Education

• Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Golden Gate University
• MA, University of California, Santa Barbara
• AB, University of California, Davis

Courses Taught

• EDUC 103/203: Public Policy: Children, Youth, and Family Issues
• EDUC 403: Education Administrative Theory
• EDUC 480: Education Leadership Seminar
• PPOL 180: Real Politics, Real Policy

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Biography

In August of 2004, Delaine Eastin joined the faculty of Mills College in Oakland, California as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Educational Leadership. Delaine joined the faculty because of the Mills’ early and deep commitment to educational leadership. She also teaches classes in public policy and serves as a senior adviser to President Janet Holmgren.

Between 1995 and 2003, Delaine Eastin served two terms as State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the state of California. The State Superintendent is a nonpartisan state constitutional office and Delaine Eastin was the highest-ranking official in California's elementary and secondary public school system, and the first and only woman to date to be elected State Superintendent. As State Superintendent, she spearheaded the drive to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade and to implement a system of statewide standards, assessments, and accountability. Eastin also advocated safe and healthy school environments, up-to-date facilities, twenty-first century technology, family-school partnerships, expanded teacher training and professional development, higher graduation requirements, including the arts in the core curriculum and increased resources for schools.

As State Superintendent she provided the backbone and blueprints for the first Net Day--a model that has been copied nationally and internationally. She was an early proponent of the charter school concept and has long advocated stronger technical and vocational training for students. An ardent supporter of public libraries, she was the major advocate for a dramatic increase in school library support.

Superintendent Eastin called for increasing and improving mathematics and science educational standards, more and better laboratory science in middle schools and high schools, and gardens in every school. She believes in strengthening school nutrition, and she enlisted California as the first state in the nation to embrace the Team Nutrition program to improve the nutritional value of school lunches. She has carried on a campaign to bring the arts back into schools at all levels. She was an enthusiastic supporter of civic engagement and community service for students. Superintendent Eastin was the first statewide official to advocate for universal preschool for all three- and four-year olds as well as for full-day kindergarten. A day care center in Fremont was named in her honor and, in 2002, a K-5 elementary school in Union City opened bearing her name. A high school art gallery in Healdsburg is also named for her.

Prior to her election as State Superintendent, Eastin served four terms in the State Assembly beginning in November 1986. As chair of the Assembly Committee on Education, she sponsored major legislation to reform the K-12 education system and to improve the sagging infrastructure of California schools. A former Accounting Manager for a Fortune 50 Company, Eastin wrote the fiscal accountability legislation, AB1200, to create an auditing system over California school districts after the Richmond School District bankruptcy. Eastin also carried the legislation to create the 1994 Family School Partnership Act making California the first state to allow parents to take up to 40 hours off from work during the year to participate in their children's education.

In February of 2003, Delaine Eastin joined the National Center on Education and the Economy as the first Executive Director of the National Institute for School Leadership (NISL). NISL offers a professional development program for leadership training in education. After the successful launch of NISL, Delaine returned to her home in California to live full-time and to return to her chosen profession of teaching.

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