Tara García Mathewson is an investigative education reporter for CalMatters and The Markup. She has been writing about schools for more than a decade, first as a local reporter in Chicago’s northwest suburbs and then nationally. Before joining the staff of The Markup in 2023, Tara worked at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom focused on innovation and inequality in education, where she explored the “Future of Learning” in K-12 schools and helped establish Hechinger’s investigative team, primarily covering punitive school discipline. Tara has been recognized for her beat reporting as well as features and investigations into the educational technology industry, school discipline, and other topics. Her work has appeared in a variety of regional and national news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, USA Today, and Wired. She grew up in rural western New York and studied journalism and sociology at Northwestern University.
