Valerie Strauss is an education writer at The Washington Post, where she has worked for nearly 30 years. At the Post, she has covered a variety of education beats and now authors The Answer Sheet blog, which 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. Before that, she worked as the Post's assistant foreign editor for Asia, and weekend foreign editor.

Before the Post, 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. She also worked as assistant foreign editor and a reporter at United Press International in Washington D.C. and Miami, and as an editor at the Los Angeles Times.

She 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.