Sophie Hayssen

My Work

Chalkbeat •

On the November ballot: tens of millions of dollars for Indiana charter schools

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Indiana charter schools have tens of millions of dollars at stake in the upcoming ballot questions this November. But it’s unclear in many instances how they officially plan to spend that potential influx of revenue.

State law requires districts in four counties to share revenue from property tax increases approved by voters with c...
Chalkbeat •

Testing experts say New York’s reading score whiplash deserves a closer look

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This year’s startling collapse of New York City’s reading scores, followed by last year’s big gains, has some experts asking: Did something go wrong with the test itself?

There is no clear evidence there is a problem, experts emphasize, but the unusually wide swing in scores warrants careful investigation, multiple testing experts told Chalkbeat this week.

“My insti...
Chalkbeat •

How can Philly schools ensure more English learners get high school diplomas?

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

English learners make up a growing share of Philadelphia’s district enrollment, with around 25,000 enrolled last year.

But they’re significantly less likely to make it to graduation than their peers — and that gap has only widened over the past decade.

English learners include a diverse range of students, from various different language and cultural backgrounds. Some students arrive in Philly...
Healthbeat •

NYC Legionnaires’ outbreak raises questions about compliance over new cooling tower law

Data analysis by Sophie Hayssen

Public health, explained: Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free New York City newsletter here.

As the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tries to identify the source of the Legionnaires’ outbreak on the Upper East Side, elected officials and residents are raising questions about the enforcement of a new law seeking to curb the spread of the disease.

Almost two dozen people on the Upper East Side have been infected since health officials confir...
Chalkbeat •

Despite funding cuts at small schools, most Chicago assistant principals are poised to keep their jobs

Data analysis by Sophie Hayssen

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Alex Dakessian, the assistant principal at McCutcheon Elementary on Chicago’s North Side, had a hectic year.

She scheduled classes, helped evaluate 78 teachers and support staff, oversaw the school’s five specialized classrooms for students with significant disabilities, and translated for some of its more than 130 English learners. With two campuses...
Chalkbeat •

What the Supreme Court didn’t say in its transgender sports participation decision

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision on transgender sports participation in some ways simply upheld the status quo.

States that prohibit trangender athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity can keep doing so — there’s no constitutional problem, the court’s conservative majority found.

But states without such bans can maintain more inclusive policies. Nothing in t...
Chalkbeat •

SCOTUS: States can block transgender athletes from school sports teams

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.

States can bar transgender athletes from playing on school teams that match their gender identity, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The 6-3 decision from the court’s conservative majority leaves intact restrictions in 29 states, most of which explicitly prevent transgender women and girls from playing on women’s and girls school sports teams.

The decision was hailed by conservatives who re...
Teen Vogue •

UVA Tried To Shut Down Its Historical Tours Discussing Slavery. These Students Resisted.

Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue TakeFor decades, the University of Virginia relied on the student-run group, University Guide Services (UGS), to lead admissions and historical tours on campus. That changed earlier this year when the university ended the group's special status designation. UGS leaders saw the move as part of a larger crackdown on history and truth-telling that is happening across the nation. Now, with the support of the student body, student gui...
Prism •

Universities used pro-Palestine protests to expand surveillance

In the aftermath of pro-Palestinian encampments last year, colleges across the country announced new policies that effectively ban many forms of protest. In addition to chilling dissent, the new university rules also allow for campus surveillance and overreach by law enforcement. 


As part of the new policies, some universities outright ban encampments, while others place restrictions on the time, place, and shape protests can take. In some cases, schools made it more difficult for students to...
Mother Jones •

These Clergy Abuse Survivors Had a Chance to Find Justice. Then Their Diocese Filed for Bankruptcy.

When Teresa Lancaster was a teenager in the 1970s, she was raped by a chaplain at her Catholic high school in Baltimore. But when she and another survivor, Jean Wehner, sued the chaplain and the diocese decades later, the court rejected their case, saying too much time had passed under Maryland law. Lancaster, by then in her mid-40s, enrolled in law school with one goal: to lift the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse lawsuits.

“It was crushing,” she said about losing the lawsuit. “I...
Mother Jones •

A new documentary goes behind the scenes of Christian nationalism

The new documentary Bad Faith, directed by Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher Jacob Jones, begins with footage familiar to many Americans: an army of insurrectionists adorned in stars, stripes, and military gear storming the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. It was a watershed moment that left many Americans wondering how we got here. Bad Faith seeks to help answer that question by looking at a crucial reason why American democracy ended up at a precipice: the rise of C...
Mother Jones •

These Child Sex Abuse Victims Had an Opportunity to Get Justice. The Louisiana Supreme Court Took It Away.

As a teen in the 1990s, Zack was routinely abused by an older man affiliated with his Louisiana church. Zack, who asked that his real name not be used to protect his privacy, said his abuser often made him feel as though he was responsible for the molestation, despite the fact that he was a minor. When the abuse came to light, his church did nothing to dispel this feeling: His attacker was asked to leave the church for a year before being allowed to return. In the years that followed, Zack saw r...
Mother Jones •

United Methodist Church repeals ban on LGBTQ clergy

On Wednesday, the United Methodist Church repealed its 1984 ban on LGBTQ clergy with an overwhelming 692–51 vote by church leaders at its general conference. The conference, which ends on May 3, has also resulted in the church rolling back several other anti-LGBTQ policies, including bans on performing gay marriage and funding queer-friendly ministries.

