Our Mission
Voxitatis exists to provide accurate, independent, and deeply reported journalism about schools, especially America’s high schools. We believe that good journalism, grounded in historical context and guided by professional editorial standards, can help students, educators, and communities make better decisions that strengthen public education.
Our Framework
Our work continues to be guided by the equilateral triangle model of school improvement, first described to me by Dr Doug Brooks, professor of education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Dr Brooks envisioned schools, students, and communities as the three vertices of a triangle, with the sides representing the meaningful relationships that connect them.
- Students — the learners at the center of education
- Schools — teachers, leaders, and staff who shape instruction
- Communities — families, civic groups, policymakers, and organizations that support learning
Unless each vertex accurately, fairly, and with a helping spirit grasps the concerns of the others, Dr Brooks argued, schools will struggle to improve. Our journalism embraces this model by ensuring that students’ voices, schools’ realities, and communities’ needs are all represented with clarity and fairness. By strengthening the bonds among them, we aim to illuminate the pathways toward meaningful improvement.
For example, if parents are given clear, timely information about their children’s lives at school — such as the state’s math standards — they are better equipped to support learning at home and are more likely to engage in constructive dialogue with the schools. When caring people collaborate with accurate information in hand, creative solutions can emerge: parents can help children practice key skills while also working with teachers on how instruction is delivered. In this way, all three points of the triangle (students, schools, and communities) are engaged.
Without such information, however, the cycle breaks down. If schools cannot provide families with up-to-date details about something as basic as the sixth-grade math curriculum, it becomes nearly impossible for parents or students to engage meaningfully in the learning process. The principle extends beyond math: in any subject, accurate and timely information is the foundation for collaboration and, ultimately, for student success.
Our Coverage
We report across the full spectrum of education news:
- Teaching & Learning in classrooms and beyond, including academics, arts, and athletics
- Policy & Leadership at the federal, state, and local levels
- School Operations such as finance, staffing, transportation, and safety
- Technology & Innovation reshaping instruction and equity
- Student Voice, with original reporting and perspectives from student journalists nationwide
Stories are selected not only for their news value but also for their potential to inform discussion, inspire solutions, and highlight the diverse realities of schools and students across the country.
Our Principles
We are committed to independence: Voxitatis does not sell advertising, ensuring that editorial content remains free of commercial influence.
We publish under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, encouraging broad sharing of our original reporting while respecting third-party rights.
We amplify a wide range of perspectives without advocating for any single policy agenda, believing that dialogue and collaboration are the surest paths to school improvement.
Our History and Future
Founded in Illinois and Maryland, Voxitatis grew from a small, two-location reporting model into a national news service. We honor the contributions of our early team members, including Catherina Webster, Alicia Mills, and Danielle Heaps, whose dedication laid the foundation for our mission. Today, we carry forward that vision by expanding coverage, elevating student voices, and striving to be the New York Times of school news.
Contact Us
Contact us email at paul@schoolsnapshots.org. This is the preferred form of communication. Contact us by phone at (630) 863-5871. Please leave a message. Our mailing address is 1412 Clark Avenue, Lutherville, MD 21093.
Copyrights and clearances.
This blog and any news stories, except as noted, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Creative Commons license above gives you permission to reuse or reframe any material on this site created by or for Voxitatis, including words, pictures, videos, and artwork.
However, some words, pictures, and accounts we use carry third-party copyrights and cannot be reproduced without explicit permission from the original copyright holder. You are not allowed to copy these materials. If you have any questions, please contact us directly.
Personal Information
Paul Katula, executive editor of the blog
I serve as executive editor and system administrator for all the websites operated by Voxitatis, and as chairman of the foundation’s board. I work at the Maryland State Department of Education in the Division of Assessment and Accountability, where I have been since 2007. I have supervised the scoring of the Maryland School Assessment in mathematics and science, as well as the High School Assessment in biology, the Ohio Graduation Test, and the Illinois Measure of Annual Growth in English (for ESL students). I was formerly employed as a writer and photographer for a daily newspaper in west central Ohio; as the technical support manager for Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica; as a database administrator for two mortgage companies; and as the information specialist for the Fellows Program at the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.
Name and Core of Voxitatis
The word Voxitatis, which I made up, is a registered trademark.
Over the years, many people have asked me what our name, Voxitatis, means. The answer is that it means, technically, nothing. It’s derived from two Latin words, vox, meaning voice or word, and aetatis, which is declined from the nominative aetas, meaning an age group or a generation.
Therefore, since aetatis is the genitive of aetas, the phrase vox aetatis means “the voice (or word) of an age group or generation.” We usually pronounce the “ae” vowel combination in Latin as “eye,” so I simply changed it to an “i” when I combined the words.
The name summarizes our mission: to listen to what students tell us about their schools and work with them to improve those schools for future generations. They do this by speaking, and their language is sometimes words, sometimes action, sometimes music or other art forms, and so on. We try to allow all these “voices” to speak on behalf of the schools, and that is where the name comes from.
—Paul Katula, August 24, 2025, Baltimore