[6] In 1985, after completing her doctorate degree program, she began working as a Social Scientist for the RAND Corporation.

Darling-Hammond was a Senior Social Scientist and Director of the RAND Education and Human Resources Program when she departed for academia in 1989.

Gavin Newsom appointed Darling-Hammond to succeed Michael Kirst as president of the California State Board of Education.

[9] Darling-Hammond was president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

[11] From 1994 to 2001, Darling-Hammond served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, chaired by Governor James B.

Under her leadership, the commission carried out a strategy to build understanding and action for leveraging major improvements.

In 2006, Education Week named the commission's lead report, "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future," one of the most influential research studies affecting U.S.

As Chair of New York State's Council on Curriculum and Assessment in the early 1990s, she helped to fashion a comprehensive school reform plan for the state that developed new learning standards and curriculum frameworks to focus on learning goals and more performance-oriented assessments.

[11] This led to an overhaul of the state Regents examinations as well as innovations in school-based performance assessments and investments in new approaches to professional development.

[16] She has been instrumental in developing performance assessments that allow teachers to demonstrate their classroom teaching skills as they are applied in practice, as an early member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and, later as a co-founder of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT).

[19] Darling-Hammond has worked with dozens of schools and districts around the nation on studying, developing, and scaling up new model schools—as well as launching preparation programs for teachers and leaders.

She has suggested that, in addition to these major breakthroughs, "We badly need a national policy that enables schools to meet the intellectual demands of the twenty-first century (and) we need to pay off the educational debt to disadvantaged students that has accrued over centuries of unequal access to quality education."