SRN LEADS/Stanford University: School Redesign Network — Leadership, Equity & Accountability in Districts & Schools

biographies

Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and SRN LEADS. Professor Darling-Hammond has also served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Prior to Stanford, Darling-Hammond was the William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. There, she was the founding Executive Director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, the blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, catalyzed major policy changes across the United States to improve the quality of teacher education and teaching. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of teaching quality, school reform, and educational equity. Among her more than 200 publications is Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs (Jossey-Bass: 2006), The Right to Learn, recipient of the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award for 1998, and Teaching as the Learning Profession (co-edited with Gary Sykes), recipient of the National Staff Development Council's Outstanding Book Award for 2000. Web site.

 

Alethea Andree

Alethea Andree is a research assistant for SRN LEADS. Prior to joining SRN LEADS she was an administrative assistant for the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) program.

 

Linda Carstens

Linda Carstens is Director of Professional Learning, a position she was appointed to after serving for a year as LEADS Network Director. Previously she was Senior Research Associate at WestEd. She has 30 years of district-level administrator experience in California, primarily in the areas of standards, assessment, curriculum and instruction as part of systemic reform, and in services for English Language Learners. Carstens served as a Visiting Educator in the Accountability Branch of the California Department of Education.  In four years at WestEd, she worked with several California districts in the area of systemic reform and second language, and for two years, co-provided the state's Title III technical assistance obligation to districts.  Carstens serves as a peer reviewer for state assessment and accountability systems for the USED, and recently authored a chapter on the impact of NCLB on ELL students for the Center on Education Policy.  She earned a Ph.D. in multicultural education from Claremont Graduate University in 1993.

 

Diane Friedlaender

Diane Friedlaender is Research Coordinator for SRN LEADS. In this role, she oversees the SRN LEADS research efforts and is currently conducting a study in collaboration with the Justice Matters Institute entitled High Schools for Equity:policy supports for student learning in low-income communities of color. Friedlaender also led SRN's project, Windows on Conversions: A multi-media exploration of redesign at four comprehensive high schools. Prior to joining SRN, she taught courses on the sociological and multi-cultural foundations in education and conducted anti-racism trainings for teachers. She has also conducted research on school reform models, youth intergroup relations and racial identity development, youth development, and evaluated arts education and after-school programs and foundations' grant-making strategies. She earned her B.A. from UC San Diego and Ph.D. in Education Policy from UCLA.

 

Milica Gurney

Milica Gurney is Administrative Director for SRN LEADS. In this role she oversees business operations and event management for the department. She has 20 years of experience in administrative and marketing operations.

 

Grace Hoagland

Grace M. Hoagland completed her graduate education at Oxford, Harvard and Indiana University, where her doctoral thesis was a study of entrepreneurial leadership in public schools.  Her work in education has centered on school reform, including service as executive director of regional reform initiatives in Indiana, St. Louis and the Bay Area.  She is a recent department chair in the Department of Educational Leadership, College of Education and Allied Studies at Cal State University East Bay.  She currently serves on the boards of Partners for School Innovation, the Center for Ecoliteracy, and the Stanford School of Education Advisory Board, served on the Stanford Alumni Board, and last year chaired the Stanford Associates Board of Governors.

 

Barbara McKenna

Barbara McKenna is Communications Director for SRN LEADS. Previously she directed communications for the national Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE). She also worked as a public information officer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Previously, she worked as a reporter for numerous papers including the Santa Cruz Sentinel and the Washington Post. She is also a web and graphic designer.

 

Raymond Pecheone

Raymond Pecheone is the Co-Executive Director of the Stanford School Redesign Network and Director of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) program, a consortium of 31 California teacher preparation programs that have joined together to develop a reliable and valid measure of teacher quality. Formerly, Pecheone was the Connecticut Bureau Chief for Curriculum and Teacher Assessment and developed the first performance-based licensure and inductions system for teachers in the nation. In addition, he co-founded INTASC, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, and co-directed the first Assessment Development Laboratory for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Pecheone has helped to develop the design for revamping the New York States Regents Examinations, served as a consultant to the Council of Chief State School Officers and ETS for the development and validation of a performance-based assessment for school administrators which is currently used by 15 states, and consulted with numerous state education departments. Pecheone has published widely in the area of teacher and student assessment.

 

Peter Ross

Peter Ross is a doctoral candidate in Administration and Policy Analysis at the Stanford University School of Education. Prior to beginning his studies, Peter was a classroom teacher in New York City, managed education non-profits in the Bay Area and in Maine, and was a Project Manager with SRN LEADS.

 

Elle Rustique-Forrester

Elle Rustique-Forrester is an associate director at SRN LEADS and previously directed the New Performance Assessment Collaborative, a consortium of small and redesigned high schools committed to creating rigorous, performance-based assessments for graduation and demonstrating college and workplace readiness. Rustique-Forrester earned an MA in educational policy from Teachers College, Columbia University and a PhD from the University of London's Institute of Education where she studied the effects of England's accountability system on teachers and schools' responses to low-performing students. A former teacher of Central Park East Secondary School in East Harlem, she is the author of Working with Disaffected Students: Why Students Lose Interest in School and What We Can Do About It (2002) and Multiple Measures Approaches to High School Graduation (2005), co-authored with Linda Darling-Hammond and Raymond Pecheone. Rustique-Forrester's interests lie with school redesign, educational policy, accountability and assessment systems, and teachers' professional development and learning.

 

Kendyll Stansbury

Kendyll Stansbury has worked in student and teacher assessment for 15 years. She currently oversees the development and revision of a pre-service teaching performance assessment and rubrics for the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) consortium of 31 teacher preparation programs.

 

Terrance Turner

Terrance Turner is an administrative associate for SRN LEADS/LEADS and the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Before coming to SRN LEADS/LEADS he worked as both a grant writer and research assistant.

 

Ash Vasudeva

Ash Vasudeva is Co-Executive Director of Stanford University’s School Redesign Network.  Vasudeva develops partnerships with districts, CMOS, and intermediary organizations and heads-up SRN’s portfolio of research, evaluation and leadership development initiatives.  Vasudeva joined SRN in 2005 as Associate Director for Policy Research and co-authored Windows on Conversion, multimedia case studies of school redesign features and district and state policies that help support equitable and high achieving high schools for all students.   In 2006, Vasudeva became SRN’s Deputy Director and he helped launch the LEADS (Leadership for Equity and Accountability in Districts and Schools) network. LEADS is one of a handful of educational leadership programs in the country that builds partnerships between Schools of Business and Education to bring interdisciplinary perspectives and knowledge bases to the work of K-12 district and school reformers. Prior to joining Stanford University, Vasudeva was Senior Research Associate in WestEd's Evaluation and Policy Research Program, where he conducted a longitudinal impact evaluation of the Western Regional Educational Laboratory (WREL). Vasudeva received his BS in History from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD in Educational Policy from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Darling-Hammond named in top 10 most influential

In January, 2007, SRN LEADS Co-executive Director Linda Darling-Hammond was named as one of the 10 most influential people in the field of education over the last decade. The ranking came from a study conducted by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, a program of Education Week. Darling-Hammond holds the number 10 spot (shared with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings) and is the only full-time academic listed. Read more.