John Merrow Biography

John Merrow is the Education Journalist for PBS NewsHour and the Chairman of Learning Matters, a New York-based independent production company. He started his career as an education journalist for National Public Radio nearly forty years ago with the weekly series Options in Education, about which he received the George Polk Award in 1982. In the years since, he has expanded into broadcast tv, documentary films, and print. He was the very first journalist to obtain the renowned McGraw Prize in Education in 2012. Merrow's diverse disclosure has kept him at the forefront of education journalism: he is the only journalist to have interviewed every United States Secretary of Education. The first to get the inside scoop on the college application process, and the driving force behind exposing the financial relationship between CHADD, a child advocacy organization, and Ciba-Geigy, the pharmaceutical firm that manufactures the A.D.D. drug Ritalin. He has also collaborated with top policymakers to shape public policy, and he oversaw the historic 1988 conference in Itasca County, Minnesota that triggered the charter school movement. Merrow's project took him from community colleges to kindergarten classrooms, from instructor rallies to Capitol Hill policy debates. He has been a NewsHour Correspondent and the host of his own documentary series on public television since 1984. He has obtained George Foster Peabody Prizes for School Sleuth: The Case of an Excellent School (2000) & Beyond Borders: Life Stories from a Small Planet (2006), as well as Emmy nominees in 1984, 2005, and 2007, four CINE Golden Eagles, countless Education Writers Affiliation prizes, and other honours. He is the writer of The Influence of Teachers (2011), Choosing Excellence (2001), and Declining by Degrees (2001), as well as a frequent contributor to United States Today, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the LA Times, and also Education Week (2005). John Merrow also writes a weekly blog called Taking Note. Merrow holds a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, an Mastar's degree in American Studies from Indiana University, as well as a Doctoral degree in Education & Social Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. He obtained the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences' Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, the James L. Fisher Prize for Differentiated Service to Education in 2000, the HGSE Alumni Committee Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Education in 2006, The Horace Dutton Taft Medal in 2010, and honorary degrees from Richard Stockton College (NJ) as well as Paul Smith's College (NY). He resided in Nyc with his wife, Hewitt School Head Joan Lonergan.

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