[3][4] Its mission is to "inform the decisions and actions that lead to better outcomes for children and families by providing deep, local coverage of education policy and practice.
"[5] It aims to cover "the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education".
[2] Its areas of focus include under-reported stories, education policy, equity, trends, and local reporting.
It merged with EdNews Colorado, founded by Alan Gottlieb, in 2013, and then redesigned and relaunched the website as Chalkbeat one year later.
[5][7][8] In 2020, Chalkbeat created Votebeat, a similar newsroom focused on local election rules and processes, before restructuring under the parent organization Civic News Company in 2023 and adding Healthbeat in 2024.
[5][9] GothamSchools was founded in 2008 by Elizabeth Green and Philissa Cramer, who started off with a local New York City education blog.
[6] As of 2015 in New York City, Chalkbeat's competitors include three daily newspapers and a public radio station with an education-focused blog.
[6] In 2016, Chalkbeat clarified its expectations, standards and editorial practices by unveiling a formal "code of ethics" that covers all its bureaus.
[11] Chalkbeat has also introduced an open-source impact tracking platform called MORI (Measures of Our Reporting's Influence).
[14][15] As of 2020, Chalkbeat has eight bureaus where it reports news regularly: Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia, and Tennessee.
[36][37] At first, Chalkbeat was unsure whether its journalists would use MORI, but the reception was positive, with reporters and editors enthusiastic about making use of the data it produced.
[37] The three-part "MORI Cycle" enables Chalkbeat to determine which types of stories led to the most impact, so that the team can plan to write more of them.
[18][6] The organization's funding model has led to criticism from those who see a conflict of interest and feel that Chalkbeat is too focused on "a reform-minded policy community".