15 years of The Hechinger Report

2010

The Hechinger Report launches!

2011

Higher Education Lessons from Abroad

The Hechinger Report wanted to know how American higher education could be improved; to answer that question, reporters set out to visit countries on three continents and examine their higher education agendas.

2012

Education nation

The Hechinger Report teams with NBC to highlight schools and communities that have come up with innovative solutions for enduring problems.

2013

A promise to renew

In 2012, Newark education officials set out to reform their city’s lowest-performing schools. The Hechinger Report is granted extraordinary access to one of them, Quitman Street Renew School, to chronicle its successes and setbacks. The award-winning series goes behind the scenes as Principal Erskine Glover and his staff take on one of the hardest –– and most important –– jobs in the nation.

2014

Freedom summer in Mississippi

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer in Mississippi, The Hechinger Report looks back on the violence surrounding the 1964 campaign to register African American voters in Mississippi and on the murders of three civil rights workers.

2016

Mississippi child care crisis

At the time of our reporting, Mississippi had the lowest standards for child care centers in the country and some of the weakest oversight. The Hechinger Report joins with the Clarion-Ledger to investigate how and why the state fails to serve all its children well, and possible solutions. Following our reporting, the Mississippi Department of Health begins posting online which child care centers have violations and dedicates more money to child care oversight.

2017

Willing, able and forgotten

At the time of our reporting, up to 90 percent of students with disabilities were capable of graduating from high school fully prepared to tackle college or a career, assuming they received proper support along the way. Yet only 65 percent graduated on time. Our reporting shines a light on what happened to students who didn’t cross the finish line, and possible solutions.

2018

Tangled up in debt

Copublished with The New York Times, a Hechinger Report investigation on La’ James International College, a for-profit cosmetology school in Iowa, shows how the beauty school business model can help for-profit schools boost profits while students take on debt and hours of unpaid training for a low-paying career. After the Hechinger story, La’ James students and graduates sue, accusing the school of delaying financial aid payments and causing them financial hardship in violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. Students subsequently receive some financial relief, with the settlement forgiving more than $2 million in student debt. Lawyers representing the students credit Hechinger with bringing La’ James to their attention.

2018

Tuition Tracker

Hechinger’s interactive Tuition Tracker tool captures information spread over various college and government websites and places it in one, easy-to-navigate page, where students can find the average price for each college based on their family’s income. Reaching millions of readers year after year, the award-winning Tuition Tracker allows students to make smart choices about where to apply for college.

2019

The Game of College

Created with CalMatters, The Game of College is an interactive website that explains the various steps students need to successfully move from high school to college. Visitors play the role of a student and select from a variety of different income levels and demographics. Then, they navigate their way through college with as little debt as possible.

2020

For-profit colleges promoting themselves as flexible in ‘uncertain times’

Copublished with The New York Times, this story by reporters Meredith Kolodner and Sarah Butrymowicz investigates how online, for-profit colleges are spending more on advertising during Covid-19, to entice more students to attend. The story raises concerns about what this could mean for students because of for-profit colleges’ poor track records and low graduation rates.

2021

Hidden debt trap

Hechinger reporters shine a light on little-known student debt issues. With NPR, we highlight how 6.6 million students’ transcripts are being withheld because of small unpaid bills, sparking policy changes in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. Our story on how for-profit colleges trap people in direct-to-student loans makes the front page of The New York Times. We reveal that public colleges in all but one state send students to for-profit debt collection agencies that often charge exorbitant fees. And we point out an obscure law that allows the State University of New York to sue students for bill payment only in Albany courts, leading to default judgments in most cases. After our story, the state revises this policy.

2022

Education suspended

The Hechinger Report and Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting uncover how school districts in Arizona have given out tens of thousands of suspensions over the past five years to students who have missed class. Many experts and educators say the punishment is counterproductive, but it’s pervasive in Arizona. The series compels a state senator to draft legislation that would ban suspending students for attendance violations and a taskforce is also launched to review policies related to absenteeism and make suggestions for improvement.

2022

Is recess a right or a privilege?

Our investigation helps expose how common it is for elementary school students to lose recess time as a form of punishment, despite research showing that physical activity and play are vital for children’s development. Our reporting is cited by a California state senator who proposes a law requiring daily recess for K-8 students and repealing the state code that allowed for it to be withheld for disciplinary reasons. The California bill passes in March 2024.

2023

The College Welcome Guide

The College Welcome Guide is an interactive tool that helps students explore state- and institution-level data on information such as anti-LGBTQ legislation, state abortion laws and the number of students who identify as Black, rural, military veterans, LGBTQ or from other backgrounds.

2024

The End of Affirmative Action

The Hechinger Report teams up with Soledad O’Brien Productions and Retro Report to look at the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on race-based college admissions decisions in a three-part docuseries. We also produced a deep look into race-based scholarships, using meticulous data reporting and extensive interviews with students who’d previously had race-based scholarships to learn how these scholarships had affected their lives.