Jill Barshay’s 25-year career in print-and-radio journalism began in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union. She has spent the majority of these years as a business reporter, covering both Wall Street finance and the intersection of money and politics in Washington D.C. A few years ago, she became obsessed with both data and education, and has combined the two as a contributing editor at The Hechinger Report, a non-profit, independent news website focused on inequality and innovation in education. At Hechinger, Jill writes a weekly column, Education by the Numbers. She taught algebra to ninth graders during the 2013-14 school year.
Previously, Barshay was the New York bureau chief for Marketplace, a national business show on public radio stations. She has also worked for The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Congressional Quarterly, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Dow Jones Newswires.
Jill spent her Spencer year on the frontier of big data in education. Her first piece on the topic was published August 2019 in The Hechinger Report. and aired as an hour-long radio documentary called “Under a Watchful Eye” on American Public Media
Examples of Jill Barshay’s work:
Education By The Numbers (The Hechinger Report)
Why a New Jersey school district decided giving laptops to students is a terrible idea (The Hechinger Report and WNYC)
Think tuition is rising fast? Try room and board (The Hechinger Report and NPR)
The Upside of Academic Tracking (The Hechinger Report and The Atlantic)