Listen up, class.
Say hello to our new education reporter: Liz Rosenberg.
Rosenberg came to us earlier this year after spending decades in the education field: from high school teacher to teacher training to designing curriculum. For the longest time, she tells me, she’s had a deep love of learning, educating — and storytelling.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen the world through the lens of education,” says the 56-year-old mother of two, and loving owner of a six-month-old puppy. “That perspective was shaped early after a less-than-great experience in grade school. Despite that, I loved learning. Books, ideas, conversations — they lit something up in me.”
That spark eventually led her to teaching, she says.
As with so many of us in the news space, Rosenberg’s path to journalism isn’t linear. After graduating from college with a degree in women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she moved to Madrid for an opportunity to teach English, a transformative experience that solidified a sense of purpose.
Drawn by New York City’s energy and its need for teachers, she pursued a master’s in the teaching of English, a program that focused specifically on how to teach literature and writing.
“Teaching felt like a way to contribute to making the world better,” says Rosenberg, who went to Columbia University’s Teachers College for her grad school, staying in the city. She commutes to Jersey from Brooklyn.
As a high school English teacher at two high schools in Brooklyn, she focused on language and literature, inspired by the way books could open up conversations about history, identity and society.
“You can learn about a time in history through a novel, but also about your own time and yourself,” she says. “It’s a rich experience, especially with high school students. They’re ready for deep conversations.”
In what now seems like a prescient moment, there was one novel that her students hated but she loved: “The Jungle,” published in 1906 by Upton Sinclair.
“It’s essentially a muckraking story,” she says of pioneering American investigative journalists. “It’s dense and not told very well. But the content is fascinating: slaughterhouses, exploitation of workers and animals. It’s an incredible story. You could learn so much about how workers were treated and how they tried to change their reality,” she adds.
Perhaps it echoed some of her mother’s work in Head Start, which she says also shaped her values. “She cared deeply about helping low-income children access early education,” says Rosenberg, adding her mom is now 92. “That commitment stayed with me.”
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, she had two older brothers, one of whom passed away six years ago. Both had law degrees like their father, who died when she was 25. “A lot of people in my family have law degrees, and my father assumed that I would also be a lawyer.”
Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, she says she spent her childhood in ice skating rinks — a sport she passed on to her kids and which she continues to enjoy today, except with inline skates. For the past three decades, she’s also found time to spin the pottery wheel to massage clay into tea pots, though she recently gave up her spot in a studio.
A strategic thinker, Rosenberg left teaching after five years to work in professional development. For 15 years, her focus was coaching teachers how to teach students to express themselves through writing.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosenberg collaborated with data-savvy parents to build a more transparent and comprehensive dashboard of COVID-19 cases in New York City public schools after seeing how little information was available on the official Department of Education site.
“I became a resource for journalists at that point, and sort of realized that I had dipped my toe into data journalism inadvertently,” she says.
The project became a vital resource for journalists and piqued Rosenberg’s interest in data journalism, ultimately inspiring her to apply for a master’s degree in journalism at City University of New York.
After grad school and before she got her first full-time newsroom gig, Rosenberg collaborated with CUNY to create a free journalism curriculum for high school teachers. The full-year course focuses on citizenship, journalism ethics, and writing different types of stories. The comprehensive resource has already been downloaded in 18 states.
Now, as The Star-Ledger and NJ.com’s senior education reporter covering New Jersey’s K-12 public schools, private schools, colleges and universities, Rosenberg brings that educator’s lens to her reporting.
She says she’s still grappling with the complexities of a state where each of the hundreds of municipalities operate their own school district — each with their own priorities, politics and pain points.
One of the biggest surprises she’s found is the emotional toll of school budgeting. “Watching school board meetings, you see seniors on fixed incomes worried about rising taxes, and others who are willing to pay more to support schools,” she says. “It’s not just policy — it’s personal.”
She’s especially interested in how class size varies across districts.
“Some districts panic when class sizes rise from 15 to 20. Others are alarmed when they hit 34,” she says. “What’s considered normal is deeply contextual. I’m very curious about what could be done to help alleviate that incredible amount of stress and pain that that these districts go through every year.”
She’s also reporting in a politically charged time. With President Trump back in office, federal education policy has rapidly shifted these past few months.
A recently published story, for instance, involved proposed changes to Head Start that could limit access for children who aren’t U.S. citizens or qualified immigrants.
And then there’s the looming question of what happens if the U.S. Department of Education is dismantled. How will that affect New Jerseyans?
“There’s not a lot of contingency planning happening,” Rosenberg says. “We all know Title I funding could be massively cut. But does the state have a plan for that?”
Title I funding supports districts that have high numbers of children from low-income families. She suspects the uncertainty has something to do with Gov. Phil Murphy leaving office after his term ends in January.
With a senior in college and a junior in high school, Rosenberg continues to parent students, bringing that perspective to her reporting, as well.
Through it all, Rosenberg remains committed to telling stories that matter. Whether she’s covering school board debates, federal policy shifts, or the lived experiences of educators and families, she brings empathy, insight, and a teacher’s instinct — her lens — for clarity.
“I’m still figuring out a lot,” she says. “But I know this work helps people.”