The Futures of Education in Texas

Aaricka Washington is an education reporter based in Austin, Texas. Most recently, she covered breaking news for 15 school districts in Central Texas as the K-12 education reporter for the Austin American-Statesman. During her time at the Statesman, she focused on the experiences of citizens from historically under-resourced communities. Aaricka has reported extensively on the controversial Austin school district closures. She spent hours reporting in school board meetings, talking to parents and community leaders and writing stories about the most important matters in the education world. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she wrote about how the crisis was affecting parents, teachers and students.

Before working at the Austin American-Statesman, Aaricka was a national education reporting intern at The Hechinger Report. She is a recent graduate of the Columbia Journalism School. Before attending Columbia, she was an AmeriCorps VISTA member in Indianapolis, supporting more than 1,000 low-income students in obtaining a full-tuition scholarship for college. Because of her experience as a Teach for America 2014 corps member in Houston, she has developed a deep passion for pursuing stories about people on the margins of society. Aaricka is a 2014 graduate of Indiana University, where she wrote weekly articles about education and diversity for the Indiana Daily Student and interned at WXIN Fox 59 in Indianapolis. She sees a need for more in-depth, visually appealing stories that illustrate the complexities that impact the educational landscape.