Lessons from Abroad: International Standards and Assessments

Join Stanford University professor and noted researcher Linda Darling-Hammond as she discusses her latest research on international standards and assessments through two free unique webinar events.

Note that unlike the events in our regular webinar series for Edutopia members, membership is not required for this free event. These webinars are a special presentation of Edutopia and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education in Collaboration with the Council for Chief State School Officers.

  November 17, 2009: "Lessons from Abroad: International Standards and Assessments"

WATCH: Lessons from Abroad: International Standards and Assessments

Presenter: Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education, Stanford University

Host: Kathryn Baron, features producer and research editor, Edutopia

The world's top-performing school systems are said to be the model for new Common Core standards. Learn about the assessment systems in these countries, and how the results challenge the status quo in the United States.

iTunes: You can also download and listen to this recording on iTunes.

As is often the case, the number of questions from our community far exceeded our allotted time, but we've put together the following resources to help you get the most out of our Edutopia webinars:

• Join the discussion: If you had a question we didn't get to during the webinar, ask the experts and your fellow Edutopia readers at large. Webinar host Kathy Baron and other Edutopia staff will check back often, too, so please continue the lively discussion at our new Assessment Group.
• Download the PowerPoint presentation: Print the webinar PowerPoint presentation and take notes during the webinar, or download it for reference after the event.
• Find links to more information about the webinar topic below.
• Watch a video on International Assessment. Linda Darling-Hammond discusses what the United States can learn from high-achieving countries on teaching, learning, and assessment.

About the Presenter

Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network. She has also served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Darling-Hammond is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education.

Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality, and educational equity. From 1994 to 2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future," led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education, and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation's ten most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade.

Among Darling-Hammond's more than 300 publications are Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do (with John Bransford, for the National Academy of Education, winner of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Pomeroy Award), Teaching as the Learning Profession: A Handbook of Policy and Practice (coedited with Gary Sykes), which received the National Staff Development Council's Outstanding Book Award for 2000, and The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Schools That Work, recipient of the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award for 1998.

About the Host

Kathryn Baron

Kathryn Baron is features producer and research editor at Edutopia. She was most recently a Journalism Fellow developing a multidisciplinary, multimedia civic-journalism project at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity, at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

Baron worked at KQED Public Radio for more than a decade and has extensive experience in television, commercial radio, print, and Internet reporting. She has been a news host and an education reporter, notably on KQED's The California Report. Coming from a family of teachers, she says education is in her DNA.

Her articles have appeared in Parenting, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Jose Mercury News, among other publications. She has a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Albany and a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University.

These webinars are a special presentation of Edutopia and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education in collaboration with the Council for Chief State School Officers.