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Emily Hanford

Emily Hanford

Senior Producer and Correspondent

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Emily Hanford is a senior correspondent and producer at APM Reports and host of Sold a Story, the groundbreaking investigative podcast that’s changing how kids are taught to read. Sold a Story was one of the most-shared shows on Apple Podcasts in 2023 and one of Time Magazine’s top podcasts of the year. It has won numerous honors including a duPont, an Edward R. Murrow and a Peabody nomination. Emily’s career in journalism began with an internship at the public radio station in her college town (WFCR-Amherst). She then worked for Ira Glass when he was making the pilots for This American Life. Emily was a reporter and host at WBEZ-Chicago and news director and senior editor at WUNC-Chapel Hill, where she won her first duPont for a series on poverty in North Carolina. Emily has been at APM since 2008. Her reporting has won many honors, including awards from the Education Writers Association and the American Educational Research Association. Emily is a graduate of Amherst College. She is based in Washington, D.C., where she is journalist-in-residence at Planet Word, the museum of words and language. She lives with her husband, Derek Goldman, a professor at Georgetown University. They have two adult sons.


Stories

October 24, 2017

States' laws to support dyslexic children mostly lack funding, accountability, training mandates

A recent APM Reports documentary showed how schools aren't adequately complying with a decades-old federal law but new state laws are failing to help struggling readers, too.

September 11, 2017

In Ohio, parents demand change for dyslexic kids

The school district needed a new approach. The teachers needed training.

September 11, 2017

Further reading for Hard to Read

Resources and extended reading materials for the documentary Hard to Read.

September 11, 2017

How American schools fail kids with dyslexia

There are proven ways to help people with dyslexia learn to read, and a federal law that's supposed to ensure schools provide kids with help. But across the country, public schools are denying children proper treatment and often failing to identify them with dyslexia in the first place.

August 28, 2017

Schools in poor, rural districts are the hardest hit by nation's growing teacher shortage

As in many parts of the country, remote McDowell County in West Virginia is having a hard time finding and keeping teachers. Vacancies are often filled by substitutes unqualified for the roles they must assume, and the isolated location deters many new hires.

August 28, 2017

A fellowship of the few: Black male teachers in America's classrooms are in short supply

Only 2 percent of the nation's teachers are black men. Increasing their numbers would benefit students of all backgrounds. In Philadelphia, a group forms to double the number by 2025.

August 28, 2017

Why are there so few black male teachers?

Only 2 percent of teachers in American public schools are black men. Why so few? Here's what the data show.

August 28, 2017

Further reading for Keeping Teachers

Resources and extended reading materials for the documentary Keeping Teachers.

August 28, 2017

Black men and teachers in rural areas are in especially short supply

There may be nothing more important in the educational life of a child than having effective teachers. But the United States is struggling to attract and keep teachers.

April 4, 2017

Kids with dyslexia are not getting what they need in American public schools

A mother and her dyslexic daughter tell their story. It's a preview of an upcoming documentary from APM Reports.

February 9, 2017

The great equalizer

Are we asking too much of America's high-poverty schools?

February 2, 2017

'Dick and Jane were not my friends'

There are proven techniques to help children with learning disabilities, but can affected kids get what they need in public schools?

September 15, 2016

How thousands of kids were denied special education in Texas

Strap on your cowboy boots: A new investigation by the Houston Chronicle finds that Texas has denied special education services to thousands of kids in the state.

September 1, 2016

Two high-poverty schools chase better graduation rates

The nation's high school graduation rate is at an all-time high, but high-poverty schools face a stubborn challenge. Schools in Miami and Pasadena are trying to do things differently.

August 18, 2016

College students increasingly caught in remedial education trap

A system meant to give college students a better shot at succeeding is actually getting in the way of many, costing them time and money and taking a particular toll on students of color.

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 10, 2015

Beyond the Blackboard: Building Character in Public Schools

This documentary explores the "Expeditionary Learning" approach, traces the history of ideas that led to its inception, and investigates what American schools could learn from its success.

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 27, 2015

Teaching Teachers

Research shows good teaching makes a big difference in how much kids learn. But the United States lacks an effective system for training new teachers or helping them get better once they're on the job.

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.


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