Ashton Marra
Ashton Marra covers the Capitol for West Virginia Public Radio and can be heard weekdays on West Virginia Morning, the station’s daily radio news program. Ashton can also be heard Sunday evenings as she brings you state headlines during NPR’s weekend edition of All Things Considered. She joined the news team in October of 2012.
During the legislative session, Ashton focuses on the state Senate, bringing daily reports from the inner-workings of the state’s upper house on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s nightly television show The Legislature Today.
Ashton comes to WVPBS from ABC News’ morning program Good Morning America where she worked as a production associate. Ashton produced pieces for the broadcast, including the first identified victim of the Aurora, CO, movie theater shooting and the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, as well as multiple entertainment news stories.
Before her time at GMA, Ashton worked as an intern on ABC’s news assignment desk, helping to organize coverage of major news stories like the Trayvon Martin case, the Jerry Sandusky trail, tornadoes that ravaged the South and Midwest and the 2012 Presidential election. She also spent 18 months as a weekend reporter for WDTV based in her hometown of Clarksburg, WV, breaking the story of missing Lewis County toddler Aliayah Lunsford. Ashton’s work from that story was feature on HLN’s Nancy Grace in October of 2011.
Ashton graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University in May of 2012, where she was named WVU’s Reporter of the Year. She covered government for the P.I. Reed School of Journalism’s bi-weekly newscast WVU News and also served a semester as the WVPBS bureau reporter.
When she isn’t reporting, Ashton enjoys cooking and is an avid supporter of the arts, including theater, music and dance. She is a huge fan of musicals and touts her collection of Playbills from the Broadway musicals she’s attended, which grew by nearly 30 in her 9 months living in New York City.
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Hundreds of students in Akron were among those prevented from beginning a state required exam Wednesday due to a computer glitch that impacted testing statewide. Testing resumed Thursday after a bug in the vendor’s system prevented students from logging in to their English Language Arts exams Wednesday. A spokesperson with the Ohio Department of Education said ODE was notified Wednesday morning by AIR, the American Institutes for Research, of a problem with its log in system. -
Ohio high school students who want to take college courses on the state’s dime will have some additional restrictions to consider starting with the summer… -
The U.S. Surgeon General has issued an advisory, encouraging more Americans to carry the overdose reversing drug naloxone. It comes in the form of an injection or a nasal spray, known as Narcan, and is regularly carried by firefighters, EMTs and police officers, but the antidote is also becoming more and more common in Ohio schools. In Lisbon, Education is More Than English and Math Students at David Anderson Junior and Senior High School in Lisbon, Ohio, file into the auditorium on a Thursday morning.
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The Ohio Board of Education is moving forward with the creation of statewide guidelines for the social and emotional learning of students.The Board voted… -
National test scores in reading and math show achievement growth has largely leveled off for Ohio students, much like the rest of the country. The National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, exam is given every two years to 4th and 8th graders. The test has measured student progress across states since the early 1990s, but in Ohio last year, there wasn’t much progress to be measured. Scores for Ohio students largely mimicked 2015 results, which Peggy Carr, an assistant commissioner for NAEP, said was also true for the country. -
A national review of high school graduation requirements shows Ohio is providing students with a well-rounded education, but not necessarily at the… -
A group of Ohio community colleges are one step closer to offering bachelor’s and applied bachelor’s degrees on their campuses. The Ohio Department of Higher Education approved five proposed programs at three schools.
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A new natural gas pipeline could result in a multi-million dollar windfall for Cloverleaf School District in rural Ohio. For struggling school districts, this unexpected source of money is welcome.
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More than 50 Lakewood High School students joined hundreds of thousands of their peers in chants of "enough is enough” and “vote them out” Saturday during a march in Washington, D.C. Titled the “March For Our Lives” by its organizers, the National Park Service issued a permit for 500,000 participants on Pennsylvania Avenue, but before the noontime event, security entrances were closed with the Lakewood students still on the outside.
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More than 150 Ohio students and their parents will depart from Cleveland and Columbus Friday night to participate in a demonstration that organizers are calling “March For Our Lives” Saturday in Washington, D.C. Organizers say the buses will include students from every corner of the state looking to participate in the rally.
