The Education Show

With a dozen years on the beat under his belt, Cory Turner is one of the most experienced national education reporters out there, and in this new interview he’s generous enough to share his thoughts about covering two important education stories: the Biden-era student debt relief effort and the present-day explosion of school choice.

His most recent major piece is a deep dive into school choice in Iowa, including a universal $8,000 per child allocation that doesn’t necessarily go straight from the public school system to private school but still creates a potentially enormous financial burden for the state.

“It’s not necessarily hurting the public schools” in direct financial terms, says Turner about what he found in Iowa. “But it is essentially putting the state and its general fund on the hook for a new stream of funding.”

Asked about his coverage of the Biden-era student debt relief effort, Turner reminds us that the effort’s questionable legality and usefulness were known and reported from the start — by him, at least — and that the Biden effort shouldn’t be confused with pre-existing Congressionally-approved loan forgiveness and income-contingent repayment programs that had preceded debt relief.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

While I neglected to ask him whether the questionable politics of debt relief — now much-discussed among Democratic pundits — were also known and reported at the time, Turner has lots of interesting things to say about journalistic fairness, bringing context into coverage, and the importance of focusing on what seems most important rather than what might generate the most interest in a given moment.

“I think one of the things that still I still grapple with is holding multiple truths in my hands at once — and helping listeners and readers do the same,” says Turner.

“I do get a little tired of the overly politicized rhetoric today where borrowers who were hurt don’t even want to talk publicly anymore because the public’s like, ‘boo hoo.’ It can be true that the system sucked and someone got hurt and it’s set them back and also that you you didn’t go to college and you didn’t feel like you could borrow this money. It’s both true.”

As for the federal school choice law, “there’s not one way to do it. There are actually more and less thoughtful ways of rolling out, let’s say a private school voucher or an education savings account program.”

Previously from The Grade

Tough jobs: covering private school choice in 2026 (EdWeek’s Matt Stone)

Full-time reporting on school choice (Josh Snyder of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

‘We are the media now,’ says school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis

Inside the Harper’s magazine story about teaching at an ESA-funded micro-school (Chandler Fritz)

The Democratic case for private school choice (DFER head Jorge Elorza)

‘We could have been a lot louder,’ says NPR’s Anya Kamenetz

Claudio Sanchez looks back: Lessons from 30 years covering education for NPR (2019)

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Stefan Merrill Block started writing “Homeschooled” — a memoir of the five years he spent at home after his mother pulled him out of school — as a healing exercise after his mother’s death. He thought it might generate material for a fourth novel.

But after writing down hundreds of pages of memories, something else came out:

“When I was reading my own story as a reader, I started to find that I had profound empathy for this kid in a way that I had never quite had empathy for myself,” he told me in this new interview. “And I was rooting for him and feeling sad for him and worried for him.”

The result of these written memories is a book that is troubling, often funny — and deeply personal.

For the years he was at home, Block had few contacts with anyone his own age and minimal formal instruction. At one point to improve his handwriting his mother made him walk on all fours for months.

But in this new interview, Block talked more about something he discovered only after the events of the book: the world of former homeschoolers who are advocating for better oversight.

“I get emails from readers all the time who had, you know — not the same situation because of course every homeschool is different — but felt sort of unseen and unwitnessed in their own peculiar home education environments,” he said. “The sense of connection that I feel with these people is just immense.”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

I am also a former homeschooler, which in my case was almost entirely a positive experience. It’s this huge range of possible outcomes in home education that makes reporting on it so tricky — when journalists even try.

“I have felt over the last 15 years that I have been trying to write something on the subject of homeschooling, a real resistance from traditional mainstream journalism to accept those stories or to cover those stories,” Block said. “I think that there has recently been a change in the culture.”

But the best coverage, he contends, is still from the groups of former homeschoolers.

For reporters looking to improve homeschooling coverage, Block wants to see journalists talk directly to children or former homeschoolers and not cover the story solely as one of parental choice.

