An Interview with Linda Darling-Hammond

By Dennis Sparks
Journal of Staff Development, Winter 1997 (Vol.18., No. 1)

(Editor’s Note: Linda Darling-Hammond is executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. A longer bio appears at the end of this article.)

JSD: What Matters Most: Teaching and America's Future argues that every student has a right to a competent teacher and that every teacher has a right to high-quality preparation, induction, and professional development experiences. The report stresses the importance of high standards for both students and teachers. Is there any evidence that students learn more when they have teachers who have met particular professional standards?

Darling-Hammond: There is a tremendous amount of evidence. The report includes reviews of research that encompass hundreds of studies that demonstrate the importance of teachers' knowledge of subject matter and teaching skills. That body of research has been accumulating over 30 years. Preservice education makes a large difference in teacher effectiveness.

There's also growing evidence that inservice development makes a big difference as well. The most recent study of which I'm aware is being conducted by David Cohen and colleagues at the University of Michigan in which they found that teachers' access to high-quality professional development affected their ability to implement reforms in a way that improved student achievement.

JSD: Many professional development activities seem to be pull-out programs for adults in which teachers are taken from their classrooms and "fixed." The report, however, says that school reform cannot succeed unless it focuses on creating the conditions in schools in which teachers can teach well.

Darling-Hammond: Teachers need sustained, intensive relationships with students. They also need sustained, intensive relationships with other teachers in which they can solve problems and share knowledge. One of the conditions for teacher effectiveness that is vastly under appreciated in American schools is teachers' time with students. The old factory model assumed that relationships between teachers and students were not important.

The most important thing was that teachers would deliver the curriculum more or less as prescribed by someone outside the classroom. We now know that teachers need to know as much about the child as they do about the subject matter and that creating longer and stronger relationships between teachers and students over more hours in the day and over more years makes a tremendous difference in the power of teaching.

That is the norm in countries like Japan, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and many others. Typically, teachers will spend at least two years with the same group of students, often for many more hours in the school day and for multiple subjects.

Teachers also need sustained time with their colleagues to share knowledge, to build practice, to critique ideas, to polish lessons, to build curriculum, to create assessments, to score student work, and so on. The most powerful learning for the improvement of already skilled teachers is the fine tuning of practice that can only occur in collegial settings.

JSD: Aren't those two recommendations—more time for teachers to be with students and more time for teachers to be with colleagues—in opposition to one another?

Darling-Hammond: We show in the report how to simultaneously increase both teachers' time with students and teachers' time with other teachers. To do that, we have to recruit back to classroom work many of the people who do their jobs wholly outside of the classroom and to redefine the work of supervisors, specialists, and other administrators. We must also redefine the work of teachers. If our recommendations were followed, virtually everyone in schools would be doing some teaching and some curriculum work and much collaborative planning.

JSD: When you refer to specialists, do you mean counselors, special education teachers, psychologists, and so on?

Darling-Hammond: All of them, yes. Virtually all of the people in these roles began as classroom teachers. The additional skills they've acquired would be used and shared as they become members of teaching teams. The team members would have various types of expertise they could use to solve the problems of classroom practice. In medicine, law, and higher education everyone continues to practice the core work of the profession even when they take on other administrative and collegial tasks. They simply reallocate their time.

JSD: In What Matters Most you point out that in the United States only about 43 percent of education personnel are classroom teachers, while in other countries that percentage is 60 to 80 percent. Are there schools or school systems in the U.S. that are closer to those percentages?

Darling-Hammond: In some regions of the country, the percentage of teachers is closer to 60 percent. Some restructured schools also have redefined the use of staff so 60 to 70 percent or even 80 percent of staff members teach.

The Taylor model of management in which some people think, plan, and manage while other people do the work is most developed in schools in the northeastern part of the U.S. and in large cities. In communities with small schools and less bureaucracy, the movement away from the one-room school house was not as severe.

In cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, schools that today are getting high achievement from students who are typically written off as failures are those that have restructured so that more personnel are directly involved in classroom teaching and longer-term relationships with students.

JSD: The Commission recommended that the standards developed by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards be the cornerstone for teacher learning. Why do you have so much faith in those standards?

Darling-Hammond: I am a member of the Board, but when it was first created I was a skeptic. Since then I have had a chance to see the standards and the assessment processes up close and to talk to a lot of teachers who have been part of the process. The standards articulate and then embody in assessments what good teachers really believe good teaching is all about. That's a new accomplishment in American education.

