ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan School of Education Dean Deborah Ball and education professor Brian Rowan are among 16 leaders elected to membership in the National Academy of Education.

The new inductees were selected for their pioneering efforts in educational research and policy development.

Ball, the William H. Payne Collegiate Professor, began her career as an elementary classroom teacher and is one of the world’s leading scholars on mathematics education, teacher knowledge and teacher education—work advanced through several research projects that she directs at U-M.

She helped organize the Center for Proficiency in Teaching Mathematics and is part of a national panel advising the White House on reforming federal math policy.

Rowan, associate dean and the Burke A Hinsdale Collegiate Professor of Education, organized a six-year, large-scale, longitudinal study of the design, implementation and effectiveness of three of America’s largest comprehensive school reform initiatives. Rowan has also done research into the growing for-profit education industry. Rowan’s scholarly interests lie at the intersection of organization theory and school effectiveness research.

Over the years, Rowan has written on education as an institution, on the nature of teachers’ work, and on the effects of school organization, leadership, and instruction practice on student achievement.

Founded in 1965 to advance the highest quality education research and its use in policy formation and practice, the National Academy of Education (NAEd) is an honorary society that currently has 162 members and 12 foreign associates. Members are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or contributions to education, and over the years, its members have included such luminaries as anthropologist Margaret Meade and psychologist Jean Piaget.

In addition to serving on expert study panels that address pressing issues in education, members are also deeply engaged in NAEd’s professional development programs such as the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, and the new Predoctoral Fellowship in Adolescent Literacy recently launched with generous funding by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Nominations are submitted by individual members once a year for review and election by the entire membership. “The newly elected members are preeminent leaders in their respective areas of educational research, and they have had extraordinary impact on education in the U.S. and abroad,” said. Lorrie Shepard, president of the National Academy of Education.

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