Linda Darling Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond is the President of the California Sate Board of Education. Previously, she was the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network. She has also served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity. From 1994-2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, it was named one of the most influential reports affecting U.S. education, and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. Darling-Hammond is the author or co-author of more than 300 publications.