Samuel Abrams, Visiting Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University

Samuel E. Abrams is a visiting scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University, writing a book on school reform for Harvard University Press.  His January 2011 essay for The New Republic entitled "The Children Must Play: What the United States Could Learn from Finland about Education Reform" draws on six weeks of school observations and interviews with government officials in Norway as well as Finland and consists of many findings to appear in his book.  

In addition to his work as a researcher, Abrams has worked extensively with Finnish scholars and government officials.  He organized and chaired a symposium on Finnish vs. U.S. educational policy at Columbia in March 2010 that included ten members of the Finnish Parliament; organized and moderated a presentation on Finnish education by Pasi Sahlberg at Columbia in September 2010; commented on the manuscript of Sahlberg’s recently published book Finnish Lessons (Teachers College Press, 2011); and briefed Finnish Minister of Education Henna Virkkunen on U.S educational policy in advance of her meeting in New York with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in March 2011.

Abrams was previously a high school teacher of history and economics for eighteen years, the last nine of which at a New York public high school called Beacon.  Abrams earned a B.A. in history and M.A. in economics of education from Columbia.