Linda Darling-Hammond

Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education emeritus at Stanford University, where she founded the School Redesign Network and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), and was faculty director of the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP).

She is also president of the recently launched Learning Policy Institute, which translates research into policy and practice to support equitable and empowering learning for all youth. In these roles, she has worked with countless schools and districts on studying, developing, and scaling up new systems of practice to improve teaching and learning; and has advised many state and national leaders on creating policies to support school and teaching quality, personalized and authentic learning opportunities, student and teacher assessment practices, and educational equity.

Darling-Hammond began her career as a public high school teacher, and she has cofounded a preschool and day care center as well as East Palo Alto Academy. As executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, she led the development of the 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, which was named one of the most influential policy reports affecting U.S. education in that decade.

In 2006, Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy; in 2008, she served as the leader of President Barack Obama’s education policy transition team. ­Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association, a two-term member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, as well as the National Academy of Education. Among her more than 400 publications is The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, which received the 2012 Grawemeyer Award.