2016-2017

Fábio Takahashi has been working as an education journalist at Folha de S. Paulo, one Brazil’s largest newspapers, since 2003. He has published more than 200 stories about Brazil’s public schools, covering subjects ranging from assessments, lack of teachers and new public policies.

Fábio won the “Prêmio Estácio de Jornalismo,” one of the most important Brazilian awards in the field of education for four consecutive years, from 2012 to 2015. Since 2012, he helped create Folha’s University Ranking, Brazil’s most comprehensive evaluation of college-level institutions.

Fábio is also one of the founders of the first association for education reporters in Brazil, the Education Reporter’s Association. Inspired by the Education Writers Association (EWA) in the U.S., the Brazilian institution is expected to launch in the 2016’s first semester.

In addition to his work as an education journalist, Takahashi is working to coordinate Folha de S. Paulo’s trainee program, that selects and trains 15 young journalists every year.

Fábio used his Spencer year to explore America’s Common Core standards and charter schools for low-income students, similar policies being implemented in Brazilian educational system.

Takahashi published his Spencer Project work in English in May, 2018, in Folha:

Samples of Fábio Takahashi’s stories:

High Standards Places Semi-arid Region of Ceará at the Level of Rich Nations

Illegal wages paid at the University of São Paulo, Brazil’s top higher education institution

São Paulo Faces Record Number of Teacher Departures

What’s behind the low quality of Brazil’s high schools?

Folha’s University Rankings

Patrick Wall is currently the Newark NJ senior reporter at Chalkbeat.org, a bureau he launched and directs. Previously he was a senior reporter at Chalkbeat New York, the education news website. He covers the 1.1 million-student New York City school system, and has written about special education, struggling schools, and school segregation, among other topics. In 2015, as an Equity Reporting Project fellow, he wrote a three-part series about the city’s efforts to turn around a low-performing high school. In 2016, he won a national beat reporting award from the Education Writers Association.

Previously, Patrick covered the South Bronx for DNAinfo, a local news website. Before that, he taught fourth-grade at an elementary school on Chicago’s South Side through Teach For America.

Patrick used the Spencer fellowship year to delve into the current state of school segregation. He focused on white privilege in New York City, where the schools are among the most segregated in the country. His work, “The Privilege of Choice,” was published in The Atlantic in April, 2017.

Jo Napolitano has been covering public education for much of the past 18 years. She was hired as a full-time freelancer for The New York Times’ national desk in 2002 and left the paper two years later to join the staff of the Chicago Tribune. Her work at the paper sparked what was then the largest investigation of a school district in Illinois history. It led to the indictment of a superintendent who squandered money earmarked for poor children.

As a Spencer Fellow, Napolitano tracked the progress of new immigrant children as they relocate from Syria and other locations to suburban and rural America. Her book, The School I Deserver, was published by Beacon Press in 2021.

Hired by Newsday in 2010 as a special (senior) writer, Napolitano has spent the past five years exposing cheating scandals, exploring the nation’s controversial teacher evaluation laws and shining a light on a local school district that refused to enroll unaccompanied immigrant minors.

Born in Bogota, Colombia and abandoned at a bus stop days later, Napolitano spent the first months of her life in an orphanage. Adopted, she moved to a blue-collar section of Long Island and attended public school before gaining entrance to Northwestern University.

Examples of Napolitano’s Newsday work:

Long Island School Failed to Properly Enroll Hispanic Students

Eight in Glen Cove Cheating Scandals Paid Fines

Glen Cove Teachers Helped Students During Tests

Educators Look to New York on Teacher Evaluations

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)

Negotiation Academy (Slate podcast series)

Textbook costs getting hard to cover (Marketplace)