Three Women Among the Nation’s Top 10 Most Influential Educational Scholars

Education Week recently published the Rick Hess Straight Up Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. The rankings list the 200 university-based education scholars who had the biggest influence on the nation’s education discourse last year. The scholars are ranked in eight categories including Google Scholar ratings, mentions in major newspapers, books published and their rankings on Amazon.com, Twitter scores, and mentions in the Congressional Record. The rankings are calculated by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.

Three of the top 10 influential educators are women, including the two highest finishers in the rankings.

Leading the list of the most influential education scholars is Linda Darling-Hammond. She is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emerita at Stanford University and the faculty director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Dr. Darling-Hammond is a former president of the American Educational Research Association. Her most recent books are Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Really Matters for Effectiveness and Improvement (Teachers College Press, 2013) and Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2014). Dr. Darling Hammond is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University and hold a doctorate in urban education from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Diane Ravitch placed second in the ranking of the most influential education scholars. She is Research Professor of Education at New York University. Dr. Ravitch is the former assistant secretary of education during the administration of George H.W. Bush. From 1995 until 2005, she held the Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Ravitch is the author of many books including The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2010) and The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Vintage, 2003). Professor Ravitch is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Gloria Ladson-Billings also is among the top 10 most influential scholars in education. She holds the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Ladson-Billings is a past president of the American Educational Research Association. She is a graduate of Morgan State University in Baltimore and holds a master’s degree from the University of Washington and a doctorate from Stanford University. Dr. Ladson-Billings is the author of Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education (Teachers College Press, 2005) and The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (Jossey-Bass, 2005).