Stanford educated heavy-hitter Linda Darling-Hammond has launched a new think tank intended to bring evidence into education policy.
The Palo Alto, California-based Learning Policy Institute launched this week with 30 researchers and a board including some big education names, such as Henry Louis Gates Jr., the director of Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, and Kris Gutierrez, a language, literacy and culture professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The institute has some $5 million in initial funding and support from The Atlantic Philanthropies, S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sandler Foundation, the Stuart Foundation, and also the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which also provides support for Education Week coverage of deeper learning issues.
The article notes that the Learning Policy Institute will be based in Palo Alto, California but will also have a Washington office. That office is located in Dupont Circle, near the heart of "think tank row."
Topics that the new think tank will focus on include early childhood learning, educator quality, college and career readiness, school organization and design, and school funding and management.
According to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, the world's top five education policy think tanks are:
- Urban Institute (US)
- RAND Corporation (US)
- Brookings Institution (US)
- Cato Institute (US)
- National Institute for Educational Policy Research (Japan)
A full list of LPI's Board of Directors, leadership, staff, and senior fellows can be found here.