TED is coming to a TV screen near you. On Tuesday, May 7, our first-ever television special will air on PBS at 10pm. Called TED Talks Education, the special is a deep dive on ideas to make our education system stronger – with talks from teachers, learning experts, education researchers and more. The speaker roster includes: host John Legend, educator Rita F. Pierson, technologist Bill Gates, grit expert Angela Lee Duckworth, education reform advocate Geoffrey Canada, chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam, poet Malcolm London and the most-watched TED speaker ever, Sir Ken Robinson.

Set your DVR or mark your calendar now: May 7, 10pm, PBS. Above, watch a 30-second trailer for this special, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate Program.

And stay tuned for much, much more, as TED will be kicking off Education Week on our site on May 6. Bonus: the day after the special airs, it will be available as a webcast — and we’ll be posting extended versions of the talks from it on TED.com.

On May 7 at 10pm, PBS will air the very first televised TED event, TED Talks Education. The event, filmed in New York on April 4, brings together an hour of speakers and performers with a deep-rooted passion for education, and a focus on one of the major crises affecting US education right now: kids who don’t finish high school. Students drop out for thousands of reasons. How can we think about the problem?

The first three speakers booked: Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, plus TED favorites Bill Gates and Sir Ken Robinson — and watch for more announcements in coming weeks of dynamic teachers, speakers and performers to take the stage. The show is set to appear on PBS’ website after the air date, and we’ll let you know more soon.

TED Talks Education will be broadcast nationally in the U.S. and will be produced by WNET in conjunction with TED.  The program is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate Program. It promises to be an exciting, thought-provoking hour of television.

Want a preview? After the jump, watch Bill Gates’ fiery, data-packed talk on the US state budgeting system — which, he says, uses accounting tricks to siphon money away from schools and give it to entrenched interests.