Dive Brief:
- On Thursday, renowned teaching expert and Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond announced her plans to start a new education-focused think tank.
- The Learning Policy Institute, as it will be called, will aim to connect education research and policy — both by conducting its own research and by communicating external research.
- Darling-Hammond has been a prominent critic of standardized tests, which she says fail to adequately assess students’ critical thinking skills.
Dive Insight:
Despite a perception that Darling-Hammond is allied with teacher unions, she has stated the think tank will be an independent, non-partisan entity. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, and will work with those of any political affiliation or point of view who share that commitment,” she wrote in the announcement Thursday.
You can expect equity to be a big part of the think thank’s focus. Darling-Hammond has critiqued the deep inequities of the American education system and its unequal funding, calling it "the single most fundamental reason for our country’s lackluster performance."