The Leftward Tilt of Education Scholarship

For the 2017 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, Education Week Commentary and Frederick M. Hess, the creator of the rankings, decided that the politics of scholarship on the eve of the Trump presidency would prompt an interesting and important conversation for those inside and outside the academy.
For this special section, Hess offers his own thoughts on “the leftward tilt” of education scholarship, while three education and policy scholars were invited to respond to the following query:
It’s no great secret that the American professoriate tilts to the left, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. The disjuncture between the academic mainstream and a large swath of the American public was especially evident during the heated presidential campaign and, more recently, in the course of the Trump transition. What should public-minded academics make of this? Is it a problem if academic sentiment generally aligns with one side of the political spectrum? Does it create challenges for the academy or limit the ability of academics to offer policy ideas or engage in a more robust public debate? What, if anything, should publicly engaged academics try to do about any of this?