Jackie Mader

Jackie Mader is a senior reporter for The Hechinger Report, based in Austin, Texas. She currently covers early childhood education with an emphasis on policies and programs that impact young children and their families. In her decade as a journalist, she has covered a range of topics including teacher preparation, special education and rural schools. She previously worked as a special education teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, and trained new teachers in Mississippi. Her work has appeared in outlets including The Nation, The Atlantic, USA Today, Time, and NBC News and has won several awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Nellie Bly Award from The New York Press Club, a Front Page Award from The Newswomen’s Club of New York and the national beat reporting award from the Education Writers Association. In 2021, she was one of two American journalists chosen for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s Early Childhood Development. In 2024, she completed the Spencer Fellowship for education reporters at Columbia University.