Our Reporting

May 2, 2016

County reopens Mesabi Academy sex abuse inquiry

St. Louis County investigators asked for a tape recording a woman made of her son, talking about whether he had sex with a staffer at Mesabi Academy.

May 2, 2016

Private juvenile center conceals abuse inquiries and pressures county to keep its business deal

On the Iron Range, investigations have created tension between Mesabi Academy and St. Louis County. Job loss, though, was the main concern when county commissioners discouraged a health and human services leader from ending a critical contract with the company.

September 10, 2015

A vision for a new kind of public school in America

In 1987 an educator frustrated with American school reform challenged Outward Bound to get more involved in the debate about the direction of public education. He thought American schools could learn from Outward Bound's focus on experiential learning and on teaching skills like resilience and collaboration.

September 10, 2015

Into the woods: Two principals explain what students learn by getting out of the classroom

One of the features of education at many Expeditionary Learning schools is an Outward Bound trip. See photos of one of these trips and read an interview with two principals about why they send their students outside and how it relates to what they’re trying to do in the classroom.

September 10, 2015

Kurt Hahn and the roots of Expeditionary Learning

Early in his life, Kurt Hahn had a vision of the kind of school he wanted to create, and it was nothing like the school he went to. It would be a school designed to help kids discover their interests and passions, not just prepare them for tests. And it would be a school devoted to character development.

September 10, 2015

Inside Expeditionary Learning at the Springfield Renaissance School

There's a lot of talk these days about the importance of traits like grit, curiosity, and self-discipline — so-called "non-cognitive skills." How can schools teach those skills? Correspondent Emily Hanford explores the approach to character development at one school in Massachusetts.

September 3, 2015

The history of the GI Bill

A staggering 16 million soldiers returned home from World War II, and millions of them went to school. Because GI Bill benefits were generous enough to pay for any college in the country, veterans flooded all types of institutions, from elite schools like Harvard to large state schools, to vocational schools. By 1947, half of all college students in America were veterans.

September 3, 2015

The GI Bill: One of the last great economic ladders?

The Post-9/11 GI Bill was supposed to change where veterans could go to college by giving them more money, and, therefore, more options. But since the new bill went into effect in 2009, the percentage of veterans enrolling at four-year public and private nonprofit schools has barely budged.

September 3, 2015

The front lines of the long journey home

Colleges and universities have become the front lines of one of the great challenges posed by war: how to reintegrate the people who've served.

August 27, 2015

Rethinking teacher preparation

In the United States, teaching isn't treated as a profession that requires extensive training like law or medicine. Teaching is seen as something you can figure out on your own, if you have a natural gift for it. But looking for gifted people won't work to fill the nation's classrooms with teachers who know what they're doing.

August 27, 2015

An American way of teaching

In 1993, a group of researchers set out to do something that had never been done before. They would hire a videographer to travel across the United States and record a random sample of eighth-grade math classes. What they found revealed a lot about American teaching.

August 26, 2015

Thinking about math from someone else’s perspective

"What you do when you’re teaching is you think about other people’s thinking. You don’t think about your own thinking; you think what other people think. That’s really hard." -Deborah Ball

August 26, 2015

A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study

In the United States, we tend to think that improving education is about improving teachers - recruiting better ones, firing bad ones. But the Japanese think about improving teaching. It's a very different idea.

August 20, 2015

The reinvention of Paul Quinn College

Paul Quinn College was a sorry sight when Michael Sorrell, the school's fifth president in as many years, drove onto the Dallas campus to see what he was dealing with. As Sorrell looked around campus, he had one thought. How do you save a school that everyone thinks is already dead?

August 20, 2015

Lysious Ogolo: ‘I didn’t know what a historically black college was’

Lysious Ogolo is an audio production major at Howard University. He's originally from Nigeria, and moved to the United States with his family in 2008 when he was 18 years old.

August 20, 2015

Lilian Spriggs: ‘When I look at HBCUs, I think of independence’

Lilian Spriggs is an audio production major at Howard University, from Jackson, Mississippi. After graduation, she wants to work as an on-air personality at a radio station.

August 20, 2015

The history of HBCUs in America

Zach Hubert came out of slavery with an adage that he would pass on to his children, and his children's children, and their children down the line. "Get your education," he would always say to them when his family gathered together in later years. "It's the one thing they can't take away from you."

November 13, 2014

The First Family of Radio: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt both used the new medium of radio to reach into American homes like never before.

September 17, 2014

A company short on skilled workers creates its own college-degree program

At a Toyota plant in Kentucky, young people are learning how to fix robots, earning associate's degrees and graduating with jobs that pay up to $80,000 a year.

September 11, 2014

A 21st-century vocational high school

For years, vocational education was seen as a lesser form of schooling, tracking some kids into programs that ended up limiting their future opportunities. Today, in the nation's best vocational programs, things are different.

September 10, 2014

Career academies: A new twist on vocational ed

Across the country, thousands of high schools are transforming into career academies. The idea is that students will be more engaged if they see how academics are connected to the world of work. And they’ll be more likely to get the postsecondary schooling they need to support themselves in today’s economy.

September 9, 2014

The troubled history of vocational education

Vocational education was once used to track low-income students off to work while wealthier kids went to college. But advocates for today's career and technical education say things have changed, and graduates of vocational programs may have the advantage over graduates of traditional high schools.

Four-year institutions brace for population shifts

September 3, 2014

Our Reporting

County reopens Mesabi Academy sex abuse inquiry

Private juvenile center conceals abuse inquiries and pressures county to keep its business deal

A vision for a new kind of public school in America

Into the woods: Two principals explain what students learn by getting out of the classroom

Kurt Hahn and the roots of Expeditionary Learning

Inside Expeditionary Learning at the Springfield Renaissance School

The history of the GI Bill

The GI Bill: One of the last great economic ladders?

The front lines of the long journey home

Rethinking teacher preparation

An American way of teaching

Thinking about math from someone else’s perspective

A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study

The reinvention of Paul Quinn College

Lysious Ogolo: ‘I didn’t know what a historically black college was’

Lilian Spriggs: ‘When I look at HBCUs, I think of independence’

The history of HBCUs in America

The First Family of Radio: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts

A company short on skilled workers creates its own college-degree program

A 21st-century vocational high school

Career academies: A new twist on vocational ed

The troubled history of vocational education

Four-year institutions brace for population shifts

Heritage University: Bringing elite education to the most disadvantaged

University of Texas at El Paso: Opportunity U.