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Linda Darling-Hammond

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Linda Darling-Hammond

Professor Emerita

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Office: CERAS 433

Biography

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University and founding president of the Learning Policy Institute, created to provide high-quality research for policies that enable equitable and empowering education for each and every child. At Stanford she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign.

Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association and recipient of its awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research, Lifetime Achievement, Research Review, and Research-to-Policy. She is also a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Education. From 1994–2001, she was executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future was named one of the most influential 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 directed President Barack Obama's Education Policy Transition Team. She is currently President of the California State Board of Education.

Darling-Hammond began her career as a public school teacher and co-founded both a preschool and a public high school. She served as Director of the RAND Corporation’s education program and as an endowed professor at Columbia University, Teachers College before coming to Stanford. She has consulted widely with federal, state and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices and is the recipient of 14 honorary degrees in the U.S. and internationally. Among her more than 600 publications are a number of award-winning books, including The Right to Learn, Teaching as the Learning Profession, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World and The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment will Determine our Future. She received an Ed.D. from Temple University (with highest distinction) and a B.A. from Yale University (magna cum laude).

Other Titles

Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Graduate School of Education

Program Affiliations

CTE
SHIPS (PhD)
SHIPS (PhD): Administration and Policy Analysis
(MA) ICE/IEPA

Research Interests

Achievement | Assessment, Testing and Measurement | Brain and Learning Sciences | Child Development | Curriculum and Instruction | Educational Policy | Equity in Education | International and Comparative Education | Standards | Teachers and Teaching

See a full list of GSE Faculty research interests >

Recent Publications

Darling-Hammond, L. (2023). How Teacher Education Matters (Reprint from Journal of Teacher Education, Vol 51, pg 166-173 2000). JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION, 74(2), 151–156.

Darling-Hammond, L., & McGuire, K. (2023). Policy for Civic Reasoning. ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, 705(1), 232–248.

Darling-Hammond, L., Flook, L. F., Cook-Harvey, C., Barron, B., & Osher, D. (2019). Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development. APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE.

Linda Darling-Hammond in the News & Media

WBUR
Professor Emerita Linda Darling Hammond talks about high turnover in the teaching profession and ways to improve retention.
April 5, 2022
Professor emerita Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California State Board of Education and leader of President Biden's education transition team, weighs in on plans for standardized exams during the pandemic.
January 14, 2021
Professor Emerita Linda Darling-Hammond says we would do well to look carefully at what has worked—and what has not worked—around the world to reopen schools, so that we can put in place plans that can succeed.
July 21, 2020
Linda Darling-Hammond, professor emerita, presents a list of 10 policy proposals to re-open schools safely and equitably.
May 19, 2020
Professor Emerita Linda Darling-Hammond has been chosen to serve as the next president of the California State Board of Education.
February 12, 2019
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