In the shadow of a national reckoning on racial equity and in the wake of high-profile debates on the future of advanced (or gifted) education, the landscape of advanced education in the United States stands at a critical juncture. The controversies and challenges that have arisen in the world of advanced education signal a broader national conversation about how we value and nurture intellectual talent.
Join us on May 22 at 3 p.m. ET to discuss the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s report titled The Broken Pipeline: Advanced Education Policies at the Local Level. On a panel moderated by Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute), Adam Tyner (Fordham Institute), Dr. Shelagh Gallagher (National Association for Gifted Children), Randi Weingarten (American Federation of Teachers), and Shari Camhi (Superintendent of Schools for the Baldwin School Union Free School District) will speak on controversies and challenges surrounding America’s politics for advanced education and recommendations for improving them. Register now.
Moderator
Michael Petrilli
Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, and host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Speakers
Dr. Shelagh Gallagher
Dr. Shelagh A. Gallagher is the President of NAGC and director of Engaged Education, where she works with educators worldwide to promote appropriate education for gifted children. Previously, she spent 12 years leading the gifted education program at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. While at UNC Charlotte, she led two federal education grants focused on the needs of CLED gifted adolescents and currently runs the Talent Unleashed advocacy initiative in North Carolina to raise awareness of the needs of CLED students. She has conducted research and published widely on topics including personality attributes and giftedness, developmental and academic needs of gifted adolescents, questioning strategies for gifted students, and twice-exceptional students. She is co-author of the IEA policy report America Agrees. Dr. Gallagher is a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award and the James J. Gallagher Advocacy Award from the North Carolina Association for Gifted and Talented, the Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence from UNC Charlotte, and the Article of the Year Award from Gifted Child Quarterly. Eight of Dr. Gallagher’s curriculum units have won the NAGC Curriculum Division Award for Outstanding Curriculum. She recently received the “Person of SIGnificance” award from the National Society for Gifted and Talented. Every summer, Dr. Gallagher makes time to work with gifted adolescents as a Fellow at Camp Yunasa.
Randi Weingarten
Randi Weingarten is president of the 1.7 million-member AFT, which represents teachers; paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state and federal government employees; and early childhood educators. Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, representing approximately 200,000 educators in the New York City public school system, as well as home child care providers and other workers in health, law and education. Weingarten is the recipient of many commendations; she was included in Washingtonian’s 2021 Washington’s Most Influential People, City & State New York’s 2021 New York City Labor Power 100, and Washington Life’s 2018 Power 100 list of prominent leaders, and in 2017 received the Roosevelt Institute’s FDR Distinguished Public Service Award. In 2013, the New York Observer named Weingarten one of the most influential New Yorkers of the past 25 years.
Dr. Shari Camhi
Dr. Shari L. Camhi is the superintendent of Baldwin School District and past president of the national School Superintendent’s Association (AASA). She also serves on the National Assessment Governing Board. With more than 30 years’ experience in both education and business, Dr. Camhi has received numerous accolades and recognition for her innovative contributions to K-12 instruction, including Education Week’s “Leaders to Learn From,” NSPRA’s “New Superintendent to Watch,” Education Dive’s “Administrators to Watch.” She was also the recipient of the ISTE Sylvia Charp Award. She is frequently invited to present her work to experts and leaders in the field. Additionally, she has been a member of the American Association of Community College’s Commission for College Readiness, chair of the Educational Telecommunications Service Committee for WNET, co-chair for the Superintendent/College Presidents Partnership for the Long Island Regional Advisory Council on Higher Education (LIRACHE), and an active participant in the Long Island Consortium for Excellence and Equity (LICEE). Dr. Camhi received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Adam Tyner
Adam Tyner is national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he develops, executes, and manages new research projects. Prior to joining Fordham, Dr. Tyner served as senior quantitative analyst at Hanover Research, where he executed data analysis projects and worked with school districts and other education stakeholders to design custom studies. He has also spent several years leading classrooms, teaching English as a second language in China and California and teaching courses at the University of California, San Diego. His research and commentary have appeared and been cited in national and international media such as The Economist, Forbes, BBC, NBC, The New York Times, Education Week, Education Next, and The Diplomat, and his scholarly work has appeared in outlets such as Economics of Education Review and the Journal of East Asian Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego, where he completed his doctoral dissertation on the integration of rural-to-urban migrant workers in China’s cities. He also holds a bachelor of arts in international studies from the University of Oklahoma.
