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Elaine Korry

Elaine Korry is an NPR contributor based in San Francisco. From August 2004-June 2007 she worked as an NPR senior reporter covering social policy for NPR, with a focus on education, and on the lives of the nation's most vulnerable citizens — the homeless, those living in poverty, working in low wage positions, and trying to find their way to a more stable life.

In 2007, she reported on hospitals struggling to serve chronically homeless people in Los Angeles; the debate over pulling welfare mothers out of school in favor of low-wage jobs; working families with children driven from San Francisco because of the spiraling cost of housing; and proposed budget cuts to literacy programs for immigrant families.

Prior to covering social policy issues, Elaine covered business and economics for NPR for 14 years. She has been awarded numerous reporting fellowships in social policy and education from the Hechinger Institute, Casey Journalism Center, and Wharton School of Business. She attended Rider University in New Jersey, and worked in public radio for 10 years prior to coming to NPR.

  • The Bush administration's plan to deal with rising home foreclosures by freezing interest rates for struggling borrowers is closely modeled on a California program that has attracted doubters.
  • Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died today at age 94.
  • When five foreign students from Egypt didn't show up for a month-long course at a Montana university, a web-based tracking system went into action. The system had been created in 2001. A manhunt ensued and the missing students were located within a matter of days. It turns out they had come to find jobs, not to study.
  • Getting ready for the world's largest passenger aircraft isn't cheap. Eighteen U.S. airports are making significant investments, mostly runway improvements, to accommodate the super jumbo, double- decker Airbus A380. But now the jet everyone's waiting for is snagged in production delays.
  • The California Supreme Court has reinstated the state's high school exit exam as a graduation requirement. The divided ruling means that 47,000 seniors who haven't passed the test may not be able to graduate.
  • For thousands of nervous parents, a popular college guide listing little-known, but highly-regarded, campuses has attracted a cult following. The Evergreen State College outside Olympia, Wash., is one of the schools listed in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even If You're Not a Straight-A Student.
  • A Government Accountability Office report finds oversight problems in the Bush administration's handling of community services block grants. The GAO said that the Department of Health & Human Services had failed to adequately monitor the program.
  • President Bush is expected to announce a large increase in funding for the study of foreign languages considered critical to national security such as Arabic, Korean and Chinese. Much of the money reportedly will go to the Pentagon, to beef up language training at military schools. A big chunk of the funding should also flow to colleges and universities.
  • The University of California system, the nation's largest, has announced a tuition hike for the fifth year in a row. Students are angry, and some educators are beginning to question whether the costs of a college education in California are getting out of reach. California's state system was once the most affordable in the nation.