Jay Mathews is an author and education columnist with the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

''.

Career

Mathews has worked at the ''Washington Post'' writing news reports and books about China, disability rights, the stock market, and education. He writes the ''Class Struggle'' blog for the ''Washington Post''. He has prepared the annual ranking of "America’s Most Challenging High Schools" for the ''Washington Post'' (and previously for ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'') for 18 years. He developed the "challenge index" by counting how many individuals take

Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board. AP offers undergraduate university-level curricula and examinations to high school students. Colleges and universities in the US and elsewhere ...

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), more commonly known as the International Baccalaureate (IB), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the I ...

, and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests at a school each year, divided by the number of graduating seniors. Top-performing schools are excluded. He previously held Bureau Chief posts at locations including

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, as its first Bureau Chief in 1979-1980, and Los Angeles. He spent several weeks back in Beijing in 1989 to cover the Tiananmen protests at the time, and has since challenged the dominant media narrative of a student massacre inside Tiananmen Square, reporting that all remaining students at the square, were allowed to leave the square peacefully when soldiers arrived, and that instead hundreds of people, mostly workers and passersby did perish that night, "but in a different place and under different circumstances".Jay Mathews, "The Myth of Tiananmen, And the Price of a Passive Press.
''Columbia Journalism Review'' Sept/Oct 1998
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Bibliography

References

External links

Waiting For Superman Debate
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mathews, Jay American columnists 1945 births Living people Writers from Long Beach, California Occidental College alumni Harvard College alumni The Washington Post people United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War