Susan Harriet Fuhrman (born April 1944) is an American education policy scholar and served from 2006[1][2] as the first female president of Teachers College, Columbia University.
[8] Susan Harriet Fuhrman was born in April 1944[9] in the Bronx, the daughter of Irene Satz Levine, who rose from a stock girl to become Vice President of Ohrbach's department store.
[12] Her dissertation was titled, “The Classification of Roll Call Votes in New Jersey.” Fuhrman's Teachers College advisor and mentor was Donna Shalala, later U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and President of the University of Miami, who enabled Fuhrman and other students to gain real-world experience working with the Connecticut State legislature and a commission appointed by New York Governor Hugh Carey.
CPRE conducted some of the most influential early analyses of what would become the state education standards movement, critiquing the spate of school reforms enacted following the publication of “A Nation at Risk.” That report famously highlighted the failure of American students to keep pace with their counterparts in Japan, Germany and other countries.
In a series of articles and policy briefs, the CPRE group articulated a theory of standards-based reform that called for directly tying text books, teacher preparation and testing to statewide standards for student learning.
[13] “The big shift coming from CPRE was about changing standards from the generic benchmarking that had gone on in the past to something that actually shaped what students were learning in the classroom,” Marshall Smith said in 2007.
TC students serve as specialty and pre-service teachers, after-school instructors, classroom assistants and psychological counseling and literacy interns.
Another top priority for Fuhrman at TC has been the expansion of the college's international alliances, particularly working together with Columbia University's Centers of Global Excellence.
In 2009, Fuhrman created a new Office of International Affairs., through which TC has launched major partnerships with Jordan's Queen Rania Teacher Academy, the Khemka Foundation in India, China's Beijing University; and Pakistan's Ministry of Education.
At the start of Fuhrman's tenure as Teachers College President in August, 2006, she faced a contentious set of issues involving Professor Madonna Constantine, who had been Chair of the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology.
I’d be outraged and horrified if it was connected.” [30] Several days later, Fuhrman expressed regret, in her State of the college address, that "...in an effort to protect (Professor Luthar's) privacy, and under legal advice not to comment about her in response to any questions about the incident, even when asked specifically about her -- we didn't offer her the public support she deserves".
Building on the previous work of its Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, the college instituted sensitivity training and held town hall meetings.
[42] This vote arose from the discovery, by TC's Faculty Executive Committee, that senior administrators were to receive bonuses from the college's 2011-12 budget surplus, with a total amount of $315,000 to be distributed.
Some faculty and students voiced opposition to the proposed bonuses, especially in light of the administration's proposal to include a tuition increase of 4.5% in the budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year [42] Soon after the May 2013 faculty meeting, a group of students wrote a letter [43] strongly criticizing President Fuhrman for her association with the for-profit company Pearson Education, and for her decision to bestow a 2013 Medal for Distinguished Services to NYS Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch who has been a proponent of standardized testing.
[44] When Merryl Tisch spoke at the 2013 graduation ceremonies, some students staged a quiet protest, holding up signs that said, “NOT A TEST SCORE.” [45] Fuhrman's responses to these various concerns were delineated in a letter sent to the Teachers College community.
Regarding the medal for Tisch, she said, "Whether one agrees with specific aspects of the chancellor’s policies, her positive impact on the lives of New Yorkers is evident in her many accomplishments in public education over the years as well as her enormous contributions in health, human services, and the arts."
She convened a national conversation in the new field of learning analytics, which seeks to mine and analyze data generated by adaptive education technologies.
In a series of meetings that drew scholars and researchers from all over the world, Fuhrman sought to establish a common framework for sharing and analyzing this wealth of information, and for protecting the privacy of students and their families.