U of A Education Researchers Ninth in Nation for Media Mentions

The University of Arkansas tied for ninth nationally in media mentions of both university-based education research and research experts, according to a paper published last month in the journal Education Researcher, which is put out by the American Educational Research Association.

Nearly all of the media mentions of research and experts involved faculty members from the Department of Education Reform, who at the time were conducting studies and engaged in public discussion about school choice, teacher quality, and standards and accountability.

"Central to the mission of the Department of Education Reform is to conduct rigorous research on the major education policy issues of the day and share those results with the state and nation," said Jay Greene, head of the department and holder of an endowed chair. "I am pleased, but not surprised, to see the University of Arkansas recognized as among the top 10 universities in contributing to our national debate about how to improve education."

The department was established in 2005 and began offering a doctorate in education policy in 2009. It consists of six faculty members with endowed chairs and has the mission to conduct research on important education policy issues and communicate the results to policymakers, practitioners, and the media.

The Education Researcher paper's author, Holly Yettick, measured the prevalence of peer-reviewed research and academic research and expertise in U.S. print news media coverage of education during the first six months of 2010. Yettick is director of Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes the trade magazine Education Week.

As part of her study, Yettick counted the number of times education research and experts from specific universities were mentioned in the media. Her counts generated two separate top 10 lists: one for education research and the other for education experts. Harvard University and Stanford University held the top two spots on the two lists, Harvard for media mentions of experts and Stanford for media mentions of research. Other universities that placed highly on one or both lists were New York University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins and UCLA.

The University of Arkansas tied for ninth in media mentions of education research, scoring the same number of mentions as UCLA, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of California-Berkeley, University of Maryland and Florida State University.

Arkansas also tied for ninth in media mentions of education experts, counting the same number as Washington and Wisconsin-Madison, while scoring more mentions than UC-Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota and University of Missouri Columbia.