NCEE CEO Anthony Mackay spoke with Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, and a member of NCEE’s Center on International Education Benchmarking advisory board. The two discussed what it might take, in this post-pandemic moment, to strengthen our public education system and ensure that it supports social cohesion, economic prosperity, and individual and collective well-being. Darling-Hammond explained that historically there is an “anatomy of inequality” in the U.S. education system. Poverty and segregation, unequal school resources, inequitable distribution of well-qualified educators, and lack of access to a rigorous curriculum work against too many of our students.