Media: Two Journos Win Nieman Fellowships, Another Heads To College Board

There are two education journalists among those announced for the 2015 Nieman Fellows at Harvard: 

"Melissa Bailey, managing editor of the New Haven Independent, a pioneering, not-for-profit online community news organization in New Haven, Conn., will study how online degrees are redefining higher education, with a particular interest in competency-based programs and the impact on the nation’s class divide. 

"Denise-Marie Ordway, a senior reporter focusing on higher education at the Orlando Sentinel, will study performance-based funding models for state universities to understand their effect on instructional quality, tuition rates and degree completion and how these models affect universities with large minority enrollments, including historically black institutions."

Politics K-12 co-founder Michele McNeil announced that she was heading over to the College Board, leaving Alyson Klein to continue the blog solo (for now, at least):

"Starting in mid-May, I'll be the director of assessment and accountability policy at the College Board. It's an exciting opportunity to work for an organization that's having a big impact at a time when the future of accountability and testing is very much in flux. Still, it's going to be tough to leave Politics K-12 behind. I started this blog more than six years ago as "Campaign K-12", and with Alyson Klein, have built it into a platform that brings EdWeek readers a great mix of breaking news, analysis, watchdog coverage, and the occasionaltelevision review."