parents, and elected officials stepped up to a microphone to blast a plan to close several struggling schools the city had promised to turn around with new social services and academic support.

Their arguments raised key questions about one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s most ambitious reforms — the Renewal program — designed to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into struggling schools instead of shuttering them. How long should low-performing schools be given to improve? With few successful national models to emulate, what does progress look like? And, crucially, is the program improving student learning?

As the three-year Renewal initiative closes in on its third birthday — just as de Blasio is up for reelection this November — and with more school closures on the horizon, those questions have taken on new urgency.

This year, I’ll also cover how the mayor’s education agenda is evolving, potential leadership changes at the education department (will Chancellor Carmen Fariña stay on if de Blasio gets another term?), and how his policies are filtering into the city’s 1,800 schools.

I’ll also dive into coverage of one of the most vulnerable yet least-covered student populations: those with disabilities. As the sibling of a disabled student, I know firsthand how complicated—and crucial—special education is. Last fall, for example, I met a mother who couldn’t find a preschool seat for her son with disabilities. He wound up spending six months at home — an example of how the city sometimes struggles to meet demand for special-education services.

I’m excited to cover these storylines, but many of the stories will depend on people I’ve yet to meet. So if you’re interested in talking about special education, school turnarounds — or are an education insider with a confidential tip — your first cup of coffee is on me. You can reach me via email at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org or on Twitter at @agzimmerman.

Meet Bene Cipolla, who’s inaugurating a new Chalkbeat chapter as our first-ever executive editor

2017-07-10T16:00:40+00:00

Bene Cipolla joined Chalkbeat today as our new executive editor. Photo by Yan Ruan.

Today the Chalkbeat team expanded one more time: We welcomed our first-ever executive editor, Bene Cipolla.

Executive editor is a position we were once too small to need, but now find ourselves too big to live without. And we’ve found the perfect person for the role in Bene, an experienced reporter, editor, team builder, and digital leader who cares as much about education and great journalism as we do.

Bene will lead our amazing team of editors and reporters, now in five locations, not to mention our new national team.

Her charge is to make sure Chalkbeat remains sharp, smart, and connected to the realities in schools. We are also asking Bene to help us get better. We want to cover a wider territory, take on more ambitious projects, and share more stories that haven’t yet been told.

With experience editing at major magazines, writing and reporting for the world’s best newspapers, and leading editorial teams at fast-growing digital startups, Bene is the perfect person to push Chalkbeat forward.

Mandatory moment of nostalgia: We started this Chalkbeat adventure in 2008 with a few dozen readers sprinkled between two cities. Today we are one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing nonprofit news operations, providing public-interest coverage in local communities where the news outlets that used to do that job have been gutted.

We take our responsibility seriously, and we know we have much more to do to keep this kind of journalism strong. We also know we can only succeed if we have the best possible team — of readers, of supporters, and of staff.

Bene is just the newest member of an amazing community that leaves us in awe every day.

Get to know her through this recent piece in the New York Times, which is personal and fascinating; this authoritative curtain-raiser on the 2008 U.S. papal visit (she covered religion for many years); and this magazine piece on Iraq war veterans. Or just send her an email to welcome her to the Chalkbeat community. Her brand-new-today email address is bcipolla@chalkbeat.org.

A Detroit student speaks: ‘DPS has expanded my horizon for me to see a whole new world.’

2017-05-08T16:38:07+00:00

When KrisTia Maxwell started in the Detroit Public Schools as a 5-year-old kindergartener, she was nervous and shy and “didn’t know what was going to happen to me.”

Now, eight years later, she’s in middle school at Detroit’s Marcus Garvey Academy and says Detroit public schools (now called the Detroit Public Schools Community District) have helped make her the active, successful student she’s become.

“DPS has expanded my horizon for me to see a whole new world,” she said.

Her years at Marcus Garvey have included involvement in the National Junior Honor Society, the Girl Scouts, and the cheer team and basketball teams, among other activities.

The school “has improved me in all sorts of subjects and … given me opportunities to express myself and be who I am,” she said.

KrisTia told her Detroit schools story in a story booth outside the School Days storytelling event that was hosted in March by Chalkbeat and the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers at the Charles H. Wright Museum.

The event brought educators, parents and students together to tell their stories on stage at the Wright but it also invited other Detroiters to share their stories in a booth set up by Chalkbeat and the Skillman Foundation. (Skillman also supports Chalkbeat. Learn more about our funding here.)

In her story, KrisTia said her school “is half of me. It’s an important part and I’m going to attempt to do whatever I can to accomplish getting my 4.0 GPA and just doing great and … making my mom proud.”

