Joanne Jacobs is an award-winning columnist who covered education for the San Jose Mercury News for more than twenty years. She is the author of Our School. In recent years, she’s written for the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Francisco Chronicle, and Reason Magazine. Her pioneering education blog was listed on MSNBC's Best of the Blogs and has drawn more than one million visitors. She has tutored sixth graders, ninth graders, and college students.