Reporter wins award for ‘Denied’ series
The Houston Chronicle’s Brian Rosenthal was named winner of the 2017 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting on Monday for a seven-part series that showed how thousands of disabled children in Texas were denied specialized instruction guaranteed by federal law.
In selecting Rosenthal, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism noted that his 10-month investigation, “Denied,” had “resulted in immediate and sweeping changes to state policy, freeing up benefits that may now help a countless number of children with disabilities.
“A bipartisan chorus of outrage in the Texas Legislature, blasting the ‘immeasurable’ damage done to children, has led to eight bills being introduced to address the issues Rosenthal uncovered,” the Annenberg School said in its announcement. “State education officials have agreed to end their decadeold cap on special education enrollments, federal regulators have launched an investigation and several large school districts have hired auditors to review their special education operations.”
The award, one of the most prestigious investigative prizes in American journalism, honors outstanding journalism that leads to direct results and comes with a $35,000 prize.
Rosenthal, 27, a reporter in the Chronicle’s Austin bureau, began his investigation after an advocate told him that the Texas Education Agency had established an 8.5 percent benchmark that had become a de facto cap on special education enrollments, unbeknownst to legislators, federal education officials, parents and even many educators outside special education circles.
Rosenthal amassed state and federal data that showed how special education enrollments had plummeted from just under the 13 percent national average in 2004, when the 8.5 percent benchmark went into effect, to precisely 8.5 percent in 2015, by far the lowest in America.
Rosenthal then tracked down hundreds of parents, teachers and administrators across the state who described the impact of the state’s benchmark. Numerous current and former educators said they had been instructed to delay evaluations and deny services.
Parents told often heartwrenching stories about their struggles to obtain special instruction for their disabled children.
Rosenthal, an alumnus of Northwestern University, joined the Chronicle in 2014 and was named the Texas Star Reporter of the Year for 2015 by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors for stories on state contracting and personnel irregularities. Previously, he worked in the capital bureau of the Seattle Times.