Professors Sarah Cohodes, Brian Jacob, and Christina Weiland are ranked among the top 200 university-based scholars in the U.S. who had the biggest impact on educational practice and policy last year. This is according to Education Week's 2026 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.
Other University of Michigan scholars include Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Nell K. Duke, and Michael N. Bastedo.
The list is comprised of university-based scholars who focus primarily on educational questions. To determine their ranking, each scholar was scored in eight categories including: Google Scholar score; the number of books a scholar has authored, co-authored, or edited; the scholar's most recent book ranking on Amazon; the total number of times the scholar was quoted or mentioned in Education Week, the Chronicle of Higher Education, or Inside Higher Education during 2025; the number of times a scholar was referenced, quoted, or otherwise mentioned online in the previous year; the number of times a scholar was quoted or mentioned in U.S. newspapers; the number of times a scholar's text(s) appeared on syllabi; and mentions in the Congressional Record.
The rankings were created by Rick Hess, author of EdWeek's "Rick Hess Straight Up" blog. Hess is a resident senior fellow and director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
See the full rankings from Education Week.