The standards recognize the complexity of teaching and make very prominent the relationship between teaching and student learning. The tasks that teachers undertake in the assessment process—tracking the work of various students over time, critiquing videotapes of their own practice, planning and reflecting upon and modifying lessons—are all the real tasks of teaching.

JSD: If these standards truly were the cornerstone of teachers' professional development, what would we see occurring in schools?

Darling-Hammond: First, we would see teachers collaborating with one another. The National Board standards require that teachers consult with one another about how to improve their practice. We would observe teachers talking about how to continually improve practice. We would also see practices in classrooms that are deeply rooted in challenging content and that take students very seriously. These practices would reflect much of what we know about how to motivate and engage students in active learning, how to structure learning and connect ideas across topics, and how to assess students so as to adapt teaching to their needs.

It's important to remember that completing requirements for National Board certification doesn't begin to encompass the array of learning opportunities we want teachers to experience every day, every week, every year throughout their careers. However, the standards that undergird the National Board assessment are broad and should inform other professional development experiences such as peer coaching and ongoing discussions about classroom practice.

The standards offer a lens for looking at practice that can be more widely applied than just the event of a teacher sitting for Board certification. The standards can help establish a set of norms and beliefs about practice that can permeate all professional development.

JSD: "Most professional dollars," the report says, "are spent today either reimbursing teachers for courses that may not be directly related to school needs or their classroom responsibilities for district determined workshops with even less connections to teachers' own practice." What is the Commission saying about graduate courses, CEUs, and other ways we recognize and reward educators?

Darling-Hammond: The old model was that teachers got a very thin knowledge base in preservice education. Master degrees were organized to give teachers specialized knowledge enroute to leaving the classroom. As a result, a tremendous amount of the course work at the graduate level is focused on skills that enable teachers to leave the classroom. There are very few intense courses offered on pedagogy, for example.

The Commission recommended that half of the estimated dollars spent for salary credits based on experience and education be redirected to demonstrated knowledge and skills. In the long run, we think this change should be supported by school districts and universities who will organize learning experiences for teachers to achieve those standards.

While many university courses are good, too many are not targeted on improving teaching. We've got to jostle the system a bit to make it pay attention to that so that district- and college-sponsored professional development actually improve the knowledge and skills required for teaching.

JSD: The Commission has also recommended that at least one percent of state and local education funding be consistently devoted to high-quality professional development. Is that sufficient?

Darling-Hammond: We think it's just a start. Some states and districts already do that. We liked the idea of a formula allocation because it locks in funds and allows schools to plan more than if it's a line item in the budget that comes and goes. But we also proposed that states give matching grants to districts that allocate up to three percent of their funds to professional development so districts that are already doing some things will set their sights a bit higher.

JSD: The Commission' goals, which are to be met by 2006, are very ambitious. Can they be achieved in that time?

Darling-Hammond: We believe they can, if all of the actors in the system—teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, schools boards, university faculty, legislators, and governors—focus their attention on what matters most—supporting good teaching for every child in every community as the key to America's future.

About the Author

Dennis Sparks is executive director of the National Staff Development Council, 1124 W. Liberty St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103, (313) 998-0574, (313) 998-0628 fax, (e-mail: dennis.sparks@nsdc.org).

Linda Darling-Hammond

Job: Professor of education, Stanford University and executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

Education: B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University in 1973, and a doctorate in urban education, with the highest distinction, from Temple University in 1978.

Professional history: She began as a public school teacher and was co-founder of a preschool and day care center. Before joining the Teachers College faculty in 1989, she was Senior Social Scientist and Director of the RAND Corporation’s Education and Human Resources Program. She earlier served as director of the National Urban Coalition’s Excellence in Education Program, conducting research on exemplary city school programs and urban school finance issues. She is author or editor of six books, including Professional Development Schools: Schools for Developing a Profession, A License to Teach: Building a Profession for 21st Century Schools, and Authentic Assessment in Action. In addition, she has authored more than 150 journal articles, book chapters, and monographs on issues of educational policy and practice.

For more information, contact Linda Darling-Hammond at 520 Galvez Mall, Room 402, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, (650) 725-0703, fax (650) 723-7578, e-mail: ldh@leland.stanford.edu.


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