KUNC’s Hood, honored for her investigation of online education. (Photo: Vince Darcangelo)
A reporter for the NPR station based in Greeley, Colo., Hood earned the award for Investigating Colorado’s Online K–12 Schools, a three-part report about for-profit education. The report found that the state’s largest full-time online school was operating under questionable state oversight and delivering poor academic results. It aired in fall 2011.
“Her reports demonstrated the likely abuse of millions of dollars in public funds for an online education that was producing decidedly inferior results while at the same time enriching the for-profit management company,” said Schorr Prize judge Philip Balboni, c.e.o. of Global Post.
Hood has also contributed to NPR’s Morning Edition, the National Radio Project’s Making Contact and Voice of America. She also won three Edward R. Murrow Awards for KUNC.
Presented Oct. 15 in Boston, the $5,000 prize named for NPR senior news analyst and veteran Washington journalist Daniel Schorr, who died in 2010, honors public radio journalists 35 years old and under.