He also wants to see more coverage of the laws around home education.

Listen to our full conversation for more on the stereotypes of homeschooling, why Block thinks few reporters are getting it right, and the kind of policy-focused coverage he wants to see.

Previously from The Grade

Covering private school choice in the Trump 2.0 era

Covering school choice during the 2024 campaign season

ProPublica’s Eli Hager on covering choice in a new era

Inside the Harper’s magazine story about teaching at an ESA-funded micro-school

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Interviewed during last her few days on the job, the Chronicle’s Emma Pettit talks about the many parallels between the critique of higher education that’s been her beat these past two years and the critique of traditional journalism currently swirling around the education beat.

Her beat this past two years has been what she calls ‘the critique’ of higher education — most often but not exclusively coming from the right. “I try to take those criticisms seriously, and I essentially am asking over and over ‘Why has higher education lost trust with some of the public?’”

Asked about the state of media coverage, Pettit has some criticism of bigger outlets’ higher education coverage. There’s not enough of it. It lacks depth. It over-focuses on elite institutions.

After eight years at the Chronicle, she’s headed off to join audio journalism company called Longview, the folks behind The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, The Last Invention, and a show called Reflector.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

If you’ve read Pettit’s work or seen her on social media — she’s still on Twitter, unlike many other journalists — you may recognize that she’s more willing than most to ask hard questions and avoid knee-jerk coverage.

“I don’t try and start stories deliberately trying to be provocative, but I do think that there are a lot of questions worth asking that sometimes get a little bit less shine,” she says. “And I definitely see my role as trying to ask those questions and trying to explore debates — not just both sides, but all sides.”

Most recently, she’s been recognized by the Education Writers Association awards judges as a finalist for two different stories —one a magazine-style field-reported narrative about the New College of Florida that reminded me a bit of On The Media’s The Harvard Plan podcast, the other a FOIA-based deep dive into the implementation of a controversial law in which general education offerings deemed overly “woke” were culled.

“The journalism I find the most interesting is where I can feel myself seeing and understanding different parts of a debate, even if I exit some story feeling exactly as I did going into it,” she says. “But I also like when I change my mind or when I have my views challenged. I just think that that makes for better journalism in general.”

Asked about the critique of journalism, Pettit urges her colleagues and readers not to ignore it. Don’t ignore your haters. Don’t fall for the conspiracy theory that the critique is entirely manufactured. And don’t shut out those who disagree with you.

“You want to be the place where people come to figure out these arguments and to argue with one another,” says Pettit — opening doors, welcoming conservative critics, and making sure that everyone feels like they have a seat at the table.

Previously from The Grade

How to fix campus protest coverage (Jeremy Bauer-Wolf)

‘Varsity Blues’ scandal reveals troubling blind spot

Calling bullsh**t on college’s contradictory diversification claims (Rick Kahlenberg)

Diversity, innovation, and strength; how to fix coverage of rural higher education (Nick Fouriezos)

Reflections on covering a hazing death at a Florida HBCU (Denise-Marie Ordway)

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A self-described angry mom who ran for office and sends her kids to NYC public schools, Danyela Souza Egorov is now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute whose work often appears in City Journal.

“I was one of those very angry moms,” says Egorov in this new interview. “And that’s what really got me into writing because I was very frustrated with the coverage of public schools during COVID.”

Asked her thoughts about NYC schools coverage, think the main problem she identifies is quantity. “New York City Department of Education represents 40 % of the budget of the city,” notes Egorov.

“If journalists are not asking at least one fourth of their questions about education, they are not doing their job.”

Watch or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

When schools do get covered, the focus isn’t on fundamental issues like spending increases or whether kids can read or do math. Instead it’s often about upper-middle-class issues that impact only a tiny number of students like gifted and talented education or specialized high schools.

“Most of the discussion is in this area. So we have very little journalism about education in New York.”

