It was an off year, relatively speaking, for education journalism being recognized by the Pulitzer Committee. Last year, the Tampa Bay Times’ won the top prizes for Failure Factories, and the Boston Globe won for Boston After Busing.
But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good year for education journalism, too. There were three big pieces of journalism that were finalists in this year’s awards, announced earlier this week. That’s no small accomplishment.
There was one winner in the local reporting category. And the winner of the Pulitzer for nonfiction book addressed an element of poor kids’ lives that educators, journalists, and advocates may not understand as well as they might.
PAST WINNERS
Though last year may have been exceptional, there’s no shortage of Pulitzer-winning education journalism. The team from the Philadelphia Inquirer won in 2012 for a series on school safety. The Daily Breeze (CA) won in 2014 for exposing mismanagement in Centinela Valley schools. For a full list of finalists and winners in the education category, go here.
THREE FINALISTS
The Houston Chronicle was a finalist for the much-discussed series on special education limitations in Texas. Written by Brian Rosenthal, who’s recently been scooped up by the New York Times, the series was praised “for exposing the grave injustice of arbitrary cost-cutting by the State of Texas that denied tutoring, counseling and other vital special education services to families, hindering the futures of tens of thousands of children.”
Much less well-known is Steve Reilly’s USA Today series on teacher discipline flaws that let them relocate and continue teaching, sometimes with tragic results. The Committee recognized the series as “a far-reaching investigation that used two ambitious data-gathering efforts to turn up 9,000 teachers across the nation who should have been flagged for past disciplinary offenses but were not.”
As EdWeek’s Mark Walsh pointed out, a team of reporters from Reuters was also recognized for its work “uncovering a U.S. college admissions process corrupted by systematic cheating on standardized tests in Asia and the complicity of American officials eager to cash in on full-tuition foreign students.”
TWO WINNERS
The Salt Lake Tribune won for local reporting on mistreatment of sexual assault victims at Brigham Young. As noted by the Committee, it was “a string of vivid reports revealing the perverse, punitive and cruel treatment given to sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University, one of Utah’s most powerful institutions.”
Last but not least, Matthew Desmond won a Pulitzer for his non-fiction book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which focused on the cycle of relocation and eviction among poor citizens in Milwaukee. The Committee recognized Desmond’s book as “a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.”
If you want to understand the out-of-school lives of students who come from poor families, especially those many who are not in public housing, this might be your best bet. As Desmond said in a 2016 interview, “If we want more family and school stability, we need a lot fewer evictions.”
Previous posts:
School Segregation Coverage Wins 2 Pulitzers & Peabody Award
Housing’s Impact On Poor Students & Education
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Russo
Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.
Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/
