2009 Spencer Education Journalism Fellows

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism named three New York journalists as the 2009-10 Spencer Fellows in Education Reporting based on projects that will explore issues about resilience and gifted education, desegregation in Louisville, KY., and the overhaul of New York City’s public school system under mayoral control.

The 2009-10 fellows include: Peg Tyre, a former senior reporter at Newsweek Magazine; Sarah Garland, a reporter at Newsweek International; and Elizabeth Green, who covered education for U.S. News & World Report and the now defunct New York Sun. Each fellow will receive a $75,000 stipend and will spend an academic year sabbatical at the Journalism School.

The fellowships are awarded in a competitive process based on the candidate's proposal and ability to publish. The program is sponsored by the Spencer Foundation of Chicago and is open to journalists, educators and education policy researchers who want to develop a long-form reporting project to advance the understanding of the American education system. This is the second set of fellowships named in a $2 million grant award that covers four years.

“The Spencer Fellowship provides an invaluable opportunity for journalists to plumb the resources at Columbia University to deepen their knowledge about research in the field,” said Professor LynNell Hancock, an expert on education and child and family policy reporting who directs the fellows during their stay at the school. “Our hope is that each year, the fellows will produce deeply reported works of long-form narrative that will energize the nation’s understanding of education.”

All three journalists plan to use their fellowships to develop book projects during the academic year, which will run from September 2009 to May 2010. The award enables the reporters to take courses at Columbia University that will enhance their research. Each will be assigned a Columbia Journalism faculty mentor to help them shape their reporting and writing.

Sarah Garland will use her fellowship to examine the impact of the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision which dismantled the desegregation program in Louisville, KY. Garland, a native of Louisville who now lives in Brooklyn, NY, plans a nonfiction narrative of the successes and failures of Louisville’s desegregation program “through the stories of those who experienced it.” Garland designed her winning proposal to examine the decision’s impact on Louisville’s schools and on the nation’s efforts to reverse re-segregation.

A master’s graduate of New York University, Garland has written for The New York Times, Newsday, Marie Claire, The New York Sun, The Village Voice, and New York Magazine. She is the author of Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation and Youth Violence Are Changing American Suburbs (Nation Books, June 2009)

Elizabeth Green, also a resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., now works as reporter and editor for GothamSchools.org. A 2006 graduate of Harvard University, Green joined the board of the Education Writers Association in January. She served as the lead education reporter of The Sun from June 2007 until it closed in September 2008. Before that she covered education for U.S. News & World Report, focusing on the impact of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Peg Tyre left Newsweek magazine in May 2008 after seven years of covering education and social issues. She is the author of a New York Times best seller, “The Trouble with Boys,” (Crown 2008), which grew out of a Newsweek cover story on the achievement gap between boys and girls. Tyre is also the co-author of Two Seconds Under the World (Crown 1995) and the winner of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for her work at Newsday where she worked from 1989-95. She was an on-air correspondent for CNN from 1995 to 1999.