Editorial Projects in Education History

Editorial Projects in Education—A History

In 1957, 15 editors of university alumni magazines launched a bold experiment that would have a substantial and lasting impact on all of American education.

In the era of Sputnik, they called their endeavor the "Moonshooter" project. With a $12,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York, they sought to speak with one voice to their collective alumni through unique research and writing. Eventually, 150 colleges signed up for the initial report. American Higher Education: 1958, a 32-page document, reached almost 1 million college-educated Americans that April.

Not long after, the group incorporated as Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), a nonprofit educational organization. From there, many successes followed, and, in November 1966, with a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and on the eve of one of the most turbulent periods in American higher education, The Chronicle of Higher Education was born. The Chronicle was a popular and critical success.

In 1978, EPE sold The Chronicle to its editors and shifted its attention. With the support of several philanthropies, EPE went on to launch Education Week. The first issue of Education Week appeared on Sept. 7, 1981, and sought to provide Chronicle-like coverage of elementary and secondary education. Like The Chronicle before it, Education Week was an immediate critical success.

Now in its 26th publishing year, Education Week has achieved its original objectives and is recognized as “American education’s newspaper of record.” Its paid circulation is nearly 50,000. Advertising revenues have increased significantly since its first issue rolled out in 1981. The budget has increased fourfold. The staff has more than doubled, allowing more journalistic resources for coverage of a complex and expanding field. The newspaper publishes 44 issues a year, three of them special reports (Quality Counts, Technology Counts, and Diplomas Count).

More importantly, Education Week has made a significant impact on the school reform debate through its focused and nuanced coverage and its continuing role as a forum for the exchange of important ideas in K-12 education.

Since the launch of Education Week, EPE has grown and changed. Today, its many components include:

Teacher Magazine

In 1989, convinced that significant school improvement could only come with the commitment of well-informed teachers, EPE launched Teacher Magazine. In 2006, Teacher’s editors embarked on an ambitious redesign aimed at refocusing the magazine on a new generation of teacher-leaders.

The magazine now offers new content documenting the challenges of being an educator-leader, presents best practices, and encourages educators to re-examine their work and their schools. Teacher’s new tag line—“Lead. Learn. Innovate. Inspire.”—reflects the publication’s new mission to inform teachers and to inspire them to act individually and collectively to help schools succeed for all children. Teacher’s updated Web site is also a key resource for the growing professional community of teacher-leaders. The magazine is published six times a year and is sent to 100,000 teacher-leaders, future teacher-leaders, and paid subscribers.

Quality Counts

In 1997, Education Week launched Quality Counts, an annual report card on public education in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

In addition to grading the states based on more than 100 indicators related to K-12 education, each edition of the report has examined a topic of central concern to education policymakers and practitioners. Its themes have included: state efforts in early-childhood education; ensuring a highly qualified teacher for every classroom; school finance; and the role of state standards, assessments, and accountability in education. Available in print and on the Web, Quality Counts has become an essential resource for educators, policymakers, and researchers at all levels.

The Research Center

The EPE Research Center was launched a decade ago as the research-support team for Quality Counts. Today, the seven-person center conducts a range of original research each year for that report, for Technology Counts, and Diplomas Count, Education Week, edweek.org, and outside clients. The center compiles statistics from all the Counts reports into a searchable database located on edweek.org.

Technology Counts

Technology Counts, launched in 1997 and released annually, turns out timely information, journalism, charts, and graphs that focus on top issues related to technology and schools. The 2006 report examined how technology and education policies are evolving to support the use of data to improve student achievement. Previous reports have explored digital content or curriculum, e-learning, and the impact of technology on assessment, among other topics.

Diplomas Count

In 2006, EPE released Diplomas Count, the first of what will be an annual report on high school graduation policies and rates. Supported by a four-year, $2.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for what is known as the Graduation Project, the report received high praise and extensive national news coverage. The report includes graduation rates and patterns for the 50 states and the nation’s 50 largest school districts.

edweek.org

Since the early 1990s, EPE has pursued several new approaches to expanding EPE’s reach, most notably with the creation of the edweek.org Web site in 1996. Originally, it primarily housed online versions of Education Week and Teacher; edweek.org now provides daily breaking news and an array of other information resources.

Today, the site serves up nearly 1.3 million page views each month, routinely hosts live Web chats with key education players, and houses the most comprehensive K-12 research center and news Archives to be found on the Web. Audio features, a photo gallery, a searchable editorial archive, and a job-recruitment service are also on edweek.org. More than 685,000 users have registered to use the site, and, in 2006 the site has drawn from 18,000 to 48,000 individual visitors a day. Full access to the site requires a paid subscription, but much of it is available through free registration.

Agent K-12

Agent K-12, EPE’s exclusive online recruiting service for high-quality K-12 educators, was launched in 2004. The recruitment tool allows job-seekers to post resumes and search for positions while enabling employers to advertise positions. Agent K-12 reaches nearly 250,000 teachers, administrators, and K-12 professionals every month.

Education Week Press

Education Week Press was launched in 2002 to publish books written by educators and experts from both within EPE and outside the organization. The Press has published six books to date. In spring 2007, the Press plans to release an anthology of some of the best Commentary essays that have appeared in Education Week over the past quarter-century.

Summing Up

Over the years, EPE has sought to capitalize on its unique assets: It has created one of the best information-gathering systems in American education; it has assembled the best collection of education writers in the nation; 25 years of publishing Education Week has resulted in an extensive and valuable database of information on education; and, EPE has established itself as an independent source of accurate and objective information in the field.

For more information about EPE, please contact EPE Communications Director Veronika Herman at vherman@epe.org.