Education Policy Initiative

Brian Jacob

Faculty Co-Director & Founder

Brian A. Jacob is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and professor of economics at the Ford School, and is co-director of the Youth Policy Lab. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Brian came...

Megan Tompkins-Stange

Associate Professor of Public Policy

Megan Tompkins-Stange is an associate professor of public policy at the Ford School. She is the author of Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence (Harvard Education Press, 2016). She is a scholar of education pol...

In the News

Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline’

May 13, 2026 New York Times

The drops in U.S. scores go beyond the pandemic and cut across income, geographic and racial divides, new data shows.

classroom of students at desks taking tests

In the News

Bridge Listens: Can Michigan fix its education woes? What to know

Mar 23, 2026 Bridge Michigan

Third grade reading retention policies are not new, but some states, including Indiana and Arkansas, implemented them after the pandemic. Research is mixed on holding students back and states vary on what additional support they provide students who ...

In the News

Holding kids back in 3rd grade can raise test scores — but a new study shows a long-run cost

Mar 10, 2026 Chalkbeat

It’s an age-old debate with an emerging conventional wisdom: Third graders should not move on to the next grade if they are still struggling to read. There’s both logic and evidence behind this policy. Studies have found that students have higher ...

Teacher working with students at desks with notebooks and pens

News

First-of-its-kind national educator survey reveals both promise and peril in school cell phone policies

Feb 27, 2026

Teachers report more face-to-face interaction as bell-to-bell bans spread, but laptops emerge as next challenge. Over 68,000 teachers surveyed to date; data collection to continue through end of school year.

First-of-its-kind national educator survey reveals both promise and peril in school cell phone policies

News

Michigan governor signs classroom cell phone ban: U-M experts available to comment

Feb 11, 2026

Jacob comments on competing screen policies for students

Publication

Jacob and Weiland raise concerns about potential bias in traditional retention studies

Jan 30, 2026

In a recent article published in the Journal of Public Economics, University of Michigan professors Brian Jacob, Christina Weiland, and Jordan Berne (who earned his doctorate in economics from U-M), along with Katharine Strunk, dean of the University...

Jacob and Weiland raise concerns about potential bias in traditional retention studies

In the News

Jacob comments on competing screen policies for students

Jan 28, 2026 EdSurge

Brian Jacob, the co-director of University of Michigan's Youth Policy Lab, believes the two initiatives can co-exist, as they address two separate ideas. One expresses enthusiasm for applying AI for educational purposes, while the other centers fear ...

News

Ford School faculty among the nation's top education scholars

Jan 8, 2026

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 E...

Ford School faculty among the nation's top education scholars

In the Media

Jacob comments on fall in public school enrollment in wealthy districts

Jan 8, 2026 The 74

Brian Jacob found that white families removed their children from public schools at much higher rates in districts that were slow to reopen for in-person instruction. Jacob said in an interview that he was "not surprised" to see that parents who had ...

Jacob comments on fall in public school enrollment in wealthy districts

In the News

Bold Challenges Initiative awards almost $1 million in grants to promote startup research projects at UMich

Oct 3, 2025 Michigan Daily

On Sept. 2, the University of Michigan announced they would award nearly $1 million in Accelerate funding grants to ten University research groups as part of the Bold Challenges Initiative. Accelerate will provide consulting and seed funding of up to...

An illustration of gears with icons symbolizing academic subjects on them.

News

Ford School team receives Accelerate grant from U-M Bold Challenges Initiative to advance early intervention for children with disabilities

Sep 4, 2025

A team led by Christina Weiland, Karl and Martha Kohn Professor of Social Policy and co-director of the Education Policy Initiative, and Catherine Asher, assistant research scientist at the Youth Policy Lab, has been selected for the University of Mi...

Ford School team receives Accelerate grant from U-M Bold Challenges Initiative to advance early intervention for children with disabilities

News

Brian Jacob: Michigan's education system needs structural reform now

Aug 4, 2025

After a year of studying Michigan’s K-12 education system — reviewing the academic literature, analyzing data, interviewing and surveying stakeholders, and examining state practices nationwide — one thing is clear: The current system of state-level e...

Photo of Brian Jacobs with quote from op-ed

In the News

Report: State leaders 'not working well together' on education policy

Jul 25, 2025 Detroit Free Press

A yearlong study published in July commissioned by the state for $500,000 claims Michigan needs to make sweeping changes to education governance at the state level, including giving the governor more influence in education policy and creating a consi...

a teacher giving whole class instructions with three students by her side in an elementary classroom

In the News

Report: Give governor more control to improve Michigan schools, test scores

Jul 23, 2025 Bridge Michigan

Michigan should give the governor more power over the state’s public education system and shrink local control, according to a report released Wednesday. The state-sponsored report, published by the University of Michigan’s Youth Policy Lab, makes sw...

