CJR Podcast: LynNell Hancock

LynNell Hancock, a reporter specializing in education and child-and-family policy issues and director of the Spencer Fellowship for Education Journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the cover story of CJR's March/April issue, "Tested: Covering schools in the age of micro-measurement." In this conversation with deputy editor Clint Hendler, Hancock talks about the limitations of purely statistical analysis of teacher success and the controversy and challenges reporters face when trying to put value-added data into context for their readers. She also discusses how corporate interests in education research are increasingly pushing the national conversation--and pushing it toward closing schools, firing teachers, starting charters, and removing the job of public education from the public sphere.