Linda Darling-Hammond, President of the Learning Policy Institute, is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research and policy work focus on issues of educational equity, teaching quality, and school reform. She has advised school leaders and policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels. In 2008, she served as director of President Obama's education policy transition team. Her book, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine our Future, received the coveted Grawemeyer Award in 2012. Among her most recent books are Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Really Matters for Effectiveness and Improvement (2013) and Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning (2014).