Facing word recently that two online charter schools took in $40 million in taxpayer dollars for enrolling students who didn't actually attend, including at least one who had died, one of Indiana's top education officials asked an important question: How did we miss this?
The answer involves the lax oversight of some charter schools, which operate with more freedom than traditional public schools. But it also has to do with something else altogether: the news business.
Because if it weren't for a few dogged reporters at Chalkbeat, the nonprofit where I work which covers public schools in Indiana and six other states, that education official most likely wouldn't have known about the schools' malfeasance at all.
While other nonprofit news organizations take on important national topics, at Chalkbeat our mantra is local first. After all, most decisions affecting public schools, including budgets, facilities, testing and curriculum, happen at the local and state level. Indiana's virtual schools resemble those in other states, but they are governed by laws that are unique to Indiana, and as we found out, they need regular and focused attention to untangle.
Chalkbeat exists because without us, that attention just wouldn't be paid. According to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the number of newspaper newsroom employees dropped by 47 percent between 2008 and 2018, to about 38,000 from about 71,000.
At the papers that remain, the education beat has been decimated. Where metropolitan dailies might have had four to six education reporters a decade ago, today they're lucky to have one.
Even fewer reporters are focused on the 41 percent of children who live near or below the poverty line, the population most central to our mission at Chalkbeat. There are plenty of think pieces, and there is no shortage of shouting. But beat reporters covering education on a daily basis will remain an endangered species unless new business models like ours gain strength.
Building new business models for news when the old ways of paying for it (mainly through advertising) are quickly disappearing isn't easy. But we're encouraged by the progress we've made.
In the past two years, our monthly readership has doubled to half a million, proving that there's an audience for local education stories. Our team now numbers more than 50 people, and our revenue for the fiscal year that ended on June 30 reached $9 million.
That local-first mantra also applies to our revenue philosophy, with the majority of each bureau's funding coming from the local community, a mix of philanthropy, membership contributions, ticketed events, a paid jobs board and corporate sponsorships.
As we grow, we're building a new community of supporters for local news: Nearly all our donors had never given to a journalism organization before Chalkbeat.
But readership and revenue aren't the only measures. Impact--such as what we saw with our reporting on the two virtual schools in Indiana--is our ultimate goal, stories that influence both the conversation around education and actual decisions.
This year, the administration of Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee lowered the annual income threshold for eligibility for education savings accounts after we highlighted inconsistencies between his initial messaging and his proposal.
In Denver, our reporting this past winter on the city's teachers' strike offered context no one else could provide.
And in New York, city officials and labor leaders just reached a deal to increase salaries for some pre-K teachers after our persistent reporting on the wide pay gap between teachers who work in community-run preschools (often women of color) and those who teach in classrooms overseen by the Education Department.
As we look to our next five years with plans to expand further, we remain committed to our original mission of lighting the path to better schools for all children, especially those for whom a quality education remains elusive.
But we're also committed to lighting the path to better local news that is sustainable, accessible and equitable. The crisis is too great to sit on the sidelines.
Bene Cipolla is the executive editor of Chalkbeat. She has more than a decade of experience as a reporter and an editor.
A future without the front page
What happens when the presses stop rolling? Who will tell the stories of touchdowns scored, heroes honored and neighbors lost? The New York Times asked news industry innovators to share their visions for what comes next, and what fills the void. Today’s column is 2 of 3.
Editorial on 08/18/2019