Loan-Anh Pham is a bilingual education reporter at San José Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom in
the heart of Silicon Valley. At Spotlight, Pham covers K-12 schools and aims to highlight
educational inequities in one of the nation’s most expensive areas. She previously reported on
Asian American issues at AsAmNews and #IAmNotAVirus, and was a Spotlight intern covering
Vietnamese communities. A recent UCLA graduate, Pham worked at the Daily Bruin, reporting
on issues like immigration and gun violence. She obtained degrees in communication, public
affairs and gender studies. Her fondest journalism memories include working as editor-in-chief
of her high school newspaper, The Union. She loves Vietnamese coffee, overfilled bookshelves
and puns.
Beat: K-12 schools
San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley and a land of haves and have-nots, has a public education crisis: 14 percent of high school students dropped out in 2020, an increase of almost 9 percent over the previous year. The greatest spike in dropouts was from students of color and homeless students. The reporter owns this beat—no other local news organization has an education reporter—following the money, holding education leaders accountable, examining the digital divide, helping parents navigate the changes and challenges in the schools and shedding light on solutions.