California Governor Gavin Newson has appointed Linda Darling-Hammond as president of the State Board of Education.
Dr. Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Emerita at Stanford University. In 2008, she founded and co-directed the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, which fosters research, policy, and practice to advance high quality, equitable education systems in the United States and internationally. Dr. Darling-Hammond has been president of the Learning Policy Institute since 2015. She served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped design. She also is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education.
Throughout her career, Dr. Darling-Hammond’s research has focused on issues of school reform, teacher quality, and educational equity. In 2010, she led President Obama’s education policy transition team. She is the author of The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (Teachers College Press, 2010).
Dr. Darling-Hammond is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University. She holds an educational doctorate with highest distinction, in urban education from Temple University.
Great appointment and good optics. However, the needle will not change for Black students in California. These are political appointments, above and beyond the expertise of the appointees. Dr. Darling-Hammond is a fine scholar and advocate but entirely overmatched by the inertia and foundational antiblackness of the system. Her appointment is really a status-quo, accommodate-the-radical move. Now, she has been absorbed into the system, and it continues to function on its own terms. Let’s revisit this story at the end of her term.
Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond congratulations.God bless