She attended Amherst College but became disillusioned with the experience, taking a two-year leave in 1991 before she returned to complete her B.A.
[3] Since 2008, Hanford has reported for American Public Media, where she is a senior correspondent and producer and has focused on early childhood education.
[4] In 2016, she began reporting on the prevalence of remedial education for college students, leading to an interest in dyslexia supports.
[1][5] Her 2022 podcast Sold a Story investigated allegations that the popular early-intervention literacy strategies developed by Marie Clay and promoted by Lucy Calkins are incompatible with educational and cognitive research.
[6] The podcast was widely influential in the national movement to reform reading instruction and reached more than 3.5 million downloads.