Selected
Investigations

Tara García Mathewson helped establish the investigative team at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom focused on innovation and inequality in education. She now investigates the intersection of tech and education at The Markup, a nonprofit, investigative newsroom challenging the tech industry to serve the public good.

Digital Book Banning

U.S. schools are effectively required to filter the internet, keeping students from seeing obscene and harmful images online. They go much further. With records from 16 school districts across 11 states, this series examines online censorship that keeps some students from sex education, LGBTQ+ resources, and much of the web.

  • Part 1: Schools Were Just Supposed to Block Porn. Instead They Sabotaged Homework and Censored Suicide Prevention Sites

  • Part 2: Five High Schoolers Describe the Dangers and Frustrations of Censored Web Access

  • Part 3: Does Your School Block These Sites?

  • Part 4: How We Investigated Web Censorship in Schools

  • Part 5: Students: Investigate Internet Censorship in Your School

Credit: Gabriel Hongsdusit

He Wanted Privacy. His College Gave Him None.

An examination of a typical college shows how students are subject to a vast and growing array of watchful tech, including homework trackers, test-taking software, and even license plate readers. Read it here.

Credit: Gabriel Hongsdusit

Education Suspended

In much of the country, schools can suspend students for not showing up to class, punishing them for missing school by forcing them to miss more. This series investigates the practice in Arizona, identifying nearly 47,000 attendance-related suspensions over a five-year period across about 150 school districts and charter networks in the state.

  • Part 1: When the Punishment is the Same as the Crime: Suspended for Missing Class

  • Part 2: Civil Rights at Stake: Black, Hispanic Students Blocked from Class for Missing Class

  • Part 3: Many Schools Find Ways to Solve Absenteeism without Suspensions

  • Methodology: Inside our Analysis of Attendance-Related Suspensions in Arizona

Credit: Camilla Forte

Ed tech companies promise results but base claims on shoddy research

With few watchdogs, educators (and now parents) are forced to figure out on their own which education software really works. Read it here.

‘State-sanctioned violence’

While corporal punishment has been stamped out across most of the United States, some schools use it routinely — and pressure parents to choose it over suspension. This deeply reported story unearths federal, state, and local data, pairing it with extensive interviews to tell a complicated story about how and why school officials still hit children.

  • Part 1: ‘State-Sanctioned Violence:’ Inside One of the Thousands of Schools That Still Paddle Students

  • Part 2: Reporter’s Notebook: Taking a Deeper Look at Corporal Punishment Data

  • Part 3: Missouri District Brings Back Corporal Punishment — At the Urging of Parents, It Says

  • EWA Award Judges Comments: “The conflicts about corporal punishment within communities are masterfully revealed by the reporter.”

Credit: Camilla Forte

Hidden Expulsions? Schools Kick Students Out But Call it a Transfer

In California, amid pressure to reduce exclusionary discipline, some schools take advantage of an underregulated transfer process. Read it here.