If you have a story to tell — or know someone who does — please let us know.

Watch KrisTia’s full story below:

KrisTia Maxwell from Chalkbeat on Vimeo.

A Detroit teacher speaks: The tragic reason why her students don’t always do their homework or come to class on time

2017-04-10T16:12:06+00:00

When Janine Scott tells people that she teaches in Detroit, she often gets looks of pity.

“You poor thing!” she said people tell her as they make negative comments about the children she works with.

But those people don’t understand her students, she said.

“I ask [my students] things like why are you late, or why didn’t you do your homework or what happened or why didn’t you even come to school?” Scott said.

“And then I’ll get something like well, Miss Scott, I had to get my little brothers and sisters up, and had to feed them and and comb their hair and get them ready for school, had to wait on their bus with them. And my kids will come in third hour. Or they’ll tell me about the drama that happened last night or they’ll tell me about their friend that died in their arms the night before.”

Scott told her story of teaching in the Detroit schools in a story booth outside the School Days storytelling event.

The event, cosponsored by Chalkbeat and the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers, was held at the Charles H. Wright Museum last month and featured Detroit parents, educators, and a student telling stories on stage about schools in Detroit.

But the stories on stage were just a start. Chalkbeat is looking to tell many more stories about Detroit parents, students and teachers. The story booth set up by Chalkbeat and the Skillman Foundation in the lobby of the Wright Museum ahead of our event was one way to do this. (Skillman also supports Chalkbeat. Learn more about our funding here.)

When Scott came into the booth, she talked about things her students must endure to get to school at all.

“All of a sudden that little mediocre C that they get in my class becomes a great grade because in order for them to even navigate through that environment and get to school and learn something, that’s an amazing thing,” Scott said. “See a lot of people don’t even make it that far but my kids do.”

Watch Scott’s story below and if you have a story to tell about Detroit schools — or know someone who does — please let us know.

Miss our “School Days” storytelling event? Catch up on the stories here — and share your own

2017-03-21T20:41:33+00:00

“I got into a public school. I didn’t matter any more,” high schooler Imani Harris concluded after learning about how Detroit’s schools operate.

That depressing realization was a turning point in Harris’s efforts to push the school system to serve students better, she recounted in the story she told during “School Days,” the event Chalkbeat hosted with The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers March 17.

The event — held at Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum — celebrated Chalkbeat’s launch in Detroit. Storytellers worked with Satori Shakoor, The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers’ host, to craft tales of despair, hope, inspiration, and indignation over the state of Detroit’s schools.

Check out the full live stream here, or scroll down for edited highlights from each storyteller. And while this event might be over, Chalkbeat’s work helping people in Detroit tell the story of the city’s schools is not. Please get in touch if you have a story to tell.

Asenath Andrews is a Detroit Public Schools graduate and former principal of the now-defunct Catherine Ferguson Academy, which served teen mothers.

(All photos Erin Kirkland for Chalkbeat Detroit)

“Every single girl who graduated from Catherine Ferguson Academy was accepted to a two- or four-year college before she graduated. We traveled all over the country. We did summer school on a college campus. I’m a first-generation college graduate. My 98-year-old mom who is here tonight never missed a graduation. I knew that girls needed to be on campuses because you only have to be on campus a few minutes before you meet somebody who’s dumb as a brick. So you don’t have to be oh-so-smart to go college, you just have to be determined. We went all over the country so that the girls could see.”

At one point, Catherine Ferguson students built a garden and maintained a farm with cows, chickens, a goat, and other animals.

“We planted seeds all over that playground. We grew every kind of vegetable that would grow in Michigan. We even grew sweet potatoes. But what we planted that was more important, we planted the seeds of being in our girls. We planted confidence; we planted strength. We built a barn and if you can build a barn, you’re not gonna take a lick. It’s like ‘I’m my own woman, I can do what I want to do.’ … Do I miss my school? I miss my school every day. But I have girls everywhere. I have artists and musicians and business owners and doctors and nurses and lawyers; one politician, not crooked. All kinds of girls everywhere. Remember that every girl who went to Catherine Ferguson was obligated to leave a trail because Catherine Ferguson was a place.”

Brittany Rogers is an educator who left charter schools for the hope of job security as a Detroit Public Schools teacher — at a time of crisis for the public school system.

