Valerie Strauss

Valerie Strauss is an education writer at The Washington Post, where she has worked for 30 years. At the Post, she has covered a variety of education beats — both local and national — and now authors The Answer Sheet blog. It focuses on education and everything connected to it, which, in her view, is just about every subject under the sun. She views it as much a news magazine as a blog, with book excerpts, guest writers, news stories, analysis and pictures.

When she first arrived at the Post, Strauss worked for years as the Post’s assistant foreign editor for Asia and as weekend foreign editor. Before that, she worked at the Reuters news service in Washington D.C., serving as national security editor and as a reporter covering foreign and military affairs on Capitol Hill, and as assistant foreign editor and reporter at United Press International in Washington D.C. and Miami. She was also an editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Strauss was born and raised in Miami and now lives in Washington D.C. with her husband, Marc, an attorney. They have two daughters; one is a special education teacher and the other is a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.