»ÆÉ«µçÓ°

»ÆÉ«µçÓ° the speakers

Linda Darling-Hammond

President and CEO, Learning Policy Institute and Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Emeritus, »ÆÉ«µçÓ°

Linda Darling-Hammond, president, and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Emeritus, at »ÆÉ«µçÓ° where she founded the »ÆÉ«µçÓ° Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as faculty sponsor of the »ÆÉ«µçÓ° Teacher Education Program, which she helped redesign. She currently serves as chair of California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and recipient of AERA awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research, Lifetime Achievement, Research Review, and Research-to-Policy. She is a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Education. From 1994 to 2001, she was executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future; its 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future was named one of the most influential reports affecting U.S. education in that decade. In 2006, Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s 10 most influential people affecting educational policy. In 2008, she served as the leader of President Barack Obama’s education policy transition team.

Darling-Hammond began her career as a public school teacher and co-founded both a preschool and a public high school. She served as director of the RAND Corporation’s education program and as an endowed professor at Columbia University, Teachers College, before coming to »ÆÉ«µçÓ°. She has consulted widely with federal, state, and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices. She is the recipient of 14 honorary degrees in the U.S. and internationally. Among her more than 500 publications are numerous award-winning books, including The Right to Learn, Teaching as the Learning Profession, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World, and The Flat World and Education. She received an EdD from Temple University (with the highest distinction) and a BA from Yale University (magna cum laude).

Eric Hanushek

SIEPR Senior Fellow; Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, »ÆÉ«µçÓ°

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, »ÆÉ«µçÓ°. He is a recognized leader in the economic analysis of education issues, and his research has had broad influence on education policy in both developed and developing countries. He is the author of numerous widely cited studies on the effects of class-size reduction, school accountability, teacher effectiveness, and other topics. He was the first to research teacher effectiveness by measuring student learning gains, which formed the conceptual basis for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers and schools, now a widely adopted practice. His book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, summarizes his research establishing the close links between countries’ long-term rates of economic growth and the skill levels of their populations. His current research analyzes why some countries’ school systems consistently perform better than others. He has authored or edited 24 books along with more than 250 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kyla Johnson-Trammell

Superintendent, Oakland Unified School District

Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell has led Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) as Superintendent since July 2017. OUSD is where she has spent most of her 22 years working in education, and it’s where she received her own primary education.

Johnson-Trammell grew up in East Oakland and attended Montclair Elementary School and Montera Middle School. She attended a private high school in Marin County on scholarship, before heading to the University of Pennsylvania where her career in education began. She first considered a career in law, but then tried her hand as a student-teacher, and her future was sealed.

After graduating college and obtaining her teaching credential, Johnson-Trammell taught at Parker Elementary School in Oakland for five years, three of which she also served as a teacher coach. That led to her first job as an administrator, serving as an Assistant Principal at Oak Grove Middle School in the Mount Diablo Unified School District. She worked there for two years before returning to Oakland as Principal at Sequoia Elementary School. From there, she quickly rose through the ranks of District leadership as Administrator on Special Assignment coaching 40 school leaders, Associate Superintendent of Leadership, Curriculum and Instruction, Lead Network Superintendent, and Interim Deputy Superintendent.

Johnson-Trammell’s numerous awards and honors include being recognized as Outstanding Principal of Alameda County by the Beta Mu Chapter of Alpha Delta Kappa, an International Honorary Organization for Women Educators. She also received the Outstanding District Leadership Award. Johnson-Trammell served as keynote speaker at an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference on Urban District Reform and a panelist at a New Schools Summit on Common Core Standards.

Johnson-Trammell has a B.A. in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania, a teaching credential from California State University, Hayward, an administrative credential (M.A.), and her Ed.D in Educational Leadership from the University of California, Berkeley. She and her husband are raising two children who attend Oakland Schools.

Heather Hough

Executive Director of Policy Analysis for California Education

Heather Hough is the Executive Director of PACE. Prior to serving in this role, she led the partnership between PACE and the CORE Districts. Her recent work has focused on using research to strengthen state structures supporting continuous improvement and advancing policies that support the whole child. Dr. Hough has worked in a variety of capacities to support policy and practice in education, including as an Improvement Advisor at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, the Center for Education Policy Analysis at »ÆÉ«µçÓ°, and the Center for Education Policy at SRI International. Dr. Hough holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy and a BA in Public Policy from »ÆÉ«µçÓ°.