Teachers talking to students with their hands up in the classroom

News

What is the secret to better reading outcomes?

May 26, 2025 Education Week

As states have struggled for decades to improve 3rd grade literacy on a large scale, many have enacted policies to hold struggling readers back a year. Education Week recently highlighted Christina Weiland and Brian Jacob's evaluation of Michigan’s “...

What is the secret to better reading outcomes?

News

Federal funding supports critical education research at the University of Michigan

Mar 21, 2025

A new brief from the Ford School's Education Policy Initiative and Youth Policy Lab shows the impact of federally funded education research. The policy-relevant research is developed in partnership with local and state agencies, practitioners, and po...

Federal funding supports critical education research at the University of Michigan

In the News

‘There doesn’t seem to be a rationale’: Michigan leaders react to US Department of Education cuts

Mar 12, 2025 WDIV Click On Detroit

University of Michigan Education Policy Professor Brian Jacob criticized the cuts. “There’s really very little thought going into what to cut, when to cut, and how much to cut. It’s kind of slash and burn,” said Jacob. Read on WDIV Click On Detroit...

News

Cohodes, Jacob, and Weiland make Education Week’s 2025 public influence rankings

Jan 9, 2025

Education Week has announced the annual 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, which highlights scholars who made significant contributions to educational practice and policy in the past year. Three Ford School faculty members have been ran...

Cohodes, Jacob, and Weiland make Education Week’s 2025 public influence rankings

In the Media

How did the pandemic change schooling?

Sep 4, 2024 American Enterprise Institute: The Report Card Podcast

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Brian Jacob about the ways in which the pandemic changed the grammar of schooling. Nat and Brian discuss the pandemic’s effects on student technology use, parent-teacher communication, and in...

Brian Jacob on The Report Card Podcast: How Did the Pandemic Change Schooling?

In the News

Opinion | Transitional kindergarten offers lessons for Michigan early learning investments

Jul 24, 2024 Bridge Michigan

Decades of research are clear: attending preschool boosts children’s kindergarten readiness, and the benefits can last into adulthood. To her credit, Governor Whitmer pledged to expand universal pre-K in Michigan to all 4-year-olds as early as this ...

Brian Jacob and Christina Weiland on Trhansitional Kingdergarten

News

Ford School researchers to study Michigan’s education governance

May 1, 2024

In partnership with the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), a team of researchers from the Ford School will conduct a study into how Michigan’s education governance system can be improved for the benefit of public school students. “An effective s...

Ford School researchers to study Michigan’s education governance

In the News

How the Flint water crisis set schoolchildren back

Mar 13, 2024 The Washington Post

School-age children affected by the water crisis in Flint, Mich., nearly a decade ago suffered significant and lasting academic setbacks, according to a study released Wednesday, showing the disaster’s profound impact on a generation of children. The...

Flint residents voice their concerns at Flint City Hall water meeting. Photo credit: Sam Owens

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, a...

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

News

PPIA students reflect on their summer of study and social life

Aug 2, 2023

What are the dynamics of inequity in labor markets? How do we determine appropriate categories for people in a multicultural society? How is the U.S. approach to ethnicity and nationality different from what they are doing in Europe? These were...

PPIA students reflect on their summer of study and social life

News

Ford School welcomes PPIA 2023 cohort

Jun 19, 2023

The 2023 Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Junior Summer Institute (JSI) has welcomed 23 students from 11 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This year’s cohort will spend seven weeks taking classes, participating in polic...

News

Ford School welcomes local and state elected officials to boost collaborative work

Feb 16, 2023

Elected officials from local, county, and state government came to the Ford School to hear about the potential for collaborations with their offices and the School’s faculty, research centers, and students. Fifteen members of the Michigan State Se...

Ford School welcomes local and state elected officials to boost collaborative work

Publication

Groundbreaking data from College and Beyond II help researchers examine diverse college experiences

Jan 10, 2023

Researchers have known for decades that attending college is associated with wide-ranging benefits to individuals and society. What is not entirely clear are the mechanisms that connect these beneficial outcomes with the undergraduate experience. For...

Groundbreaking data from College and Beyond II help researchers examine diverse college experiences

State & Hill

COVID-19 and education: A tough time for all

Dec 19, 2022

Ford School education researchers look for answers By Shaun Manning From early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered public education in the United States. Many schools introduced remote learning for at least part of the 2020-2021 ...

COVID-19 and education: A tough time for all