She’s glad to see more coverage of the school class size law, which is both a big budget item and affects large numbers of students. But otherwise she’s critical of most of what she sees.

“I think the New York Times has had so much focus on gifted and talented and how these schools are racially segregated,” says Egorov. “I mean, that has been their main point of coverage for some time.”

In terms of traditional journalists, she’s a fan of Susan Edelman. On the non-traditional side, she likes a new podcast called Schooled: Inside the Nation’s Largest School District that’s produced by parent advocates Deborah Alexander, Yiatin Chu, and Josh Cross.

Unlike many people I talk to, Egorov is aware that her critique is based on her sense of what’s most important. “There are other people who might tell you that there are different problems in New York City public schools.”

However, she says that so much of what goes on in schools isn’t known publicly. Parents might complain — they might even sue. But they don’t want media attention.

“What you see in the newspapers is the tip of the iceberg.”

You can also follow her at @dany_egorov.

Previously from The Grade

Boosting the impact of New York City schools coverage (David Bloomfield)

The journalist who started out as an angry mom (Trish Powell Crain)

Inadequate literacy coverage in New York City (Lee Gaul)

Why’s a Georgetown economist covering Montgomery County schools? (Nora Gordon)

A reporter reflects on 8 years covering NYC schools (Ben Chapman)

Parents, school closures, & media coverage (Vernée Wilkinson)

Student voices missing in coverage of NYC specialized schools debate

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Getting rid of Chromebooks isn’t McPherson Middle School principal Inge Esping’s first time helping her school reconsider well-intended but ultimately unhelpful education technology — and based on this new conversation it might not be her last.

Four years ago, McPherson banned cellphones during the day.

Then in December, the school eliminated the 1:1 Chromebook program that had been in place for roughly a decade — a decision featured in KCWH, KCTV, Sentinel KCMO, and most recently including the New York Times.

It’s no easy feat standing up to the relentless, well-funded, and often media-fanned hype surrounding education technology.

But McPherson’s Epsing shows how it can be done.

So far, the biggest challenge may be helping kids re-learn how to keep track of assignments and turn in homework without Google Classroom reminders.

Watch or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

According to Esping, the school made this most recent change because — surprise! — getting rid of cellphones wasn’t a silver bullet, and also because it had the support of the district and school parents.

It also helped to have already banned cellphones — and to operate in a school district that already has paper-and-pencil curriculum materials available.

“I’m not sure if we didn’t do the cell phone restriction would have connected some of our challenges to Chromebooks as easily — or would have been brave enough to say it,” says Esping, given how much districts spend on devices and the reliance on online-only learning platforms many have purchased.

Last but not least, a 2018-2020 experience with an intensively online learning platform had helped the district look harder at education technology products.

“I truly think that experience helped our district and our community just have a little bit more critical of an eye on some of those ed tech things that promise the world.”

Previously from The Grade

AI HYPE VS. CHROMEBOOK REMORSE: WHO WILL WIN?

HOW TO COVER AI IN SCHOOLS: AN EXPERT’S ADVICE

AI-ASSISTED ED NEWS IS ALREADY HERE

Edtech coverage, the hype cycle, and media complicity

AltSchool, media hype, & the innovation dilemma

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If you know the name Steven Waldman, it’s probably because of his involvement in helping create Report for America, the nearly decade-old nonprofit endeavor to match ambitious journalists with growing newsrooms that at times has funded 30-40 reporters covering the education beat alone.

What you may not know is that Waldman is now growing a new organization called Rebuild Local News, an even more ambitious effort to win government support for news coverage that is dropping precipitously.

The former politics and government reporter is now now doing politics and government — an irony of which he’s well aware.

Watch or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

Waldman’s overall take is that the state of local news is bleak even while there’s so much innovation going on.

“There’s a lot of wonderful new things going on,” says Waldman. “They just tend to be small.”

