She is a contributing writer to The Nation and The Daily Beast, and in 2010 was a recipient of the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a competitive award supporting the long-form work of mid-career education reporters. Goldstein is currently at work on a political history of the American teaching profession. She is a former associate editor at The Daily Beast and The American Prospect, and her writing has also appeared in BusinessWeek, Slate, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. She is a graduate of Brown University, where she studied history.