School of Education

From those first days, the school has been defined by service to our students, to our communities, and to each other through ever-growing professional offerings and through collaboration with school districts, organizations, and agencies in our home city of Baltimore, throughout the state of Maryland, and across the country.

Our legacy is one of leadership, innovation, and scholarship in addressing education’s most-pressing issues in our nation’s classrooms and communities. We count among our number historic as well as present-day leaders in education: faculty, alumni, staff, donors, friends and, of course, students, who all share an extraordinary commitment to making a difference in the lives of learners everywhere.

Through our wide-ranging academic programs, we are the largest producer of new teachers for public schools in Baltimore City, our home community — where we also operate Henderson-Hopkins, one of the city’s top elementary/middle schools.

Our research and policy centers are recognized around the country for their evidence-based work in school-based health and safety, graduation improvement, equitable practices, social-emotional learning, tutoring, family engagement, literacy, counseling, and much more.

Accreditation

Johns Hopkins University is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). Middle States is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Since 1921, Middle States has continuously accredited Johns Hopkins University.

Vision

The schools, organizations, and communities we serve are confronting complex, far-reaching problems. Some are long-standing; others have exploded only recently into our collective consciousness. More than ever, it is clear that these challenges will require deep, empirically informed change.

Today’s Education Challenges Call for Change

• Health and Well-being:  Students increasingly are being diagnosed with mental health disorders, challenging educators to move beyond an emphasis on academic achievement to one addressing mental health and social-emotional well-being.
• Entrepreneurial Solutions:  States and districts are experimenting with policy approaches that emphasize entrepreneurial solutions to school safety and early childhood education, and for-profit startups are competing with nonprofit, traditional providers. 
• Growing Inequity: Education occurs in a context of growing societal and racial inequity—particularly in cities like Baltimore. Through our operation of the Henderson-Hopkins School, we have seen how local challenges reflect global ones.
• Changing Practice at Scale:  Research funders and consumers of research are requiring more rigorous studies that demonstrate the capacity to change practice at scale and make a lasting, positive impact.

Creating and Translating Knowledge for Impact

• Addressing the Social Determinants of Education:  Since much of what influences student learning happens in homes and communities, we focus on school climate, social-emotional learning, family engagement, career readiness, mental health and trauma, and other work to address the broadest needs of students and give schools the approaches, methods, and tools to help them thrive.
• Advancing Equity and Social Justice:  Recognizing that our society cannot afford to fail to develop the potential of individuals who are at risk of being left behind, the School of Education will act to advance equity and social justice through its training of leaders for diverse contexts and to apply knowledge toward improving outcomes for underserved students and organizations.
• Supporting Diverse Learners—and Educators:  As learners have unique and diverse educational and mental health needs that must be understood to teach them effectively, we prioritize work in learning differences, neurodiversity, tutoring, data analysis, and other areas across the spectrum of academic ability—as well as the needs of those who teach, counsel, and advocate on students’ behalf.

Actions

Given the deep and sweeping changes confronting schools and human services organizations, the Johns Hopkins School of Education leverages its considerable talents and resources to become a national leader in creating knowledge and translating it into means for impact. Guided by our vision, we engage in two defining actions.

• Developing Leaders for Diverse Educational Contexts:  Today’s diverse learners and learning environments demand flexible, resourceful educators who can spot problems and opportunities across a range of contexts. The School of Education leverages its expertise across all academic programs to develop the world’s most innovative 21st-century education leaders. We facilitate learning experiences that foster the skills, insights, and knowledge for critically examining factors within systems in education contexts; by evaluating unique and diverse needs of individuals situated in their contexts; by collaborating with stakeholders and research-practice partners; and by utilizing creative and rigorous methods to develop appropriate solutions and interventions.
• Making Knowledge Relevant and Actionable:  The schools, organizations, and communities we serve are confronting complex, far-reaching problems, from meeting the social, developmental, and educational needs of students to distributing resources in efficacious ways. The School of Education creates innovative, evidence-based policies, methods, and tools to address these challenges. We are a world leader in producing and translating cutting-edge knowledge, as well as in developing high-impact policies, methods, analytical tools, and applications, that advance education and serve our communities. To that end, we work to make research more rigorous, actionable, and scalable; to leverage technology; and to develop accessible data systems for research, implementation, and evaluation.

Our Community

During this dynamic and challenging time for education, we reaffirm the pivotal importance of our students, staff, faculty, and leadership—the people who work to realize our strategic vision. We remain committed to working collaboratively; building a productive, supportive culture; promoting and recruiting candidates from diverse backgrounds; and inspiring our community to foster positive teaching and learning environments.