56 American education writers

William Charles Ayers is an American elementary education theorist. During the 1960s, Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground that opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s radical activism and his later work in education reform, curriculum and instruction.

Harry Erwin Bard was secretary of the Pan American Society of the United States. He was also an author on education specializing in South America.

Randy Elliot Bennett is an American educational researcher who specializes in educational assessment. He is currently the Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. His research and writing focus on bringing together advances in cognitive science, technology, and measurement to improve teaching and learning. He received the ETS Senior Scientist Award in 1996, the ETS Career Achievement Award in 2005, the Teachers College, Columbia University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016, Fellowship status in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2017, the National Council on Measurement in Education's (NCME) Bradley Hanson Award for Contributions to Educational Measurement in 2019, and the E. F. Lindquist Award from AERA and ACT in 2020. Randy Bennett was elected President of both the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), a worldwide organization primarily constituted of governmental and NGO measurement organizations, and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), whose members are employed in universities, testing organizations, education departments, and school districts.

Frank Wilson Blackmar was an American sociologist, historian and educator. He served as the 9th President of the American Sociological Society.

Catharinus Putnam Buckingham was an American soldier, college professor, author, and industrialist. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and was the main assistant to the U.S. Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, during part of the first term of the Lincoln Administration.

Susan Horowitz Cain is an American writer and lecturer, and author of the 2012 non-fiction book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which argues that modern Western culture misunderstands and undervalues the traits and capabilities of introverted people. In 2015, Cain co-founded Quiet Revolution, a mission-based company with initiatives in the areas of children, lifestyle, and the workplace. Cain's 2016 follow-on book, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, focused on introverted children and teens, the book also being directed to their educators and parents.

Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey is an American higher education writer and policy analyst. He serves as Director of the Education Policy Program at New America, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization based in Washington, D.C. He writes regularly on education for The Upshot at the New York Times, and is guest editor of the annual Washington Monthly College Guide. He has taught education policy at Johns Hopkins University, and was a monthly columnist for six years at The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has been described by New York Times Washington columnist David Leonhardt as “one of the sharpest higher education experts out there” and by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews as “the best higher education writer in the country.”

Marva Delores Collins was an American educator. Collins is best known for creating Westside Preparatory School, a private elementary school in the impoverished Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois which opened in 1975.

John Collins Covell was a 19th-century American educator and school administrator specializing in deaf education in the U.S. states of Virginia and West Virginia.

Anne Curzan is a professor at the University of Michigan, author of books on language, member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and co-host of That's What They Say on Michigan Radio.

Fred D'Ignazio is an American author, educator, and television commentator.

Robin Jeanne DiAngelo is an American author, consultant, and facilitator working in the fields of critical discourse analysis and whiteness studies. She formerly served as a tenured professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and is currently an Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington. She is known for her work pertaining to "white fragility", an expression she coined in 2011 and explored further in a 2018 book titled White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

The 7th Dzogchen Ponlop is an abbot of Dzogchen Monastery, founder and spiritual director of Nalandabodhi, founder of Nītārtha Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies, a leading Tibetan Buddhist scholar, and a meditation master. He is one of the highest tülkus in the Nyingma lineage and an accomplished Karma Kagyu lineage holder.

John Erskine was an American educator and author, pianist and composer. He was an English professor at Amherst College from 1903 to 1909, followed by Columbia University from 1909 to 1937. He was the first president of the Juilliard School of Music. During his tenure at Columbia University he formulated the General Honors Course—responsible for inspiring the influential Great Books movement. He published over 100 books, novels, criticism, and essays including his most important essay, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent (1915).

Abraham Flexner was an American educator, best known for his role in the 20th century reform of medical and higher education in the United States and Canada.

Jeremiah Denis Mathias Ford (1873–1958) was Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literature at Harvard University from 1907 to 1943, and Chairman of the Department of Romance Languages from 1911 to 1943. He was the youngest-ever to be appointed a professor at Harvard and the last ever appointed Chairman of the Department of Romance Languages.

