Again, ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College ranks among the best

ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College placed No. 15 among 385 institutions surveyed in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of America’s graduate schools of education. Among public universities, the college was ranked No. 7. This year’s U.S. News & World Report survey solidifies ASU’s ascent to the top tier of colleges of education since 2012, when it ranked No. 35 in the survey.

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College continues to be one of the few colleges of education in the country that excel at both teacher preparation and world-class scholarly research. Among other Arizona universities with graduate programs in education, the University of Arizona was ranked No. 51, Northern Arizona University was ranked No. 130 and Grand Canyon University was not mentioned in the rankings.

“It’s good to be among the top-ranked graduate colleges of education in the nation,” said Carole Basile, dean of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. “For us, it’s gratifying to maintain a high ranking even as we change our direction. It’s important to maintain excellence in doing the things that colleges of education have traditionally done: preparing teachers and principals, generating research that informs education policy and that helps educators improve learning outcomes for students. But we think a great college of education can and should do more.”

Basile noted that Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College has embraced four strategic initiatives to support that ambition:

• An educator workforce initiative intended to rethink how educators are deployed in schools and how colleges of education prepare those educators to perform those roles
• Community design labs in which faculty, staff and students work with schools and communities to tackle tough problems
• Working with schools to develop contextual models, or prototypes, of systems that deploy teachers in new ways to deliver personalized learning to students
• Generating more team-based, cross-disciplinary research that improves the lives of learners, the impact of educators and the performance of schools

“We want to play a leading role in a necessary national conversation about how to redesign our education systems and culture,” said Basile. “The U.S. News & World Report ranking is one of many indications that we are in a position of strength from which to embark on the really innovative work of defining what a college of education should be in the 21st century and how we can create knowledge and mobilize people and institutions to improve education.”