Barack Obama has picked as an education-policy adviser Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University who for two decades has been a key figure in the nation’s school-reform debate.
Ms. Darling-Hammond volunteered to become part of Mr. Obama’s team of education-policy advisers last month, said Jen Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman. “As one of the leading thinkers on education, we are thrilled to have her on the team,” Ms. Psaki said in an interview today.
At Stanford, Ms. Darling-Hammond is co-director of the School Redesign Network and the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Before moving to Stanford, in 1998, she was a professor of education at Teachers College at Columbia University, a researcher for the RAND Corporation, and director of the National Urban Coalition’s Excellence in Education program.
At Columbia, she also served as co-director of the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching, and as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. She is the author of The Right to Learn, which received the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award in 1998, and has been a leading critic of the federal No Child Left Behind law, arguing that it does not do enough to encourage schools to teach higher-order thinking skills.
Ms. Darling-Hammond’s involvement in higher education has consisted mainly of weighing in on debates over teacher education. She has been a prominent critic of Teach for America—a program that sends recent college graduates into rural and urban schools—telling The Chronicle that it has failed to take steps to make sure it adequately prepares its participants.
Update: After this item was posted Ms. Darling-Hammond contacted us to clarify that she holds no formal appointment with the Obama campaign and continues to hold her usual appointment as professor of education at Stanford University.
In her capacity as a researcher and private citizen she has advised numerous legislators on a variety of education issues, including Senator Obama, and she has endorsed the senator’s education platform.
