Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, who led President Biden’s education transition team earlier this year, said that the Biden administration has already made dramatic reforms to public education during the first 100 days in office.
Darling-Hammond, who is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, pointed to Biden’s proposal to invest $122 billion for school reopening, educator stabilization, wraparound services and learning recovering as key initiatives to investing in education both at the K-12 and higher education level.
“This is the moment to seize,” said Darling-Hammond, who delivered the keynote address at Thursday’s webinar sponsored by the New Jersey-based Education Law Center. The education initiatives, she added, have come “so quickly and so forcibly,” and have sought to address critical issues like civil rights and desegregation and access to college.
“President Biden was determined to make the first 100 days really count,” said Darling-Hammond. “He has not wasted a single opportunity to do that.”
The work of the Biden education transition team, she said, was to focus primarily on how to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including inequality in education and the ongoing pandemic of racial injustice that has plagued schools–particularly in urban areas–for years.
Today, there are “great disruptions” for education, she said, but also a “moment of clarity about what the dire needs are.”
Darling-Hammond praised First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, a community college professor, for helping to advance the president’s focus on education.
