The Institute provides financial and journalistic assistance to ambitious education-journalism projects that address national issues at the local and regional level.
Projects supported include:
Los Angeles Times: Grading the Teachers
The Los Angeles Times published a series that used “value-added analysis” to measure the effectiveness of more than 6,000 teachers in L.A. Unified. The analysis, which made use of seven years of individual student-performance data, was supported in part by a grant from The Hechinger Report.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Building a Better Teacher
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel partnered with The Hechinger Report to produce an eight-part series, “Building a Better Teacher,” looking at the teaching profession in Wisconsin and nationally. Running on the front page eight consecutive Sundays, the stories spotlight challenges to the way teachers are trained, evaluated, paid, promoted and dismissed – and how all of it bears on student success.
The Hechinger Report and the Education Writers Association partnered with more than 30 newspapers nationwide to take a look at how the stimulus money was spent.
USA TODAY: Suspicious Test Scores
The Hechinger Report, USA TODAY and several other news outlets partnered to investigate the standardized test scores of millions of students in six states and the District of Columbia. The investigation identified 1,610 examples of statistically rare, perhaps suspect, gains on state tests.