Brian Jacob

Core faculty

Brian A. Jacob

Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy; Professor of Public Policy, Economics, and Education

Jacob is co-director of the Youth Policy Lab. His primary fields of interest are labor economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education. Jacob's current research focuses on urban school reform, with a particular emphasis on standards and accountability initiatives.

State & Hill

Faculty news, fall 2024

Dec 17, 2024

William G. Axinn is the interim director of the Ford School’s International Policy Center. He recently published “Early-life risk factors for depression among young adults in the United States general population: Attributable risks and gender...

Top row (from left to right): Sarah Cohodes, Yusuf Neggers, Morela Hernandez, Paula Lantz. Bottom row (from left to right): Katherine Michelmore, Yousif Hassan, Barry Rabe, Kevin Stange.

In the Media

With Michigan school bond proposals on the ballot, Jacob stresses funding challenges within districts

Oct 7, 2024 Bridge Michigan

Nearly 1 in 10 Michigan school districts have bond proposals on the ballot in the upcoming November elections. Raising awareness of the lack of funding for Michigan schools, the Ford School's Brian Jacob stated, "There is no state funding for school...

Publication

Jacob’s new research reveals lasting changes in K-12 education due to COVID-19 pandemic

Sep 5, 2024

By the fall of 2022, children across the country returned to what seemed like “normal” school: students and educators returned to classrooms and masks began to disappear. While schools seemed to be going back to what they were before the pandemic,...

Photo of Brian Jacob standing at the Annenberg Auditorium podium, delivering remarks at a public event

Publication

Transitional kindergarten programs expand early education access, boost academic gain

Aug 16, 2024

Children enrolled in transitional kindergarten programs in Michigan did better in math and English by the time they reached 3rd grade, with higher test scores than other kids who didn't go through the program, according to a new policy brief from...

Kindergarten teacher with students at a table

News

Youth Policy Lab celebrates growth and expansion in annual report

Aug 5, 2024

Since launching in 2016, The Youth Policy Lab (YPL) at the University of Michigan has helped community and government agencies make informed, impactful policy and program decisions. The most recent annual report shares remarkable growth and...

State & Hill

Discourse: Fordies in the news, spring 2024

Apr 24, 2024

“The most likely explanation for our findings is that Black—and to a lesser extent Hispanic—families were more concerned about the health risks associated with in-person schooling than white families. This is consistent with the fact that nonwhite...

Headshots of Jacob, Camara, Wolfers, Raimi, and Ivacko

State & Hill

Faculty news, spring 2024

Apr 24, 2024

Kamissa Camara chaired the Bipartisan Senior Study Group for the Sahel at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The study group’s comprehensive report critically assesses opportunities for peace, security, and economic development in the Sahel.Charlotte...

(Top row, left to right) Fullerton Rico, Hills, Holz, Jacob, and Leiser (Bottom row, left to right) Morenoff, Raimi, Shipan, Spencer, and Stevenson

News

School enrollment during COVID-19: U-M study reveals racial disparities

Feb 21, 2024

Student enrollment in districts that provided in-person schooling in fall 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic showed a greater decline among nonwhite students than white students.But in districts that offered virtual learning, the opposite was true,...

Brian Jacob, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy at the Ford School.

News

Jacob and Stange: Getting free college right

Feb 9, 2024

Governor Gretchen Whitmer proposed making the first two years of community college free in Michigan in her 2024 State of the State AddressIn an opinion published in Bridge Michigan, Brian Jacob and Kevin Strange applaud Governor Whitmer for her...

Headshots of Brian Jacob and Kevin Stange

News

Jacob and Weiland make the 2024 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings

Jan 28, 2024

Education Week has unveiled the annual 2024 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings which rank education scholars based on criteria that determines who has made the largest impact in their field over the previous year. Christina Weiland,...

Headshots of Brian Jacob and Christina Weiland

In the Media

Jacob paper on student loan debt relief for teachers: No significant effect

Aug 1, 2023 Knowledge at Wharton

Brian Jacob, Knowledge at Wharton: “The potentially limited take-up of this program is of particular interest against the backdrop of a long-standing challenge of recruiting and retaining teachers, especially in high-need school districts, and, more...

In the Media

Jacob's study on teacher loan forgiveness cited in Chalkbeat

Aug 1, 2023 Chalkbeat

Brian Jacob, Chalkbeat: “The program has really good intentions,” said Brian Jacob, a professor at the University of Michigan and coauthor of the study. But, ultimately, “it’s not effective as it’s currently structured.” “The teachers in schools...

News

MEDC shares it knowledge in a data-hungry world

Jul 31, 2023

Education researchers across the country are always in search of more data. They all have access to resources like the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), but each state has different models of collaboration and data sharing. A recent example in...

