For Release: Four Leaders in Education, Education Law Join Education Sector’s Board of Directors

Washington, D.C.— Education Sector's Board of Directors has named four prominent leaders in the fields of education and education law to the board: Camilla Persson Benbow, Dominic Brewer, Michael (Mike) Goldstein, and Jane Wellman.

Camilla P. Benbow is Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, a position she has held since 1998. Under her leadership, the school has been ranked as the top education school in the country by U.S. News and World Report for the last four years.

An educational psychologist, Benbow has focused her scholarly work on the education of gifted students and the development of mathematical talent. She co-directs, with David Lubinski, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), a longitudinal study examining the developmental trajectories of more than 5,000 individuals throughout their life spans. She is particularly interested in identifying the educational experiences and interventions most conducive to developing intellectual talent and excellence in careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Benbow has received a distinguished scholar award from the National Association for Gifted Children and has been inducted into Johns Hopkins University’s Society of Scholars. In 2004, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the MENSA Education and Research Foundation. She was recently appointed co-chair of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, a new accrediting body formed through the unification of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council. She co-founded the committee of AAU College of Education Deans.

Benbow was appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. President George W. Bush appointed her to the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation.

Dominic Brewer is vice dean for Research, Partnerships, and Globalization and Clifford H. and Betty C. Allen Professor in Urban Leadership at the Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California. Brewer is a labor economist specializing in the economics of education and education policy.

Before joining USC in 2005, he was a vice-president at RAND Corp., directing RAND’s education policy research program for more than five years. Brewer has overseen major projects focusing on educational productivity and teacher issues in both K-12 and higher education. His most recent publications include a co-edited book, Economics of Education (2010) and one on urban education, Urban Education: A Model for Leadership and Policy (2011). His earlier work includes empirical analyses of the effects of teachers on student achievement, class size (including a review of the research literature published in Scientific American), and a book on competition in higher education, In Pursuit of Prestige (2001).

He co-led the state-sponsored evaluation of California’s charter schools (2003) and is one of the authors of Rhetoric Versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools (2001). Brewer spearheaded RAND’s effort to assist in major K-12 reform in the State of Qatar, the centerpiece of which is a system of charter-like, government-funded schools; a book detailing this effort, Education for a New Era, was published in 2007.

Brewer is a co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a policy research collaboration of USC, UC Berkeley, and Stanford; co-editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2010-2012; and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, elected in 2011.

Mike Goldstein is co-leader of the higher education practice at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Dow Lohnes PLLC. Goldstein has been a pioneer in the development and rational regulation of online learning and is a current member of the National Advisory Panel organized by the Council of State Governments to develop interstate reciprocity laws governing cross-border online learning. 

He has long served as general counsel to the American Association of Community Colleges as well as in the past as general counsel to other higher education organizations, including the State Higher Education Executive Officers and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.  Prior to joining Dow Lohnes in 1978 to organize the firm’s higher education industry practice, he was assistant city administrator and director of university relations in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York, and then served as associate vice chancellor for urban and governmental affairs and associate professor of urban sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  

Goldstein is chair of the board of trustees of the Fielding Graduate University, a founding member of the board of the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, and a board member of and general counsel to The Washington Ballet. He is a graduate of Cornell University and of the New York University School of Law and was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Urban and Environmental Studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Jane Wellman is the executive director of the National Association of System Heads (NASH), the association of the chief executives of the 52 colleges and university systems of public higher education in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Wellman came to NASH from the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit research and policy organization focused on ways to improve public transparency about higher education finance, including comparative data on cost metrics, where she served as executive director. She has more than 30 years of experience in higher education policy in the United States, at both the state and federal levels, working with public, nonprofit and for-profit institutions. Wellman previously sat on the Association of American Colleges and Universities' board of directors, and was a member of the board of trustees for Argosy University.

Wellman is widely recognized for her work in public policy and higher education at both the state and federal levels, with particular expertise in state fiscal policy, cost analysis, strategic planning, state and federal regulation of higher education, accountability metrics and performance reporting, and quality control including accreditation.

Wellman served as a senior associate with the Institute for Higher Education Policy, vice-president for government relations with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, deputy director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, and staff director of the California Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

"Camilla, Dominic, Mike, and Jane bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the Education Sector board. We are delighted that they are joining this organization as we continue to address key issues in education policy,” said David Breneman, who chairs Education Sector’s board recruitment committee.

Education Sector is an independent think tank that challenges conventional thinking in education policy. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to achieving measurable impact in education, both through improving existing reform initiatives and by developing new, innovative solutions to our nation’s most pressing education problems.

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