The passage of these measures heralded a new era for the church. At the convention in 2019, delegates, made up of both clergy and laypeople, vo...
Mother Jones •

How former fundamentalists are finding healing on Reddit

Millie isn’t always comfortable talking to her friends about her childhood. She grew up Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB), a strict branch of the Baptist faith in which pastors have unquestioned authority over their flock. Each summer, Millie was homeschooled by a woman from her church to counteract the “liberal brainwashing” her parents believed she was receiving at her Pentecostal school. (She recalls one of her summer readings arguing that enslaved people enjoyed their servitude.) But Mil...
Teen Vogue •

Every Trump Indictment, Explained

Over the last year, details about Donald Trump’s indictments and trial updates have flooded the news cycle. And if you’ve lost track of where his cases stand, no one can blame you. It’s a lot. So here's every Trump indictment, explained.Initially, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate faced 91 indictments across four cases. In late May, Trump was found guilty on all 34 charges in a New York case concerning hush money payments he made during his presidential campaign. Trump still has 54 outs...
Mother Jones •

The Lizzo lawsuit shows you can't have representation without labor rights

On Tuesday, Lizzo was hit with a lawsuit from three of her former dancers, who allege that they faced a hostile work environment while employed by the singer. The suit, which also names Lizzo’s production company and her dance captain Shirlene Quigley, includes numerous complaints about sexual, racial, religious, and disability harassment, as well as assault.

The news is particularly disappointing for fans of Lizzo, given her purported commitment to social justice issues and to empowering plus-...
Teen Vogue •

Child Labor Is Still Common in the United States

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.While most kids looked forward to summer break, José Velázquez Castellano did not. An undocumented immigrant and the son of a single mother who had immigrated to the US from Mexico at age 17, Castellano spent his summers working in the scorching-hot fields of North Carolina. When he was eight, he took a job picking blueberries. By his teens, Castellano had moved on to picking tobacco...
Teen Vogue •

The Union-Busting Roots of the Oscars

The story of the Academy Awards starts with Louis B. Mayer’s beach house. In 1926, Mayer was working as West Coast chief for the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a position vested with extreme wealth and power. As film critic and historian David Thompson wrote in Vanity Fair, Mayer wanted to build his family a relaxing getaway, and to do so quickly. Conventional laborers would be too slow, he thought, so he decided to use studio construction workers, who he knew could work fast. Previously, thea...
Teen Vogue •

This Supreme Court Case Is ‘an Assault’ on Native Children

At age nine, tragedy struck Autumn Adams’ life. Her father passed away and her mother was deemed unfit to care for her, leaving Adams with an uncertain future. Adams, who is a member of the Yakama Nation, a federally recognized Native tribe, recalls overhearing officers from Child Protective Services discuss the possibility of moving her to a non-Native home if they couldn’t soon find a Native family to place her with. The idea terrified her. “At that point in my life, I had everything I recogni...
Teen Vogue •

This Conservative Organization Has a Huge Say on Who Is on the Supreme Court

Just days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, a crowd of protesters swarmed the entrance to the University Club in midtown Manhattan. The exclusive New York social club was hosting a meeting of the Federalist Society, a self-described “group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order.” Society members waded through a sea of protesters from the NYC Democratic Socialists of America and NYC for Abortion Rights to chants of “Shame on you!” and middle fingers w...
Teen Vogue •

The Inside History of ‘Disorientation’ Guides for College Students

Weeks into my freshman year at Wesleyan University, I stumbled across a booklet on one of the marble benches inside the echoing halls of Olin Library. Peeking out from among other campus literature, copies of Wesleyan’s student newspaper, and flyers advertising school events, the booklet’s cover caught my eye. The word “disorientation” was written several times in wobbly, black and white letters on the front.In that fall of 2015, I had just concluded the long admissions process filled with nerve...
Teen Vogue •

What’s Wrong With the Nonprofit Industrial Complex?

Amid persistent upheaval, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade and mass protests over police brutality, donating to nonprofits has become a go-to response to crises. But with the influx of giving, debates have surfaced about which nonprofits deserve the public’s hard-earned cash.David Hammack, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University, defines nonprofits as formal, self-governing, voluntary, private organizations that don’t distribute profits and provide a public benefit. This d...
Teen Vogue •

These Midterm Races Will Determine Control of Congress

The stakes are high for the 2022 midterms. President Biden’s approval rating has dropped and Democrats are preparing to fight a potential red wave. With Democratic control of the House and Senate in the balance, Biden’s ability to continue to push his agenda is at risk. Currently, Democrats hold a 12-seat majority in the House and have a tie-breaking vote in Vice President Kamala Harris in the Senate. These thin majorities mean every race counts.The general election is in November and primaries...
Teen Vogue •

10 Great Recently Banned Books to Check Out

Teen Vogue compiled a list of some of the contemporary books being challenged that touch on sexuality, gender identity, abuse, death, racism, and other sensitive subjects that affect the everyday lives of teens.Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evinson, has been challenged at schools in several states, including Minnesota, Texas, and North Carolina. According to its publisher, Lawn Boy tells the story of “a young man determined to achieve the American dream of happiness and prosperity — who just so happens...
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