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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The nation's for-profit colleges and universities received more than $1 billion in benefits from the Post-Sept. 11 GI Bill in the last year alone. But some say the for-profit schools aren't policed well enough — which creates an opening for abuses — and their dropout rates are too high.
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The mid-Atlantic states are trying to put themselves back together again after a record-setting snowstorm over the weekend. Snowfall totals in some parts of Maryland were over three feet; parts of the Washington and Baltimore metro areas got more than two feet.
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More schools closed in the U.S. Monday in an effort to reduce the spread of swine flu. Included are 24 schools in a district west of Detroit where a high school student may be infected with the new H1N1 flu strain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is considering making guidelines on school closures more flexible.
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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is proposing a laundry list of educational benefits that would reach from birth to college. His rival, Republican John McCain, focuses on enabling local educational initiatives and expanding virtual learning.
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One Laptop per Child may have been thinking of the developing world, but cities such as Immokalee, Fla., feel its kids would benefit, too. But it's unclear how much the laptops can bridge the achievement gap for the kids of migrant workers.
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Captain Ahab, who led the ill-fated quest for Melville's great white whale, Moby-Dick, may have been misunderstood. Today, it appears he has much in common with modern American leaders.
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The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002, mandated standardized testing in the nation's public schools to establish a measure of accountability among states and school districts for the academic performance of their students. The pressures of such testing are most acutely felt among the schools which perennially have low scores, like Northwestern High School in Baltimore.
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Across America, schools are struggling to close the achievement gap between low-income and minority students and their white and more affluent peers. Seattle's efforts offer a window into just how challenging that can be. -
The double-digit tuition hikes of recent years have slowed, though tuition is still rising faster than the inflation rate in some places, according to the College Board. The group has released its new report on tuition increases at U.S. public and private universities.
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The Bush administration plans to appeal a federal judge's ruling that the government's warrantless wiretapping program violates the constitution. The judge ordered that the program be stopped, but both sides in the suit have agreed the program can continue pending the outcome of the appeal.
