Susan Tave Zelman

Dr. Susan Zelman was born and raised in the Bronx and is a product of New York City Schools. Many of her teachers entered the profession during the Depression when teaching jobs were hard to come by. She graduated from an all-girls high school and Hunter College. At Hunter, she majored in history and minored in political science. Following graduation, she taught high school social studies in the New York City schools and then received a fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of Education to the University of Michigan to pursue a doctorate in education. She spent the next fourteen years of her career as a college professor. She then pursued a career in state government as the Associate Commissioner of Education in Massachusetts, Deputy Commissioner of Education in Missouri, and State Superintendent for Public Instruction in Ohio. She is the recipient of three honorary degrees and numerous awards and grants.

Dr. Zelman returned to the department in 2013 as Executive Director and then retired from the Ohio Department of Education at the end of 2018. She then was senior vice president for education and children’s programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She is currently president of the Zelman Education Consulting Group. She has many clients in the field of education technology and textbooks. She continues to witness firsthand policy negotiations in education at the federal, state, and local levels through her consulting business.

Susan is also the mother of three children and grandmother of seven. As she has observed her grandchildren’s education, especially during the COVID pandemic, she has gotten depressed. She feels that their education can be so such more exciting and challenging. She worries whether our current public education system is adequately preparing children for a future that we cannot even imagine and senses that their world will be more difficult than we have experienced. In The Buying and Selling of American Education: Reimagining a System of Schools for All Children, Dr. Zelman takes a bold look at the timely examination of the history of education in the United States and proposes a controversial remodel of our current policy. The result is a challenging but necessary blueprint for action that extends beyond the political realm and into communities, families, and civil society.