Catherine Gewertz is a nationally recognized journalist who joined the Center staff in 2022 as its inaugural editorial director. In that role, Catherine supports the Center’s strategic communication efforts, helping it share its work with broader audiences, spark discussion on important issues in the field, and advise its clients.
During her 22 years as a reporter at Education Week, Catherine was the newspaper’s full-time reporter on the Common Core. She wrote extensively about national shifts in assessment policy and practice, from the rise of the federally funded assessment consortia and their tests to states’ increasing reliance on college-entrance exams for accountability. Her annual survey on states’ summative assessments became a key resource in the field.
In recognition of her reporting on assessment, the National Council on Measurement in Education named Catherine the winner of its first award for Excellence in Public Communication in 2019. Even as she shifted her coverage focus to other topics, such as pathways from high school to college, and COVID’s impact on schools, Catherine continued to track key issues in assessment, including how 2021 summative scores, shaped by the COVID pandemic, should be interpreted and used.
Before joining Education Week in 1999, Catherine was a staff writer at The Los Angeles Times, where she covered courts and K-12 education, and United Press International, where she was a national feature writer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Stanford University.
