About me:

I’m an education data reporter for the Associated Press. My mission is to tell human stories through data, combining an analytical brain with a journalist's heart to deeply investigate and illuminate the state of our nation's schools and students. 

My work collaborating with reporters across the country on groundbreaking series like The Pandemic's Missing Students has helped set the conversation about how the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic are still impacting students today. 

In addition to the AP, my work has appeared in USA Today, the Washington PostHechinger Report, and NPR stations in Texas, New York, and Louisiana. My specialty is covering education (former middle school math teacher here!), but I also have experience in covering science/health, business, real estate, municipalities, and crime.

I am:

  • Data-driven: My journalism philosophy is that there is a human behind every number. See my data projects page for examples of work I’ve done with R, Python, and Datawrapper.
  • Empathetic: I write deeply-reported, narrative stories that center the voices of people who have lived through injustice and trauma.
  • Tenacious: I diligently explore every avenue of an investigation to uncover scoops and never-before-published insights.
  • Collaborative: The best part of my job is being part of AP's Education Reporting Network, a group of thousands of partner newsrooms across the country. We do the hard work of painstakingly collecting and cleaning data, so that journalists across the country can more easily create localized stories that matter to their own communities.

How 'the most violent' special education school ended restraint and seclusion

Teachers at Centennial School, for children with autism and serious behavioral issues, thought they had no other way to keep children safe except to use restraint and seclusion. They restrained children with disabilities over 1000 times in a single year. Then, they decided they had to change. In 1999, Centennial went from 233 restraints in the first 40 days of school to just one restraint in the last 40 days of school. Within four years, restraints were down to zero. This is how they did it.

Their son had autism. Mom didn't speak English well. COVID-19 put school online: One family's fight for special ed services

Nationally, Hispanic students are consistently the most underrepresented group in terms of accessing private placement. In 2019, the Teacher Project surveyed all 50 states for data on students placed at private special education schools at the public’s expense. Of the 15 states where demographic data was available, Hispanic students were significantly underrepresented in 13 of them. I co-reported this story with a Teacher Project colleague and worked with her on data collection and analysis.
Load More Articles