 While William F. Russell Professor at Teachers College, Columbia, Darling-Hammond co-founded the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST), which documented highly successful school models and supported a range of school reform initiatives in New York and nationally.As Chair of New York State's Council on Curriculum and Assessment in the early 1990s, she helped to fashion a comprehensive school reform plan for the state that developed new learning standards and curriculum frameworks to focus on learning goals and more performance-oriented assessments.This led to an overhaul of the state Regents examinations as well as innovations in school-based performance assessments and investments in new approaches to professional development.