Three Johns Hopkins education professors—Jonathan Plucker, Ebony McGee, and David Steiner—have been listed among the nation’s most influential education scholars in the 2025 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.
Compiled annually by American Enterprise Institute director of education policy studies and Education Week contributor Rick Hess, and chosen from among more than 20,000 or more university-based scholars, the list spotlights the top 200 contributors “to public discussions of education—both inside the academy and out.”
Jonathan Plucker, professor and director of the School of Education’s Master of Science in Education Policy program, is an educational psychologist whose research examines education policy and talent development. His work studying excellence gaps is part of a larger effort to reorient the thinking of policymakers and educators toward promoting achievement for all children. Plucker’s work has been supported by over $40 million in external grants and contracts. He has also published over 300 articles, chapters, and reports as well as the authoritative text Creativity and Innovation: Theory, Research, and Practice, now in its second edition.
Ebony McGee is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Inclusion in the STEM Ecosystem, with appointments in the School of Education and in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Mental Health. She is also part of the university’s Advancing Racial Equity in Health, Housing, and Education research cluster. An electrical engineer by training and a 13-time NSF investigator awardee, McGee is the leading expert on structural racism within the traditional STEM ecosystem. Her latest research explores innovation and entrepreneurship, focusing on the infrastructure enhancements required to support a diverse population of STEM entrepreneurs.
David Steiner, professor and executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, is the author of A Nation at Thought: Restoring Wisdom in America’s Schools, a penetrating, wide-ranging analysis of U.S. K-12 education. A former member of the Maryland Board of Education, Steiner served on the landmark “Kirwan Commission,” which produced the comprehensive recommendations behind the historic Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation, passed in 2021. He previously served as commissioner of education for New York State, dean at the Hunter College School of Education, and director of education at the National Endowment for the Arts.
The methodology for the 2025 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings scores each scholar in eight categories, including mentions in the education press, newspapers, web sources, and the Congressional Record; as well as the expert’s Google Scholar score, which tabulates others’ academic citations of their work.
