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Dear Reader,
Our country was founded on the ideal of eradicating inequality, but we have been unable to fully live this principle: Inequality pervades nearly every major debate about our schools. In this time of coronavirus upheaval and uncertainty, disparities in education, from preschool to universities, have been exacerbated.
Against this backdrop, The Hechinger Report's work - our national reporting - has spurred policy changes that are increasing opportunities for underserved students around the country:
- Just this year, in Massachusetts and Ohio, our reporting was cited in bills seeking to ban the practice by some colleges and universities of withholding transcripts from individuals with student debt, which may impair their ability to pursue and secure employment. In New York, City University cited our reporting in announcing the suspension of their transcript-holding policy.
- In Maryland, the state allocated $100 million for tutoring to help offset coronavirus learning loss, after our story on tutoring research published.
- In Georgia, the state created its first entirely need-based scholarship, after we wrote about students deeply in debt despite funds sitting in state coffers that might have alleviated their burden.
- In Iowa, we revealed how private cosmetology schools, lobbyists and legislators saddle graduates with crippling debt there and across the country, which set in motion the filing of a class-action lawsuit.
- In Massachusetts, the state ceased operations of a higher ed institution and agreed to provide $1.6 million in debt relief to students, the day our investigation into suspect certificate programs ran with NBC Nightly News.
These are just a few examples of how our investigative reporting has elevated state or regional issues and drawn clear and compelling connections with national debates around policy, inequity and solutions.
This is precisely why Hechinger’s distinctive style of education journalism is needed like never before. Our stories humanize, whether they are long-form narratives, ambitious data investigations, multipart series on a single topic, or pointed, argument-driven news analyses.
But journalism that serves the public can't exist without public support. We need people like you to stand up for it.
Invest in the stories going untold, and the lives worth fighting for.
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