U.S. News has named Bellarmine University’s Annsley Frazier Thornton School of Education among the best in the nation in its 2021 Best Graduate Schools Rankings.
Bellarmine’s School of Education was one of 255 graduate education schools included on the list. U.S. News numerically ranked the top three-quarters of the list. For schools in the bottom quarter of the rankings, U.S. News made the editorial decision to display only the ranking range. Bellarmine fell into this 196-255 category, which was listed alphabetically.
The mission of the Annsley Frazier Thornton School of Education is to prepare caring, effective educators in the Catholic liberal arts tradition of Bellarmine University to teach and lead in diverse settings. The school offers degrees and programs to help prepare and enrich educators at all stages of their career:
To arrive at its final list, U.S. News surveyed 393 schools granting doctoral degrees in fall 2019 and early 2020 on these 10 measures:
Quality Assessment (weighted by 0.40)
- Peer assessment score (0.25): In fall 2019, education school deans and deans of graduate studies at education schools were asked to rate peer programs on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). A school's score is the average rating of all the respondents who rated it.
- Educational professionals assessment score (0.15): In the fall of 2019, school superintendents, school hiring contacts and professionals who hire graduates from graduate education programs were asked to rate programs on a scale of 1 to 5. A school's score is the average of all the respondents who rated it in the three most recent years of survey results. The graduate education schools provided U.S. News with the names of the school superintendents, hiring contacts and education professionals.
Student Selectivity (weighted by 0.18)
- Acceptance rate (0.06): This is the proportion of applicants to the doctoral program who were offered admission for the 2019-20 academic year.
- Mean GRE verbal scores (0.06): This is the mean verbal score on the GRE for doctoral students entering in the 2019-20 academic year.
- Mean GRE quantitative scores (0.06): This is the mean quantitative score on the GRE for doctoral students entering in the 2019-20 academic year.
Faculty Resources (weighted by 0.12)
- Student-faculty ratio (0.045): This is the 2019 ratio of all full-time-equivalent doctoral students to full-time faculty.
- Percentage of faculty with awards (0.025): This is the average percentage of the full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty who held awards or editorships among selected education journals in 2018 and 2019.
- Doctoral degrees granted (0.05): This is the ratio of the number of doctoral degrees awarded in 2019 to the number of full-time faculty members in 2018-19.
Research Activity (weighted by 0.30)
- Total research expenditures (0.15): This is an education school's total research expenditures averaged over fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Expenditures refer to separately funded research, public and private, that the school conducted.
- Average expenditures per faculty member (0.15): This is the average of research expenditures per full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty member averaged over fiscal years 2018 and 2019.
Data was standardized so that each school's value was compared with the mean and standard deviations of all other schools, and standardized scores were weighted, totaled and rescaled so that the top school received 100; other schools received their percentage of the top score. Graduate education schools were then numerically ranked in descending order based on their scores.
Every year, U.S. News ranks professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law, medicine and nursing, including specialties in each area, based on two types of data: expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students. The data for the rankings in all six disciplines comes from statistical surveys of more than 2,081 programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 24,603 academics and professionals, conducted in fall 2019 and early 2020.
Information on U.S. News’ website can help prospective students compare factors such as schools’ student-faculty ratio and job-placement success.