Larry Abramson
Larry Abramson is NPR's National Security Correspondent. He covers the Pentagon, as well as issues relating to the thousands of vets returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Prior to his current role, Abramson was NPR's Education Correspondent covering a wide variety of issues related to education, from federal policy to testing to instructional techniques in the classroom. His reporting focused on the impact of for-profit colleges and universities, and on the role of technology in the classroom. He made a number of trips to New Orleans to chart the progress of school reform there since Hurricane Katrina. Abramson also covers a variety of news stories beyond the education beat.
In 2006, Abramson returned to the education beat after spending nine years covering national security and technology issues for NPR. Since 9/11, Abramson has covered telecommunications regulation, computer privacy, legal issues in cyberspace, and legal issues related to the war on terrorism.
During the late 1990s, Abramson was involved in several special projects related to education. He followed the efforts of a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, to include severely disabled students in regular classroom settings. He joined the National Desk reporting staff in 1997.
For seven years prior to his position as a reporter on the National Desk, Abramson was senior editor for NPR's National Desk. His department was responsible for approximately 25 staff reporters across the United States, five editors in Washington, and news bureaus in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The National Desk also coordinated domestic news coverage with news departments at many of NPR's member stations. The desk doubled in size during Abramson's tenure. He oversaw the development of specialized beats in general business, high-technology, workplace issues, small business, education, and criminal justice.
Abramson joined NPR in 1985 as a production assistant with Morning Edition. He moved to the National Desk, where he served for two years as Western editor. From there, he became the deputy science editor with NPR's Science Unit, where he helped win a duPont-Columbia Award as editor of a special series on Black Americans and AIDS.
Prior to his work at NPR, Abramson was a freelance reporter in San Francisco and worked with Voice of America in California and in Washington, D.C.
He has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Abramson also studied overseas at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.
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Western Governors University is an online school that uses personal mentors to help adult students finish their college degrees at an affordable price. After 15 years in existence, the model finally seems to be catching on. -
Teachers and school districts say they agree better teacher evaluations are needed, but they can't agree on the details. Disputes in Hawaii and New York could lead to revocation of lucrative federal grants and also force the Department of Education to take aggressive action.
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In January, colleges and universities will have to sign a special memorandum before they can receive tuition assistance for active members of the military who enroll in their programs. But some schools have declined to sign the memo because of its requirements. Military advocates have asked Defense Department officials to put the new rules on hold. -
Like other suburban areas, Montgomery County, Md., is wondering what to do with aging shopping malls like White Flint. The solution may be a radical redesign that makes malls look like the things that suburbanites once ran away from: urban downtowns.
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Public colleges and universities in Tennessee have a new incentive to boost student success: Their funding depends on it. Will this approach improve dismal completion rates? -
Many community colleges let students pick and choose classes, but those who sign up at a Tennessee Technology Center have their schedules decided for them. The centers work closely with advisers from local businesses to keep their programs in sync with economic reality — one reason why around 8 in 10 students finish and get a job in their field.
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Additional students have been charged in an SAT cheating scandal on Long Island, New York. Thirteen students were charged Tuesday with being part of a scheme in which students paid other teens to take college entrance exams on their behalf. So far, 20 current and former students at three high schools have been implicated in the scandal.
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New Orleans has become the center of an education revolution, where more than 70 percent of students attend a charter school. By many measures, student achievement has improved. But the city's new system has led to questions about whether the district is truly open to the most challenging students. -
Ohio's rejection of a plan to scale back collective bargaining rights for public employees this week was a big victory for labor. In particular, it showed how important the nation's teachers unions have become beyond the classroom. -
With college tuition on the rise, students find one way to keep up: take on more debt. New data show that students who graduated in 2010 carried 5 percent more debt than in the previous year.
