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As 2024 comes to a close, Chalkbeat journalists are looking at how our education reporting spurred change in our communities.
This year started off with an unexpected shoutout to Chalkbeat during the third season premiere of the ABC comedy “Abbott Elementary.” (If you want to relive the excitement, this season is now streaming on Hulu). But what we value even more is hearing from real people impacted by the education stories we write.
Here are a few of many changes our thoughtful reporting brought about in 2024.
Members of Congress push federal officials to fix FAFSA for students with undocumented parents following Chalkbeat’s reporting
More than 90 members of Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education urging officials to fix a glitch preventing students with undocumented parents from filling out federal financial aid forms following Chalkbeat’s coverage of this problem. The letter included language from Chalkbeat’s articles — we were among the first news outlets to report on the problem’s effects on students from immigrant families.
Colorado school district reverses decision to cut a dyslexia program for older students
Chalkbeat Colorado was the first news outlet to cover the planned cuts to a unique public school program for older students with dyslexia. Less than a week after their story, district officials met with families in the program and pledged to continue it at the same level it was operating. In a recording of the meeting, one parent said about his talking to the media, including Chalkbeat, “I apologize for stirring the pot, but that’s what got you in this room.” Chalkbeat’s coverage exposed the district’s abrupt last-minute decision to cut the program to a wide audience and helped galvanize a district-level response to the planned cuts. Initially, the cuts had been orchestrated by school leaders, and district leaders professed not to know about them.
Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s investigation forced a group to register as lobbyists after they showed support for school vouchers. The group? Part of Jay-Z’s philanthropic organization.
Team Roc, the philanthropic arm of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation entertainment company, had been asserting for months that they were not lobbyists but merely “concerned citizens” advocating for school vouchers in Philadelphia. Chalkbeat reporters attended one of its “dine and learn” events and noticed its advocacy looked a lot like lobbying. Chalkbeat’s investigation proved Team Roc’s events were part of a broader lobbying campaign that it had been conducting unregistered. After the publication of the investigation, a Team Roc spokesperson confirmed the group registered as lobbyists with Pennsylvania.
Newark students with disabilities missed class during the first week of school. Chalkbeat uncovered the problem and helped them get placed in classrooms.
Chalkbeat Newark reporter Jessie Gomez spoke with parents of students with disabilities who said that on the first day of school, they were told their child did not have a school placement. Other parents said they were told their child was enrolled at a different school. Chalkbeat reached out to the district, which said it was not experiencing a problem with enrollment despite parents claiming they had reached out to the district’s enrollment office for multiple days to resolve issues that forced some students to miss multiple days of school. Within hours of Chalkbeat Newark publishing its story, some of the parents quoted in the article received a call from the district notifying them of their child’s placement in a school.
Sometimes impact takes time. In this case, it took more than a year for changes to happen in Chicago.
The pandemic spurred a technology revolution in Chicago schools as the district spent big on new laptops, tablets, and devices to deal with virtual and hybrid learning, and also to implement a new universal curriculum. In 2022, Chalkbeat Chicago’s Mila Koumpilova and WBEZ’s Sarah Karp spent several months digging into data obtained through FOIA and speaking to staff in schools about how this technology spending spree happened. They found it was poorly planned and poorly tracked. The district’s inspector general investigated and through a tech audit found 77,000 missing devices worth more than $23 million. That office made 16 recommendations to the district to fix the “flawed” device tracking and this year, CPS officials said they’re taking steps to better track technology across the district.
The Michigan Department of Education took action based on Chalkbeat’s reporting
The Michigan Department of Education reached out to all public school districts in the state to remind them to not send home the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress reports with a printing error. The action came immediately after Chalkbeat Detroit inquired about erroneous reports that were sent to parents in one district. The district had missed the department’s initial notification about the printing error and mistakenly sent the inaccurate reports to parents. The paper reports are the only way parents have to check their children’s M-STEP scores, which show whether students are meeting state standards for their grade level.
Chalkbeat Tennessee’s reporting connecting the impact of Hurricane Helene’s destruction to the school voucher debate sparked a lot of conversation — and outrage
In the days following Chalkbeat’s analysis of school funding issues related to Hurricane Helene’s destruction in northeast Tennessee — including that $144 million is sitting idle in the current state budget for a school voucher program that hasn’t passed — House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons issued a statement criticizing Gov. Bill Lee’s recovery plan for not dipping into unused voucher or reserve funds. Tanya Coates, president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teacher organization, issued a statement calling on the governor to release the voucher funds for immediate disaster recovery efforts. JC Bowman, who leads Professional Educators of Tennessee, wrote an editorial calling the governor’s plan “tone deaf” to the needs of Tennesseans when voucher funding lies fallow.
State senator files bill following story on lax charter school oversight in Indianapolis
In 2023, Chalkbeat Indiana’s reporting found few guardrails in state laws for authorizers of Indianapolis charter schools, which have allowed some charters to quickly expand amid enrollment struggles and vary widely in how authorizers hold schools academically accountable. After reading Chalkbeat’s reporting, Indianapolis state Sen. Andrea Hunley filed a bill this year to limit who can authorize schools in Marion County. The bill did not advance.
Chalkbeat New York’s reporting brings a slew of changes to education communities across the city in a single week
Chalkbeat’s New York bureau was especially busy in November. Less than a week after reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney’s story about special education issues at Beacon High School, the interim principal withdrew his name from contention to become the school’s permanent principal. Elsen-Rooney also wrote a story voicing complaints from New York City high school basketball coaches over what they felt was an unduly harsh decision by the league to penalize a number of teams for missing a roster deadline. Hours after the story was published, the league rescinded forfeits for a number of teams. NYC Council members Rita Joseph and Lincoln Restler introduced a bill requiring the city’s Education Department to report annual figures on the number of school librarians across the city following Chalkbeat reporter Julian Shen-Berro’s article spotlighting the loss of school librarians over years. And Chalkbeat New York Bureau Chief Amy Zimmer’s 2023 investigative piece about problems with NYC’s Community Education Council elections had an impact more than a year later. The NYC comptroller released findings of its own investigation, corroborating much of Chalkbeat’s reporting and calling for immediate fixes.
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