The President

Dr. Susan Fuhrman is the tenth President of Teachers College, Columbia University, joining the College in August 2006, and also Chair of the Management Committee of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). She previously served as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, as well as the school's George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education. Dr. Fuhrman received bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and a Ph.D. in political science and education from Columbia University, New York. She has written widely on education policy and finance; among her edited books are The Public Schools (The Institutions of American Democracy Series, with Marvin Lazerson, 2005); Redesigning Accountability Systems for Education (with Richard Elmore, 2004); From the Capitol to the Classroom: Standards-Based Reform in the States (2001); and Rewards and Reform: Creating Educational Incentives that Work (with Jennifer O'Day, 1996). Her many professional involvements include membership on the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the National Coalition on Asia and International Studies in the Schools. She is also a former Vice President of the American Educational Research Association, and a non-executive Director of Pearson plc, the international education and publishing company. Her research interests include state policy design, accountability in education, deregulation, intergovernmental relationships, and standards-based reform. She has also conducted research on state education reform, state-local relationships, state differential treatment of districts, federalism in education, incentives and systemic reform, and legislatures and education policy.

Educational Background

Dr. Fuhrman earned a B.A. in History, with highest honors, from Northwestern University in 1965; an M.A. in History from Northwestern University in 1966; and a Ph.D. in Political Economy from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1977. She wrote her dissertation at Teachers College on "The Classification of Roll Call Votes in New Jersey."

Scholarly Interests

Dr. Fuhrman's research interests include state policy design, accountability, deregulation, and intergovernmental relationships. She has also conducted research on state education reform, state-local relationships, state differential treatment of districts, federalism in education, incentives and systemic reform, and legislatures and education policy. She is currently a co-principal investigator of a large project that studies high school response to accountability pressures and use of instructional assistance in six states.

Selected Publications

Fuhrman, S., & Lazerson, M. (Eds.) (2005). American institutions of democracy. The Institutions of American Democracy series. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fuhrman, S. (2004). "Less than meets the eye: Standards, testing and fear of federal control." In N. Epstein (Ed.), Who's in charge of the schools? The tangled web of education power and policy. Denver and Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Elmore, R. & Fuhrman, S. (Eds.). (2004). Redesigning accountability. New York: Teachers College Press.

Fuhrman, S. (2003). "Riding waves, trading horses. The twenty-year effort to reform education." In D.T. Gordon (Ed.), A nation reformed? American education 20 years after A Nation At Risk (pp. 7-22). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Fuhrman, S. (2003). Redesigning accountability systems in education. CPRE Policy Briefs. Philadelphia, PA: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Fuhrman, S. (Ed.). (2001). From the Capitol to the classroom: Standards-based reform in the States, One hundredth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carr, M. & Fuhrman, S. (1999). "The politics of school finance." In Making Money Matter: Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance. National Academy of Sciences Press.

Fuhrman, S. & O'Day, J. (Eds.). (1996). Rewards and reform: Creating educational incentives that work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.