That’s why you hear about the same “green shoots” at conferences, he says, but innovation can still seem hard to find when you’re looking at the whole ecosystem of 7,000 local newspapers and TV stations.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s having an impact because it’s a minority of what we’re experiencing.”

Asked to name some examples of innovation and leadership towards journalism reform, Waldman cites Outlier in Detroit, the American Journalism Project’s efforts to train people to run the business side of journalism organizations, Ken Doctor’s Lookout Santa Cruz, Documented, Report for America, and Spotlight PA.

When it comes to building intermediary nonprofits, Waldman’s big lesson may be the peril of relying on big grants like the $2 million that Facebook gave RFA rather than a diversified set of funders.

He’s also learned to pivote when necessary, as in the case of broadening out his new organization’s initial focus on the U.S. Congress to focus on states — now six of them — that have passed laws that provide an estimated $75 million in revenue for journalism.

Other notable insights:

*Twitter still has its moments but LinkedIn is the place to spend time.

*Attracting younger people remains a journalism weak spot.

*Non-traditional journalists who succeed tend to be national rather than local.

*Desperate times have made traditional newsrooms much more interested in non-traditional content creators.

Previously from The Grade

How a Teach For America-inspired journalism program aims to bolster local news coverage (on the initial 2017 launch of Report For America)

Report for America goes to school (2020)

Literacy, blue-state politics, & media reluctance (with The Argument’s Kelsey Piper)

How to cover Trump 2.0? (with ProPublica alum Dick Tofel)

Eviction, housing affordability, & rethinking education news (with Pulitzer finalist AP education reporter Bianca Toness)

Inside the Harper’s magazine story about teaching at an ESA-funded micro-school (with Harper’s magazine writer Chandler Fritz)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

Alan Gottlieb has deep, deep roots in education journalism, having founded or co-founded several education news outlets over the years: Education News Colorado, Chalkbeat, and now Boardhawk.

In this new interview, Gottlieb shares his take on Colorado’s “Balkanized” education news ecosystem, the much-diminished number of reporters covering schools in Colorado, and the coverage being produced by Chalkbeat’s Colorado outpost.

“I’m very proud of having co-founded Chalkbeat, and I still think it’s an amazing accomplishment — and that Elizabeth Green is a superstar who’s done amazing work and that it continues to be a really impressive organization,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have criticisms.”

Watch or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

Previously from The Grade

A 'turning point' for Oregon schools coverage? (Christine Pitts)

Matt Barnum tells (almost) all!

Shutdown worries, blue-state reluctance, & layoffs at Chalkbeat

Make room for non-traditional education journalism!

The ‘softness’ of traditional day-to-day news (Dan Kennedy)

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You may recall news coming out last month that longtime education journalist Kavitha Cardoza had won a $100,000 journalism award from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

But Cardoza wasn’t the only winner. The other prizewinner that day was unknown-to-me freelance journalist Oliver Whang — or should I say former journalist.

“I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that I’m not in journalism,” says Whang in this new interview. “But I’m definitely not a full-time journalist right now.”

“I really enjoy literary nonfiction,” says Whang about his previous work and that of others he admires. “But can it justify itself?”

Watch or read the interview transcript above (or on YouTube), or listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

“Being a journalist can sometimes feel voyeuristic, and difficult to justify,” says Whang in the Heising-Simons contest announcement. “But I’d like to think my reporting develops a record of what happened that people can look at and feel something about.”

Journalism wasn’t Whang’s childhood passion. He was a science and math kid. But he did well in school, interned with the NPR’s ‘Invisibilia’ podcast, and published stories with high-prestige national magazines like the NYT Sunday Magazine.

And then, shortly before it was announced, the foundation contacted him from out of the blue and let him know he was going to win.

Asked about his feelings towards journalism, Whang describes both enjoying the process of finding, pitching, and reporting stories — and questioning the value of the work and its effect on the people he was writing about.

“I didn’t really question that at first,” says Whang. “But then some people I wrote about were like, ‘S**t, you got it so wrong.’ And, you know, ‘I’m not like this. I’m not my struggle. You reduced me to this thing.’”

