Azbee Awards

Entry Details

About the Entry

Category:
Overall Excellence > Website of the Year

Title of entry:
Controversy and upheaval in the education space: K-12 Dive covers the ups and downs in a charged environment

Issue or Publication date:
12/20/23, 3/21/23, 8/1/23, 12/13/23, 11/21/23, 2/22/23, 12/5/23, 5/5/23, 7/13/23, 12/8/23

Publication name:
K-12 Dive

Publishing/parent company:
Industry Dive

View Website home page:
https://www.k12dive.com/

Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

K-12 Dive provides in-depth journalism and insight into the most impactful news and trends shaping K-12 education.

School shootings. Book bans. Pandemic-induced learning loss. The list of fraught topics and political hot potatoes affecting the K-12 education sector goes on and on. Against that backdrop, K-12 Dive provides critical and insightful reporting to help education leaders and stakeholders make sense of everyday developments, react with knowledge and strategize for long-term trends.

Coverage runs the gamut from breaking news to in-depth analysis and deeply reported features with data that drive home the impact and visuals that humanize the stories. Using the Industry Dive "Brief" model, K-12 Dive gives readers the top three items of import in a story and follows with the insight needed to apply the information to their own school campus or school district.

In other cases, K-12 Dive employs storytelling techniques that go behind the scenes to uncover untold stories. In 2023, this included a heartbreaking expose showing how schools are failing to protect students — some just in elementary school — who are victims of sexual abuse and harassment. Another feature explained the workings of the nation's only federally funded school voucher program, which sends public dollars to pay for private school tuition. And still another delved into the confusion and inconsistency surrounding a highly technical and little understood nuance of federal special education regulation aimed at reducing racial disparities for students with disabilities.

Using other reporting tactics, K-12 Dive published timelines following the machinations of the government's controversial Title IX regulations covering LBGTQ+ students and transgender athletes, as well as the repercussions in the year since Uvalde, Texas, became the face of another school massacre. "By the Numbers" features and other data reporting present enrollment and funding trends that school leaders need to know about to plan for a coming fiscal cliff. A regular Staffed Up column details best practices for schools, localities and states faced with a nationwide teacher shortage. K-12 Dive also celebrates the profession it covers, naming principals, superintendents and "rising leaders" for readers to keep an eye on — and bestowing annual awards on a principal, superintendent and district of the year.

New in 2023, we started a Pop Quiz feature each Friday. This fun, interactive feature allows readers to test their memory on that week's stories (and at the same time steering them back to the original stories for another read). Our readers picked up on the quiz element right away, and it has proved to be a great way to engage readers.

Links to entry URLs

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Controversy and upheaval in the education space: K-12 Dive covers the ups and downs in a charged environment

Description

Publication name:
K-12 Dive

Publishing/parent company:
Industry Dive

Winner Status

Website of the Year Honorable Mention