The EdNext poll edition

President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

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…

Dara Zeehandelaar Shaw was the national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where she oversaw Fordham’s research pipeline, designs and executed new studies, managed ongoing projects, and conducted quantitative and qualitative research until the beginning of 2017. Her areas of study include education governance and school boards; finance and teacher pensions; policy design and implementation (…

Brandon Wright is the Editorial Director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is the coauthor or coeditor of three books: Failing our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students (with Chester E. Finn, Jr.), Charter Schools at the…

Alyssa Schwenk is the director of external relations at the Fordham Institute, where she leads Fordham’s outreach and messaging to outside audiences, including the media, policymakers, others in the education-policy sphere, and the funding community. Alyssa started her education career at a Ward 5 D.C. charter school via Teach For America, where she learned that everything important in life can be learned in…