“I woke up one morning and realized that charters had all the issues of public schools but somehow they managed to come out as the golden child. We had the same pay. We had the same community of students. Our test scores were not better. Our buildings were not better. In fact, I started to feel like I was missing a few things. I didn’t have a union to fight for a wage increase. I didn’t have pension protection. So, I slept on it and I said, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to apply to Detroit Public Schools instead where at least, if I’m going to have the same issues, I can have a bit more job security. So I applied. Right before I got accepted there was a series of protests. DPS was talking about not only cutting wages, again, but also increasing class sizes to 43, which, you know, was a bit scary, shall we say. But by that point I had already been in charters and I had those issues before. And again, I figured, at least I can have the same issues with a bit more job security. So, I put on some really warm clothes and I joined the protests, figuring that I should start standing up for the rights of the district I knew I wanted to belong to.”

Erin Einhorn, senior correspondent at Chalkbeat Detroit, shared the tale of her choice to move her family from New York City to Detroit. (Read more of her story here.)

“I was out in West Bloomfield last year, which is where I grew up and I ran into a high school classmate. It was actually someone I went to kindergarten with, so we had spent our childhoods together. I hadn’t seen her in years. So, it was, ‘Oh, hey, how are you?’ We hugged and you know, it was this great kind of reunion. And then she kind of got this sort of puzzled look on her face; and I was there with my daughter, holding her hand. She kind of looks at me; kind of looks at my daughter. She looked really confused and she says, ‘You live in Detroit?’

“I was like, yeah. Then she asks, “So do they have any schools there with like white kids? And I’m like, ‘Well you know, not a lot.’ There’s not many schools in the city of Detroit that enroll a lot of white children. Her question made me really uncomfortable but if I’m being honest, I don’t love the idea of my kid being the only white child in her class. My daughter’s five years old. She starts kindergarten in September. If I send her to school in Detroit, the odds are she’s going to look very different from a lot of her classmates. But I also hate the idea of her being in a classroom with kids who look exactly like her. And I hate that I have to choose. I hate that we all have to choose to either bear this burden of being different or bear this burden of being the same and not getting to live in the real world.”

Chastity Pratt Dawsey, a DPS graduate who is a journalist at Bridge Magazine, shared her story of how one teacher’s encouragement launched her from a life of poverty to becoming the first college graduate in her family.

Detroit Public Schools teacher Robert Zoltowski (formerly Stevens) shows former student and current Bridge Magazine reporter Chastity Pratt Dawsey, right, a picture he found of her from when she was his student.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Chastity, why have you been writing about these schools for so long. Fifteen long years. Well, actually it started for me in seventh grade at Farwell Middle School on the city’s East Side. Okay, so, one day, somebody had this bright idea. We’re gonna pass around two sheets of paper. One sheet of paper had all the girls’ names on it. The other sheet of paper had all the boys’ names on it. It was like a beauty contest, right. We had to rate each other from zero to five. So, it’s 1986, seventh-grade girls are wearing those Guess jeans and all them bright colors. Getting their hair done at Vantinus hair salon and wearing those belt buckles with your name on it. (I still want one of those.) Those were the girls who got the fours and the five. I had a played-out jheri curl. I wore my cousin Marla’s hand-me-downs. So all the boys; all the boys in seventh grade, gave me zeroes. I was the only girl who got all zeroes.

So while we’re standing around talking about all my zeroes, little did we know that the math and academic games teacher, Mr. Stevens was listening. Now, Mr. Stevens had taught me that you pronounce your name how it’s supposed to be pronounced: Chas-tity! So, this day, I hear Chastity! I’m already having a bad day and now everybody is looking at me and it feels like there’s a spotlight on me, and the whole wold is looking at me, and it feels like the whole room is throbbing. I’m having a bad day. What? What he said I will never forget. Chastity will be a success at whatever she chooses to do. … At this point in my life I’m only good at two things: looking after kids because I was the big sister and role model to eight, and I was good at school — mostly reading, writing, I had won the Area E Regional Essay Contest. Nobody had ever told me where these two things would get me and they damned sure never told me I was going to be a success. I looked around the room and some of those kids, the ones giving me zeroes even, they were nodding their heads. They were agreeing with Mr. Stevens. They might have thought I was ragtag. But even they thought I was going to be a success. So, right there in the seventh grade at Farwell Middle School I went from being a zero to somebody. I was gonna be a success.’’

Imani Harris, a 17-year-old senior at Renaissance High School, recounted her decision to write open letters to Michigan lawmakers and citizens about problems at her school.

