Tara García Mathewson covers education for CalMatters; she joined the California nonprofit newsroom through its merger with The Markup, a nonprofit, investigative outlet challenging the tech industry to serve the public good. She has been writing about schools for more than a decade, first as a local reporter in Chicago’s northwest suburbs and then nationally. Her reporting has informed local and statewide policy as well as academic research and helped parents and educators better serve and advocate for the children in their care.
Before joining the staff at The Markup, Tara worked at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom focused on innovation and inequality in education, where she explored the “Future of Learning” in K-12 schools and helped establish Hechinger’s investigative team.
Tara has been recognized for her beat reporting as well as features and investigations into Internet censorship, the edtech industry, punitive school discipline, and other topics. Her work has appeared in a variety of regional and national news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, USA Today, and Wired.
As a Spencer Fellow, Tara will examine the politicized history of bilingual education in the United States and how using English-only instruction to assimilate immigrants has hurt all of us.