Edward B. Fiske is an internationally known education writer and editor who has written informatively on topics ranging from American higher education to primary school reform in Southeast Asia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Formerly the Education Editor of the New York Times, Mr. Fiske is well known as the author of the best-selling Fiske Guide to Colleges (Sourcebooks), an annual publication that has been a standard part of college admissions literature for two decades. Other books on college admissions co-authored with Bruce G. Hammond include the Fiske Guide to Getting Into the Right College, the Fiske College Deadline Planner, and the Fiske New SAT Insider's Guide (Sourcebooks).

Mr. Fiske and his wife, Helen F. Ladd, an economist at Duke University, spent the first half of 2002 at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and they are currently writing a book on that country's efforts to create an equitable and democratic state education system in the post-apartheid era. The resulting book, Elusive Equity, was published in July 2004 by Brookings Institution Press. In 1998 they carried out a similar project examining New Zealand's experiment with market-based school reforms. When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2000 by the Brookings Institution Press. Mr. Fiske is also author of the highly praised 1991 study of systemic school reform in the United States entitled Smart Schools, Smart Kids (Simon & Schuster).

Mr. Fiske joined the New York Times in 1964 as a news clerk and, after serving as Religion Editor, became the Education Editor in 1974. He edited the Times' quarterly education supplements and in 1983 authored an award-winning series on Japanese schools. In 1991 Mr. Fiske left the Times to pursue other writing interests related to education. He spent 1993-94 in Cambodia, where he worked with the International Rescue Committee on a UNICEF-sponsored cluster school project in the northwestern city of Battambang. He also worked with the Asian Development Bank and authored Using Both Hands, an analysis of the situation of girls and women in education in Cambodia.

Mr. Fiske’s journalistic travels have taken him to more than 60 countries. In 1995 he went to the former Soviet Union in behalf of the Academy for Educational Development to assess the effects of a major training program sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and in 1996 he visited Alaska and the Russian Far East to evaluate an exchange program run by the U.S. Information Agency. Other assignments have included a 1996 study of the politics of school decentralization for the World Bank; a series of reports for UNESCO, including the final report of the World Forum on Education for All, held in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000; and a 2001 report for the Aga Khan Foundation on its schools in northern Pakistan.

Mr. Fiske was born in Philadelphia. He attended the William Penn Charter School and Wesleyan University, from which he was graduated summa cum laude. He received master’s degrees in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and in political science from Columbia University and has been awarded honorary doctorates by Occidental College and other institutions.

He is a regular contributor to the International Herald-Tribune. In addition to the New York Times his articles and book reviews have appears in American Prospect, Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Readers Digest and other national publications. He has received numerous awards for education reporting and serves on a number of boards of non-profit organizations, including the Foundation for Excellent Schools in Vermont, the Center for International Understanding in Raleigh, NC, and the Central Park School, a charter school in Durham, NC.