“I was upset, I was angry, but I didn’t know what to do. I joined a collective called 482 Forward. In this collective, it’s parents, it’s teachers and students and community members who all want to work together and change things and fight for equity in education. When I joined I found my fit. I found that we could fight for something. We began to get into the logistics of things happening, understanding so, this is why this happens, this is who funds this, and all the money for this is going here. You don’t have a teacher because of this. Now, when I figured that out, why things happen, I was perturbed. I was boiling mad to realize that as a student in Detroit if I’m not paying for my education it doesn’t matter to nobody else because at private school when I was paying for my education everything was fine. I got into a public school. I didn’t matter any more. If I had went to a school in West Bloomfield it wouldn’t have happened that way. If I had went to a school anywhere else where students didn’t look like me, it wouldn’t have happened that way. …My story is a story of finding myself in advocacy and realizing, wait a minute, I can make a difference and I don’t have to be 25 to do it. My story to any teenager out here, to any teenager who’s ever going to see any of this, is, we don’t have to be grown to make a difference. This is our education.”

Five different perspectives on Detroit schools — none of which you will hear on the news

2017-03-15T20:29:35+00:00

Teacher Brittany Rogers tells the story of resisting pressure from her family to leave the Detroit Public Schools for a job in the suburbs — until she experiences her lowest moment.

Asenath Andrews recalls the day, 32 years ago, when she found herself suddenly faced with the challenge of educating teen moms and pregnant girls.

And Imani Harris describes what it’s like to go to school every day, worried about her personal safety.

They are three of the five storytellers who will take the stage Friday night at the Charles H. Wright Museum for the School Days storytelling event hosted by Chalkbeat and the Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers.

“Storytelling is a very powerful artform,” said Satori Shakoor, who is the creator, curator, producer and host of the Secret Society, which holds a monthly storytelling event at the Wright.

The audience on Friday will come away “with five different perspectives on Detroit schools — none of which you will hear on the news,” Shakoor said. “You’ll hear part of it on the news. You’ll hear the sound-bitey stuff but … (these stories) will challenge the stories that are proliferated out there. … You’re going to learn something.”

Chalkbeat is hosting the event as part of its official launch in Detroit. Teachers, parents and school leaders have been invited in hopes that stories told on stage will spark conversations that will lead to needed school improvement.

“I hope that by the end of the evening, everyone will feel a call to action,” Shakoor said.

In addition to Rogers, Andrews and Harris, two education reporters will take the stage: Chastity Pratt Dawsey, a graduate of the Detroit Public Schools who now writes about education and other issues for Bridge Magazine, and Erin Einhorn, Chalkbeat’s Senior Detroit correspondent who is now navigating the Detroit schools for her own children.

Tickets are still available here for $20 in advance or $25 at the door. Book them online.

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The public learned how Newark failed students with disabilities

Thank you, readers

From teaching about race to COVID and Rebuilding Stronger, here are our 5 most-read stories of 2022

Statehouse debate on teaching about race

What happens to my school under Rebuilding Stronger?

Election 2022: Voters chose school board members

COVID learning recovery and virtual attendance changes

Accountability for state lawmakers

Bonus: Charter troubles, special education staffing, and more

We’re your Chalkbeat Indiana team, and we’re excited to be here

Aleksandra Appleton, statewide education reporter

Amelia Pak-Harvey, Indianapolis schools reporter

MJ Slaby, bureau chief

Andrew Ujifusa, story editor

A new community: Join ‘After the Bell: Teacher Advice’ on Facebook

Introducing ‘After the Bell,’ a new community for teachers

We’re launching a free tool for journalists to track source diversity

How my grandmother’s response to her school’s racism has shaped my work

Introducing Votebeat in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas

Introducing the Local News Field Guide

An end-of-year note from Chalkbeat’s CEO

Writing about Newark is a ‘privilege and responsibility’ for me. Here’s why.

Growing up alongside a brother with disabilities inspired me to fight for education equity

The difference between quitting and graduating? Sometimes, it’s just one person who cares.

How to design your source diversity audit survey with inclusivity in mind

Race/Ethnicity

Gender

Other Survey Questions

Conclusion

One year later: Reflecting on our commitment to antiracism

Here’s everything we learned about source diversity auditing

What we learned:

Lesson 1: Newsrooms need clear direction at the beginning on goals for source tracking, data collection, and how to use the results.

Lesson 2: Surveys should be short and auditing should be continuous.

Lesson 3: Automation saves time (but doesn’t mean reporters are less invested).

Lesson 4: Newsrooms should design with a living source database in mind.

Want to read more?

What’s next?

The pandemic brought me home to Memphis to expand my fight for education equity

Experiencing racism as a child was traumatic, but these young voices are helping me heal

In high school, I witnessed inequities in public education. Now, I want to write about it.