Alumni Connections: Holly Kurtz, the research journalist
As a journalist covering the education beat in Denver, Holly Kurtz (PhDEdu’13) turned to CU Boulder professor and National Education Policy Center Director Kevin Welner many times as an expert source. One fateful conversation changed the trajectory for Kurtz, who went from Welner’s interviewer to advisee in the educational foundations, policy and practice doctoral program in the CU Boulder School of Education.
“It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. CU’s approach was perfect for me in that I experienced the program as close knit and nurturing even as I got to work with some of the top scholars in our field.”
Welner has become a lifelong collaborator, advisor and friend, said Kurtz, who is now the director for The Education Week Research Center. After graduating from the PhD program, she enjoyed a postdoctoral research position with CU Denver’s School of Public Affairs, but she missed journalism and had always admired EdWeek’s stellar reporting. A temporary position with the EdWeek Research Center, which has been a staple of the publication for more than 20 years, led to a full-time job as the center director, a role she has held for the past six years.
“One thing I love about my job is that I feel like the work we do helps inform the practitioners and policymakers and others who are doing the critical job of educating and supporting our nation’s children, especially students of color and low-income families who have not been well-served in the past,” she said, adding EdWeek is known for its satisfied staff and low-turnover rates, an impressive feat in the field.
Kurtz’s graduate studies continue to strengthen her work as a journalist. She has helped expand the mission of the Research Center to include more contract research for external clients in addition to the publication’s longstanding Quality Counts annual report on states’ student achievement and school finance ratings. She admitted the thing that had initially worried her most about her doctoral studies—statistics—was an area she ended up enjoying in graduate school and continues to provide a robust foundation for her work today. The faculty provided care and compassion for graduate students who, like Kurtz, dreaded the statistics involved in the required quantitative research methods coursework. She ended up taking more advanced electives in factor analysis and hierarchical linear modeling and being admitted twice to the national Educational Testing Service’s competitive internship program.
One thing I love about my job is that I feel like the work we do helps inform the practitioners and policymakers and others who are doing the critical job of educating and supporting our nation’s children, especially students of color and low-income families who have not been well-served in the past."
“Because all the work was applied to the issues that interested me most deeply (education and educational equity), I was incredibly motivated to learn so that I could, in turn, share my knowledge with others,” she said. “I also had less trouble understanding because my instructors constantly demonstrated how the content applied to real world educational settings.”
Today, she is paying it forward as an education journalist committed to designing solid research studies and thoroughly reporting on the complexities of education policy and practice.
“Even those who consider themselves experts often make misguided statements or decisions about issues such as tracking and detracking, social promotion and other topics associated with large and definitive research bases that are too often ignored in favor of opinion or ‘common sense,’” she said.
“I now have the knowledge I need to counter these misconceptions as well as the ability to identify legitimate research when new misconceptions arise. The capacity to provide the best available evidence is obviously a critical skill for a journalist.
This story is part of an Alumni Connections series featuring alumni who are putting their education background to work in meaningful ways and on the fringes of the field.
Know an alum who is doing interesting things with their degree? We would love to learn more. Submit story ideas to edu-communications@colorado.edu