About This Series

For decades, the District's public schools have resisted scores of reform plans and multiple changes in leadership to remain among the most troubled in the nation.

In 2007, The Washington Post and Washingtonpost.com dispatched more than a dozen print and audio reporters, database analysts, videographers and photographers to investigate what was wrong with the school system in the nation's capital. The team spent months uncovering the true condition of the school system and its programs, identifying the huge obstacles to change that had defeated reforms and reformers in the past.

The multi-platform series won the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for Web Reporting and two multimedia awards from the White House News Photographers Association.