Josette Frank was an American children's literature expert and educational consultant. Frank spent most of her adult life working for the Child Study Association of America (CSAA), a leading authority on child development from the 1920s to the 1960s. Frank was engaged as the CSAA's child reading expert and published a parental literary guide titled What Books For Children? in 1937 with a new edition in 1941. Due to her progressive views about parental supervision of children's reading, Frank became one of the significant pro-comics voices during the American anti-comics movement of the 1950s, for which she received praise and criticism.

John Taylor Gatto was an American author and school teacher who taught in the classroom for nearly 30 years. He devoted much of his energy to his teaching career, then, following his resignation, authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. He is best known for his books Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, which is sometimes considered to be his magnum opus.

Nikhil Goyal is an American sociologist. He has previously taught as an adjunct professor in New York University's Prison Education program. He is the author of Schools on Trial, which was published by Doubleday, an imprint of Random House, in 2016, and has written for The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Nation, and other publications.

Lyda Judson Hanifan, better known as L. J. Hanifan, is credited with introducing the concept of social capital. Robert Putnam in his book, Bowling Alone (2000) credits a 1916 paper by Hanifan as the first recorded instance of the term. Hanifan also authored a book published in 1920 that contains a chapter entitled "Social Capital".

Elizabeth Harrison was an American educator. She was the founder and first president of what is today National Louis University. Harrison was a pioneer in creating professional standards for early childhood teachers and in promoting early childhood education.

Fred M. Hechinger was a German-born American education editor at The New York Times from 1959 to 1990.

Frederick M. Hess is an American educator, political scientist, and author. He is resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to his blog "Rick Hess Straight Up" on Education Week, he is also a regular contributor to Forbes and The Hill, and executive editor of Education Next.

John Caldwell Holt was an American author and educator, a proponent of homeschooling and, specifically, the unschooling approach, and a pioneer in youth rights theory.

Kay Johnson-Gentile is an American musician and educator.

Kristine K. Kershul is an American author, publisher, linguist and teacher. Kershul founded Bilingual Books, Inc. in 1981 with the publication of her first book, German in 10 Minutes a Day and the development of the 10 Minutes a Day Series. She has authored books, audio CDs, phrase guides and interactive computer software for 20 languages.

Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior. He is a proponent of progressive education and has offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, managing, and American society more generally, drawing in each case from social science research.

Jonathan Kozol is an American writer, progressive activist, and educator, best known for his books on public education in the United States.

Susan Marie Kunze is a former second grade teacher in Bishop, California, situated in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. She is an author of educational books and other resources, as well as a recipient of the 2008 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

Joanne Larson holds the Michael W. Scandling Professorship at the University of Rochester Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

William P. Leahy is the 25th President of Boston College, a post he has held since 1996. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in Imogene, Iowa. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1967, and is a member of the Jesuits' Midwest Province. Leahy earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a master's degree in United States history at Saint Louis University in 1972 and 1975, respectively. He then began studies at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in Berkeley, California, where he earned degrees in theology (1978) and historical theology (1980). He was ordained a priest in 1978. He received a doctoral degree in U.S. history from Stanford University in 1986.

Sharon L. Lechter is an American accountant, author, and businesswoman. She is the co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, and the founder and CEO of Pay Your Family First, a financial education organization.

Harry Roy Lewis is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and university administrator known for his research in computational logic, textbooks in theoretical computer science, and writings on computing, higher education, and technology. He is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, and was Dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003.

Deborah Meier is an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement. After spending several years as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and then New York City, in 1974, Meier became the founder and director of the alternative Central Park East school, which embraced progressive ideals in the tradition of John Dewey in an effort to provide better education for children in East Harlem, within the New York City public school system.

John Howard Moore was an American zoologist, philosopher, educator and socialist. He advocated for the ethical consideration and treatment of animals and authored several articles, books, essays and pamphlets on ethics, vegetarianism, humanitarianism and education. He is best known for his work The Universal Kinship (1906), which advocated for a secular sentiocentric philosophy he called the doctrine of "Universal Kinship", based on the shared evolutionary kinship between all sentient beings.

William George Read Mullan, SJ, was an American Jesuit and academic who served as President of Boston College from 1898 to 1903 and President of Loyola University Maryland from 1907 to 1908.

