Andrew was born and raised on Long Island. After completing an undergraduate degree in Art and Semiotics at Brown University, he began teaching Reading and Language Arts at a public middle school in Brooklyn, New York. Since then, he has taught English, reading, and civics, supervised teachers, designed curriculum, and managed school-wide assessment and reporting of academic performance at public schools in New York, New Orleans and Newark.

Andrew received a M.A. in English Education from Teachers College in 1994. In 2003, as a Teachers College Ed.D candidate in English Education, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled “Parallel Lives, Parallel Literacies: A reflexive life-history of an adult emerging reader and his teacher-researcher.” Later that year, at the national conference of the American Education Research Association, he received the Mary Catherine Ellwein Outstanding Dissertation Award for Qualitative Research. His notification letter included the following comment:

"According to the committee, your dissertation was enthralling in its efforts to reconceptualize what it means to write a qualitative dissertation. The creative aspects of your dissertation provided insights into how research is constructed and critique of dominant paradigms in research. Your work also showed the complexities of literacy education and literacy research."

Currently, Andrew serves on the faculty of City College of New York as Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in the Program of English Education. In addition to his continued interest in theories and methods of qualitative research, his research agenda includes diversity, equity, and access in literacy learning and reform in teacher preparation for urban schools. His first book – Street Lit: Teaching and Reading Fiction in Urban Schools – will be published by McGraw-Hill in fall 2006