Source: California Commission on Instructor Credentialing webcast

Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Constitute leader and one of the report'southward authors.

Source: California Commission on Teacher Credentialing webcast

Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Establish leader and one of the report's authors.

A prominent scholar from Stanford Academy will straight a new pedagogy institute in Palo Alto whose mission is to influence Chiliad-12 policies in both California and the nation.

Linda Darling-Hammond, an emeritus professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, is the president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, which formally announced its opening Wednesday. Along with headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, the institute has an office in Washington, D.C., an initial budget of $5 million and a staff of 30 that may abound to 50 within a year.

The new position volition take well-nigh of Darling-Hammond's time, although she volition continue to teach occasionally equally an emeritus professor at Stanford and to serve as chair of the California Committee on Teacher Credentialing. Patrick Shields, who managed research at SRI Education for two decades with a focus on California'south pedagogy force, will be the new institute's executive director.

The San Francisco-based Sandler Foundation is the lead funder with the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Southward.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stuart Foundation also providing initial support for the found.

The institute has opened during a critical period for education policy nationwide and in California. Forth with implementing the Common Core State Standards, California is transitioning to a new school accountability system and a financing organisation that targets essentially more coin to loftier-needs students and shifts control over spending from the state to local school districts.

In Washington, Republicans and Democrats are struggling with aspects of the rewrite of the No Child Left Backside law. But their overall compromise would return more authority over education policy and accountability to the states. That volition make it all the more important, Darling-Hammond said, for communities "to know what works and act based on that knowledge. States and the federal regime need to be in the knowledge-sharing business organisation," and the institute volition be a forum and conduit for that information, she said.

Independent and nonpartisan, the Learning Policy Institute will differ from most research institutions, Darling-Hammond said, in that it will combine original and existing research to focus on "pressing policy questions" and then will translate the findings so that federal, state and local policymakers and practitioners tin adopt the recommendations and bring them to scale. A large focus of  the establish'due south piece of work volition be on California, she said.

She said the institute's policy agenda will include:

  • Examining effective designs for new schools with structures, curriculum and types of learning that young people will demand to thrive in a "radically different, noesis-based world economy."
  • Sharing early education programs with potent outcomes so that they can be brought to scale. There is an emerging bipartisan recognition nationally of the importance of early instruction, she said.
  • Making recommendations and sharing research on how to attract, train and effectively retain the next generation of teachers; California and other states are already experiencing a diminishing supply of prospective teachers.
  • Helping to shape an "equity agenda" that draws attention to the The states' high rates of child poverty and homelessness and unequal schoolhouse funding and staffing, compared with other industrialized nations.

The timing may be right for a new institute focusing on these issues and for Darling-Hammond. An early on educational activity adviser to President Obama, who considered naming her secretary of instruction, she has been a critic of the standardized test-based school sanctions and federally prescribed options for turning around low-performing schools under the No Kid Left Behind constabulary. She also has criticized the federal government'southward pressure for states to use standardized exam scores to evaluate teachers.

As California, under Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown, rejected federal initiatives like the Race to the Top funding competition and went its own way, education leaders have turned to Darling-Hammond. Brown appointed her to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, where she and the commission have been rewriting requirements for grooming and credentialing teachers and principals. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson asked her to co-lead the task force that produced his Blueprint for Cracking Schools in 2011. The State Board of Didactics has turned to her for advice on creating a new school accountability system based on a collaborative process of improvement and a dashboard of measures of student and school performance. She gave a lengthy presentation of her ideas at the lath's May meeting.

While an abet for many of these policies and viewed equally an ally of the nation's teachers unions, Darling-Hammond said that the constitute is committed to evidence-based, loftier-quality research that "addresses the circuitous realities facing public schools and their communities."

An author of xx books and 500 publications, she has frequently testified earlier Congress and was an counselor to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which has produced the standardized tests for the Mutual Core Land Standards for California and other member states. While not involved in the creation and adoption of the Common Core – she has criticized its timeline for implementation – she has championed the standards' goals of deeper learning and problem solving.

Forth with researchers, the plant will utilise educators, policy experts and communicators who will hold briefings, seminars and debates and do extensive communications outreach and networking, the institute said in a press release.

Merely David Plank, executive managing director of Policy Analysis for California Teaching, or Pace, a research eye, said the institute'due south "biggest asset will be Linda."

"All of us say we want our research to influence policy," he said. "Linda is uniquely engaged at the highest levels of California and Washington, with a straight line to those making policy decisions so she is in a unique position to brand enquiry thing."

Susan Sandler, a trustee of the Sandler Foundation, will chair the board of directors. Other members are Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Enquiry at Harvard University; Kris Gutiérrez, professor of Language, Literacy and Culture at UC Berkeley and former president of the American Teaching Research Clan; David Lyon, founding president emeritus of the Public Policy Constitute of California; David Rattray, executive vice president of the Los Angeles Sleeping accommodation of Commerce; and Stephan Turnipseed, chairman of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

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