U.S. News & World Report ranks the UW College of Education among best graduate schools

For a second consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report has ranked the University of Washington College of Education No. 5 among the nation’s best public education schools — and No. 12 among education schools overall, up one spot from last year — in its 2023 rankings of best graduate schools, released today.

Reflecting on the College's continued top rankings, Dean Mia Tuan noted that the school's longstanding commitment to community sets it apart from its peers and remains a critical component of its appeal to prospective students, faculty, staff, donors and organizational partners.

“As a public school of education, our mission centers the diverse communities we serve,” Tuan shared. “We strive to transform inequitable systems of education to create just, sustainable and culturally thriving democracies, and we do that by co-designing best practices with our community partners. Indeed, our long track record of impactful research-practice partnerships with schools, districts, families and nonprofit organizations speaks for itself and allows us to innovate together to successfully challenge flawed systems.”

U.S. News sent surveys to 457 schools granting education doctoral degrees in the fall of 2021 and early 2022, with 274 providing data that the publication used to calculate rankings. Measures include quality assessment based on surveys filled out by education school deans, deans of graduate studies at education schools and education professionals; research activity based on total research expenditures and average expenditures per faculty member; student selectivity based on acceptance rate and mean GRE scores; and faculty resources and productivity based on doctoral degrees granted, student to faculty ratios and percentage of faculty with awards.

In the latest rankings of education specialty programs, the UW had top 20-ranked programs in seven of the eight areas in which it has programs. Additionally, five UW education specialty programs were ranked in the top 10 among public education schools. The UW’s ranked programs are:

• Curriculum and Instruction:  No. 5 public; No. 8 overall
• Educational Administration: No. 7 public; No. 10 overall
• Education Policy: No. 14 public; No. 19 overall (three-way tie)
• Educational Psychology: No. 11 public; No. 13 overall
• Elementary Teacher Education: No. 4 public; No. 6 overall
• Secondary Teacher Education: No. 4 public; No. 5 overall
• Special Education: No. 6 public; No. 7 overall (tie)

Education is among six major disciplines ranked annually by U.S. News. These disciplines are the graduate program areas with the largest enrollments and, in addition to education, include business, engineering, law, medicine and nursing.

Prospective students can see how the UW College of Education compares to other education graduate programs and how the rankings are calculated on USNews.com. Additionally, visitors may view the College’s U.S. News profile page for information on application deadlines, fees and enrollment numbers among other data.