Journalism is famously difficult, financially and professionally. But is it justifiable in terms of its effects on those who are depicted or any larger impacts?

These are considerations that more education journalists should consider. See below for previous interviews and essays we’ve published about journalism ethics and no-harm practices.

Previously from The Grade

Student reporters, classroom predators, & journalism ethics (with Isolde Raftery)

Inside the Harper’s magazine story about teaching at an ESA-funded micro-school (with Chandler Fritz)

Capturing the ‘central transaction’ of schools (with James Traub)

Covering a hazing death at a Florida HBCU (by Denise-Marie Ordway)

How to report on communities that aren’t your own (by Cici Yu, Sarah Conway, Ariel Hart, Katie Licari, and Yanqi Xu)

Community-based solutions will deepen your reporting (Deepa Fernandes)

Key elements of community-driven education coverage (by Brent Brewer)

Covering trauma in schools (by Lee Romney)

First, do no harm — but how? (by Danielle Dreilinger)

Covering communities that are not your own; a reporter reflects (by Lee Romney)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

Hard to believe, but it was just a week ago when the Baltimore Banner published Everyone has seen Baltimore’s missing boy. So why can’t authorities find him?, a deep and vivid investigative story that includes U.S. Marshalls tromping through a neighborhood in search of a little boy and a city agency that mistakenly closes the case instead of prioritizing it.

Readers like me spent half their time exasperated at all the agencies that couldn’t locate him and the other half wondering how discredited city systems must be for the boy and the Baltimoreans who hid him to think that they actually might be helping him out.

In this new interview, two of the three reporters involved in the story — Jessica Calefati and Lee Sanderlin — talk about how they made such a complicated and deeply frustrating story into something clear and compelling to read.

“I had done some reporting in this neighborhood for a number of years,” says Sanderlin about how his understanding of the story evolved when he started learning that Tristan was receiving intermittent help from well-intended adults. “A different picture started to be painted.”

“One important interview we got sort of late in the process was with a woman named Heather Thomas,” says Calefati about key elements of the reporting. “She was able to share with us was some of his humanity — that he had a black cat named Shadow and he was interested in video games.”

Watch or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to it on Spotify or Apple.

Jessica Gallagher is the third reporter whose byline appears next to the story.

Previously from The Grade

Eviction, housing affordability, & rethinking education news (Bianca Toness interview)

An interview with the AP team responsible for Pulitzer-recognized education coverage

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It won’t take long for you to get hooked on Adults in the Room, a new eight-episode series from KUOW Seattle Public Radio about a charismatic high school teacher named Tom Hudson and the two student journalists whose accusations of improper conduct lead to his suspension and who eventually committed suicide.

One of the two self-described best friends became a lawyer. The other became a journalist. And you can probably guess what happens next: After 20 years wondering if they had done the right thing, the two decided to start interviewing former classmates and searching for long-ago records.

In this new interview, KUOW managing editor Isolde Raftery — the journalist half of the best friends duo — tells the story behind the podcast. The station wasn’t initially interested. The listener response has been massive. The reactions have been sharply divided. And the surrounding ethical questions are up for debate.

“There was one call I think [we made] to Kelly McBride at Poynter,” says Raftery about the external part of the vetting process, which was extensive within the station. “But I don’t feel like I need someone else — people I don’t know, who don’t know the context, who don’t know me, don’t know how I work — I don’t need them to weigh in.”

Watch or read the interview transcript above (or on YouTube), or listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Previously from The Grade

Your high school journalism teacher was a serial sexual predator. (Matt Drange)

Sexual predators & self-protective school systems (Courier Journal / Jess Clark)

Other pieces from The Grade about school sexual misconduct.

Requiem for a parent-run education podcast (Seattle Hall Pass)

How I unintentionally became an education reporter (Minneapolis)

How the Seattle Times’ COVID coverage missed the mark

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