Gene I. Maeroff's School Boards in America, A New Book

Gene I. Maeroff is senior fellow at the Hechinger Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he was the founding director in 1996. His latest book, in December 2010, is School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Among his 13 earlier books are Building Blocks: Making Children Successful in the Early Years of School; A Classroom of One: How Online Learning is Changing Our Schools and Colleges; Altered Destinies: Making Life Better for Schoolchildren in Need; and The Empowerment of Teachers: Overcoming the Crisis of Confidence.  His articles have been published in such general interest magazines as New York, the New York Times Magazine, and the Nation, as well as in such education periodicals as American School Board Journal, Principal, Teacher, and the Kappan.

Before moving to Columbia University, Maeroff was a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where for a decade he researched and wrote reports on education policy.  Earlier, he spent 16 years at the New York Times, where he was national education correspondent.  His work has been recognized with awards from such organizations as the American Association of University Professors, the Education Writers Association, and the International Reading Association.

Maeroff was elected a member of the school board in Edison, N.J., in 2008. It governs the fifth-largest district in the state and has a budget of $200 million. In 2010, he was elected president of the board, putting him in a position to lead a search for an interim superintendent and, then, for a superintendent. Maeroff moved from Manhattan to Edison in 1988.