Glasses rest on a desktop with various coding windows open on a screen behind

Publication

Jacob explores barriers to Teacher Loan Forgiveness program

Jul 10, 2023

The Biden Administration is preparing a new set of student loan debt-relief measures in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of its previous, ambitious plan, which would have eliminated between $10,000 and $20,000 per student. A number of...

In the Media

Jacob on grade retention debate

Jun 20, 2023 Chalbeat

Brian Jacob, Chalkbeat: Brian Jacob, a professor at University of Michigan, has studied retention for many years, but he still is ambivalent about the policy. “I do really come out kind of in the middle,” he said. Maybe students themselves make...

State & Hill

Faculty News, spring 2023

May 3, 2023

Dominique Adams-Santos, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, and PhD candidate Kayonne Christy contributed a chapter, "Narratives in Context: Locating Racism and Sexism in Black Women's Health Experiences," to The Routledge Companion to...

Headshots of Kathryn M. Dominguez, Rusty Hills, Morela Hernandez, Brian Jacob, Barry Rabe, Megan Stewart, David Thacher, Christina Weiland

News

YPL wins grant to evaluate Michigan child welfare program

Apr 24, 2023

In Michigan, each year 140,000 children are investigated for suspected child abuse or neglect. Many of these youth end up in foster care, where they are especially vulnerable to long-term difficulties. Research has shown that children associated...

Publication

Learning from lottery-based evaluations of early education programs

Apr 19, 2023

The value of Pre-K education has been widely acknowledged through decades of research. However, much of that research has come from studying older and often smaller programs than those currently being implemented across the country. To determine how...

Publication

Jacob finds little benefit, large costs to pretrial juvenile detention

Apr 11, 2023

Despite the large number of youth detained in juvenile detention centers before a trial, little research has been conducted on the impact of this detainment on life outcomes. Publishing a new research brief for the Cato Institute, Brian Jacob,...

Publication

Michigan transitional kindergarten widely available, supported by administrators and parents

Jan 26, 2023

Expanding access to high-quality early education has been a bipartisan goal of Michigan policymakers for at least a decade. New findings by the University of Michigan Education Policy Initiative provide the first systematic description of...

News

EPI's Weiland and Jacob, SOE's Ball and Duke, make the prestigious 2023 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings

Jan 5, 2023

Education Week has unveiled the annual 2023 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings which rate education scholars based on criteria that determines who has made the largest impact in their field over the previous year. Education Policy...

Publication

Jacob and Guardiola call for investment to address CTE access inequity across Michigan

Jan 3, 2023

As college tuition and resulting student debt continue to rise, and college completion rates for underserved students have declined, Career Technical Education (CTE) is increasingly seen as offering alternative paths to economic security. While CTE...

State & Hill

Education policy at the Ford School

Dec 19, 2022

Interdisciplinary, rigorous, and committed to real world impact and to mentoring: the Ford School has one of the strongest education policy programs in the country. How did we get there? S&H asked the scholar at the front of the class, economist...

State & Hill

Data for good: Expanding college opportunity in Michigan

Dec 19, 2022

By Daniel Rivkin When the state of Michigan issued its COVID-19 stay at home order in March 2020, Youth Policy Lab (YPL) Data and Policy Fellow Ava Attari found herself in the middle of an ambitious state program. The thousands of workers who had...

State & Hill

Faculty News, fall 2022

Dec 19, 2022

Jenna Bednar published “The Fractured Superpower: Federalism is Remaking U.S. Democracy and Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Affairs. The Coalition for Networked Information, the Association of Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE awarded Paul Courant the...

Headshots of Brian Jacob, Paula Lantz, Katherine Michelmore, Jeffrey Morenoff, Susan D. Page, Shobita Parthasarathy, Natasha Pilkauskas, Joy Rohde, Joe Schwarz, and Fabiana Silva

News

Jacob breaks down increasing importance of school board elections

Oct 23, 2022

With midterms quickly approaching, school board races are getting increasing attention. Brian Jacob, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy, explained to WWMT Channel 3. “School boards I think even before COVID had started being more...

Publication

COVID-19 remote learning policy: public health or political preference?

Oct 16, 2022

A new study by Ford School professor Brian Jacob looks into whether decisions about extending virtual learning were led more by political preference or public health guidance. The working paper, Assessing School District Decision-Making: Evidence...

In the Media

Poverty Solutions papers on cash payments show lack of long-term impact

Jul 12, 2022 Vox

Two studies published by Poverty Solutions were cited in an article in Vox which stated that "cash transfers in the US, and those studies found the transfers did... very little." The papers by Ford School professors Brian Jacob, Natasha...

State & Hill

Discourse: Ford School faculty in the news, spring 2022

May 31, 2022

“(Putin) has already violated every international treaty, including the U.N. charter, by invading. This has international implications, not just European implications. Now, the question of what we do and how we do it, with regards to sanctions or...

Headshots of Melvyn Levitsky, Brian Jacob, Natasha Pilkauskas, Katherine Michelmore, Justin Wolfers, and Barry Rae