🏆 Best Education Journalism of the Week 🏆 (01/02/2026)

In this week’s newsletter:

Welcome back!

📌 An honest assessment of the past 12 months

📌 A couple more all-star ed reporters have left the beat and/or the business

📌 “You are not entitled to a response from us, or anyone, ever.”

📌 Who can resist the sight and sound of education reporters laughing?

Since there was no Friday newsletter last week, some of the items go back all the way to the beginning of Xmas week.

2025: MORE THAN CULTURE WARS AND USDE DOWNSIZING

The big education story of the week:

The big education story of the week is an assessment of what happened in education over these past 12 months, during which national political stories dominated while major shifts took place at the state and local levels.

No doubt, the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize and refocus the US Department of Education has been a major story (New York Times, Washington Post, Hechinger Report). Immigration enforcement and student disengagement have caused kids to stay home (Sahan Journal, Boston Globe). Media and public attention have been focused on many other issues entirely outside of education (Axios).

However, an honest assessment of the past year suggests that the most immediate, real-world changes that students and schools have been experiencing have taken place at the state and local levels and — with the exception of immigration enforcement — have relatively little to do with what’s happening in Washington. Private school choice continues to expand (Concord Monitor, Arkansas Democrat Gazette). Cellphone bans in schools spread to more states (The Hill, Wall Street Journal, Vox, Washington Post). And public school enrollment continues to fall — leaving many districts with more capacity than students (Dallas Observer, Baltimore Banner, Arizona Republic, Voice of San Diego).

For more assessments of the year in education: Idaho Education News, Post and Courier, Fresno Bee, Palo Alto Online.

Other big education news of the week includes Mayor Mamdani’s surprise pick for NYC schools superintendent (City and State, EdWeek,, NYT, Gothamist) and his last-minute reversal on mayoral choice (New York Times, Chalkbeat, City & State NY).

SCHOOL MISMATCH, PHONE-FREE CLASSES, & HOMELESS STUDENTS

The best education journalism of the week:

🏆 Baltimore has a big problem with small schools. Just look at West Baltimore.

While many districts are losing students, none may have quite as thorny a mix of issues as those the Baltimore Banner’s Liz Bowie documents here. This balanced and thoughtful story mixes data analysis, narrative and a thorough history of education reform to show how West Baltimore classrooms emptied out — even as schools in East Baltimore are overcrowded.

🏆 Many states tried to create phone-free learning spaces this year. Here’s how it went.

Possibly the most significant story of the year in education was the spread of classroom phone bans, so it was nice to see this roundup from NPR’s Sequoia Carrillo. It’s a balanced story that makes sure to include the voices of students along with educators and experts.

🏆 A growing American crisis is affecting more than 1 million students

At The Grade we’ve highlighted several pieces in the past about eviction and homelessness for students, but few are as comprehensive as this piece from USA TODAY’s Christopher Cann. The story not only documents a rise in homelessness but also all the ways that typical counting methods undercount students without stable housing.

Other education stories we liked include Massachusetts schools rank first, but for how much longer? (Boston Globe), The Hottest High Schools in Massachusetts Are Trade Schools (WSJ), and A long-overdue reckoning with child sex abuse of the past is straining California classrooms today (LA Times).

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BEST OF 2025

Above: Education reporter Krista Johnson’s personal essay about her childhood was the best piece we published last year.

In case you missed it last week, the 10 most important and memorable education stories of 2025 include the Washington Post investigation into DCPS’s failure to address student attendance (by Robert Samuels and Lauren Lumpkin), APM Reports’ episode on literacy in Steubenville, Ohio (by Kate Martin, Carmela Guaglianone, and Emily Hanford), and Harper Magazine’s cover story on what it’s like inside a publicly funded private school in Arizona (by Chandler Fritz). Check them all out here.

New this week: The best pieces published by The Grade during 2025 include a searing personal essay from the Louisville Courier’s Krista Johnson (above), a hilarious interview with The Argument’s Kelsey Piper, and a thought-provoking defense of the popular TV show ‘Abbott Elementary’ by freelance writer Ekemini Ekpo. Check them all out here.

For other folks’ look-backs at their best and most popular work, check out the Associated Press (including a Bianca Toness piece on eviction and schools), Longreads (featuring a story about an Altadena high school rebuilding after the fire), and ProPublica (including an Aliyya Swaby story about one school’s horribly mistaken response to a reported school shooting).

What’d I get wrong in 2025? So many things — among them that the EWA listserv would bounce back.

Thanks for reading Alexander Russo’s The Grade! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Above: The Christian Science Monitor’s Ira Porter describes ‘the best reporting assignment of my year.’

📰 People: ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein wrote about the aggressive pushback reporters like Megan O’Matz have been getting from Trump administration officials. Longtime journalist Kavitha Cardoza just finished her first semester teaching journalism full-time. Standout education journalist Sara Randazzo is no longer reporting for the Wall Street Journal — their loss! — but you can follow her latest efforts here.

📰 Media segments: Gothamist education reporter Emily Gould talks about school lunch after the cellphone ban on WNYC. Education expert Richard Kahlenberg talks about the importance of socioeconomic class and college admissions with WBUR host Meghna Chakrabarti. ‘English Teacher’ may have been canceled and ‘Weapons’ may be too scary to watch, but there’s a new Netflix flick featuring Cillian Murphy as a teacher and you can listen to a rebroadcast of him being interviewed about it with Allison Stewart on NPR’s on All Of It.

📰 Jobs: The California Post is scheduled to launch soon, but I still don’t know who its new education reporter is going to be. Ditto for the mystery person who’s replacing Melissa Taboada at the Boston Globe. Meanwhile, The 19th is hiring *two* full-time editors and Wisconsin Watch is looking for a pathways to success reporter.

📰 Numbers: For people who currently have kids under 18, Republicans lead 39-29, according to The Argument. For people under 65 who have kids under 18, Republicans lead 41-27. If you *only* used SAT to admit to elite colleges, the share of admits from top 1% income falls 15.8% → 9.9% and representation from <$200k rises by +8.8%, “with no reduction in post-college outcomes,” according to a paper cited by YCombinator’s Garry Tan. Only about a quarter of counties have herd immunity for kindergartners from measles, according to a Washington Post analysis. Oregon has the nation’s third-highest vaccine opt-out rate, leaving more than 50,000 children vulnerable to serious disease, according to the Oregon Journalism Project. Only Idaho and Utah parents opt out more. And EdSource rounded up the most popular winter-break books.

📰 Quotes:

“My adult life has been divided between two professions where the connection between credentialing and effectiveness is slim-to-nonexistent: journalism and education.”

“Only by learning how to examine evidence and prioritize outcomes over feel-good idealism was I able to break free.”

“Why did it take so long? It was so obviously damaging. Yet it went on for years.”

“You are not entitled to a response from us, or anyone, ever.”

📰 Events: The USDE’s Lindsey Burke will appear with Chalkbeat’s Erica Meltzer and Matt Barnum on January 14 to discuss what lies ahead for the USDE. Join Contrarian Boston and a panel of experts (including yours truly) on Jan. 15 as they discuss the challenges facing public education.