As part of CPB’s American Graduate Initiative, the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs uses its unique mentoring model, news curriculum and online collaborative workspace in partnership with other public media youth-media programs to forge connections between public media and at-risk student populations at low-performing schools, while creating compelling youth journalism about education issues, particularly the dropout crisis and student retention strategies.
The NewsHour is to scale up the Student Reporting Labs and partner with up to 35 local stations (10–15 in Year 1 and 15–20 in Year 2) and schools or after-school programs in low-performing school districts, giving preference to stations selected as Public Media Community Hubs.
The NewsHour is also to develop a teacher-training module and tiered system so that the labs can be scaled up and sustained.