Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. She holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University and an Ed.D. with highest distinction from Temple University. Beginning her career as a public school teacher, she co-founded a preschool and a public high school. She later served as Director of the RAND Corporation’s education program and as an endowed professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College before joining Stanford, where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped redesign. She has consulted widely with federal, state, and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices.

Darling-Hammond was executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future from 1994 to 2001, authoring the influential 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future. She directed President Barack Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team in 2008 and led President Biden’s in 2020. Currently, she is President of the California State Board of Education and founding president of the Learning Policy Institute. Her research focuses on educational policy, equity in education, teachers and teaching, assessment, achievement, child development, curriculum and instruction, international and comparative education, and standards. Among her over 600 publications are award-winning books such as 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 is past president of the American Educational Research Association, recipient of its awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research, Lifetime Achievement, Research Review, and Research-to-Policy, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education. In 2022, she received the Yidan Prize for Education Research, and in 2023, she was named Policy Leader of the Year by the National Association of State Boards of Education. She has received 14 honorary degrees and was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people in educational policy in 2006.

Professional Email: ldh@stanford.edu