The Story Behind the Stories

As Education Week marks its 25th anniversary, insiders and observers recall the paper's start and assess its role in fostering a national conversation on schools.

Twenty-five years ago this week, a newspaper nobody had ever seen before broke a national story on education policy.

In its first issue, Education Week disclosed details of a 91-page Reagan administration memo that called for downgrading the year-old U.S. Department of Education to sub-Cabinet status and shifting key federal responsibilities to the state and local levels.

“You could almost say the journalism gods gave it to us,” Martha K. Matzke, a co-founder and former executive editor of Education Week, said recently of the confidential plan, which caused a stir once revealed and was never enacted. “It captured so much about the fact that education plays in the politics of this country...