Shadows in the Classroom: How Federal Enforcement is Reshaping Minnesota’s Schools
The echoes of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns—a time of forced isolation, technological scrambling, and a desperate yearning for human connection—have returned to Minnesota classrooms. However, the cause is no longer a microscopic virus, but a geopolitical…
Shadows in the Classroom: Minnesota Schools Face Crisis Amid "Operation Metro Surge"
The Minnesota education landscape is undergoing a profound and harrowing transformation. Across the state, classrooms that once bustled with the predictable rhythms of daily learning now sit half-empty, while students who do attend often do so under the…
Shadows Over the Cubbies: How Grassroots Networks Saved Minneapolis Child Care Amidst an Immigration Crackdown
This report was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. MINNEAPOLIS — On a frigid February afternoon, the daily ritual at a local Spanish-immersion child care center…
Beyond the Classroom: The Growing Momentum of Minnesota’s Career and Technical Education
This story was produced as part of ThreeSixty Journalism’s 2026 Capitol Reporting Workshop for Minnesota youth, with financial support from the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. Every day, as the clock strikes 11:30 a.m., Dah Htoo undergoes a daily…
Beyond the Page: How Minnesota’s READ Act is Reshaping Literacy and Dividing the Capitol
This story was produced as part of ThreeSixty Journalism’s 2026 Capitol Reporting Workshop for Minnesota youth, with financial support from the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. For Hennepin County Commissioner and former Minnesota state…
The Pulse of the Campus: How Student Newspapers Endure in a Shifting Media Landscape
MANKATO, Minn. — One hour before the Monday night print deadline, the newsroom of The Reporter, the student newspaper at Minnesota State University (MSU) in Mankato, is a study in controlled chaos. For editor-in-chief Anahi Zuniga, the atmosphere is…
The End of an Era: Jane Kirtley and the Battle for the Future of Press Freedom
After more than two decades of defining the discourse on media ethics and the First Amendment, Jane E. Kirtley, the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will…
Minnesota’s Financial Aid Crisis: A System "Hobbling Along" Under the Weight of Unmet Promises
For over forty years, the Minnesota State Grant Program has served as the bedrock of higher education accessibility for the North Star State. It is the ladder out of poverty for tens of thousands of students—a promise from the state that if you work hard…
Unlocking the Legacy: Minnesota Voters to Decide the Future of the Permanent School Fund
By [Your Name/Journalistic Staff] For over a century and a half, a quiet financial engine has been humming beneath the surface of Minnesota’s public education system. Established in 1858—the very year Minnesota attained statehood—the Permanent School…
Federal Child Care Funding Stays in Limbo: Minnesota and Four Other States Secure Temporary Reprieve
MINNEAPOLIS — For the thousands of Minnesota families who rely on subsidized child care to balance the demands of the workplace and the home, the last month has been defined by a singular, suffocating anxiety: the fear that the federal government might…