Carroll Vincent Newsom (1904–1990) was an American educator who served as the eleventh NYU President and President of Prentice Hall.

Jeanne Laveta Noble was an American educator who served on education commissions for three U.S. presidents. Noble was the first to analyze and publish the experiences of African American women in college. She served as president of the Delta Sigma Theta (DST) sorority within which she founded that group's National Commission on Arts and Letters. Noble was the first African-American board member of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and the first to serve the U.S. government's Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). She headed the Women's Job Corps Program in the 1960s, and was the first African-American woman to be made full professor at the New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

William H. Payne was an American educator and translator. As professor of the Science and Art of Teaching at the University of Michigan in 1879, he was the first university professor of pedagogy in the United States. He served as the chancellor of the University of Nashville and the president of Peabody College from 1887 to 1901.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.

Elizabeth Porter Gould was an American poet, essayist, and suffragist who edited an early anthology of selections from Walt Whitman's work and wrote extensively on subjects related to education.

Neil Postman was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed technology, including personal computers in school and cruise control in cars, and is best known for twenty books regarding technology and education, including Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992), The Disappearance of Childhood (1994), and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).

Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools". Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.

Louise Michelle Rosenblatt was an American university professor. She is best known as a researcher into the teaching of literature.

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American actor, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and former politician who served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 to 2011. As of 2020, he is the most recent Republican governor of California.

Todd Siler is an American multimedia artist, author, educator, and inventor, equally well known for his art and for his work in creativity research. A graduate of Bowdoin College, he became the first visual artist to be granted a PhD from MIT. Siler began advocating the full integration of the arts and sciences in the 1970s and is the founder of the ArtScience Program and movement.

John Lancaster Spalding was an American author, poet, advocate for higher education, the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria from 1877 to 1908 and a co-founder of The Catholic University of America.

Kenneth Ray Sprague is an American bodybuilder, businessman, author and school teacher. He is best known as the owner of the original Gold's Gym in Venice, Los Angeles, which he owned and managed between the years 1972 and 1979.

Jesse Hilton Stuart was an American writer, school teacher, and school administrator who is known for his short stories, poetry, and novels as well as non-fiction autobiographical works set in central Appalachia. Born and raised in Greenup County, Kentucky, Stuart relied heavily on the rural locale of northeastern Kentucky for his writings. Stuart was named the poet laureate of Kentucky in 1954.

John Swett is considered to be the "Father of the California public school" system and the "Horace Mann of the Pacific".

Arthur Mellen Wellington was an American civil engineer who wrote the 1877 book The Economic Theory of the Location of Railways. The saying that An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two is attributed to him. He was involved in the design and construction of new railways in Mexico. He was chief engineer of the Toledo and Canada Southern Railroad. He was the editor of the Engineering News.

Richard K. Vedder is an American economist, historian, author, and columnist. He is a professor emeritus of economics at Ohio University and senior fellow at The Independent Institute.

Todd Whitaker is an American educator, writer, motivational speaker, educational consultant, and professor. A leading presenter in the field of education, Dr. Whitaker has published over 30 books on staff motivation, teacher leadership, technology, middle level practices, instructional improvement, and principal effectiveness, including the national best-seller, What Great Teachers Do Differently. Before leaving in 2016, he was a professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University. In 2013, Dr. Whitaker received the President's Medal from Indiana State University, the university's highest award for faculty.

Richard Grant White was one of the foremost literary and musical critics of his day. He was also a prominent Shakespearean scholar, journalist, social critic, and lawyer, who was born and died in New York City.

James Pyle Wickersham was an American educator and author in the state of Pennsylvania. He also served as the US Chargé d'Affaires in Denmark in 1882.

Gene Luen Yang is an American cartoonist. He is a frequent lecturer on the subjects of graphic novels and comics, at comic book conventions and universities, schools, and libraries. In addition, he was the Director of Information Services and taught computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. In 2012, Yang joined the faculty at Hamline University, as a part of the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFAC) program. In 2016, the U.S. Library of Congress named him Ambassador for Young People's Literature. That year he became the third graphic novelist, alongside Lauren Redniss, to receive the MacArthur Fellowship.