PCEL Receives Annenberg Grant for Leadership Initiative

The Penn Center for Educational Leadership (PCEL), housed at Penn GSE, has received a $4.9M grant from the Annenberg Foundation to launch the Distributed Leadership Initiative, a four-year collaboration with the Philadelphia School District to promote shared leadership at the individual school level.

"Like many districts, Philadelphia has made educational leadership a significant part of its improvement plans," PCEL Executive Director John DeFlaminis said. "Distributed leadership is an effort to create more leaders in complex urban schools to improve instruction and advance student achievement."

The Initiative will train more than 80 teachers in 16 schools to be instructional leaders and work collectively with principals. These distributed leadership teams will establish building-level learning communities that pool resources to identify and employ best instructional practices, foster analysis of student data and encourage further professional development.

PCEL will create a leadership development center to support distributed leadership schools and aid in disseminating effective practices.

"Philadelphia's future depends on the quality of our schools," Penn President Amy Gutmann said. "It's very exciting for Penn to partner with the Philadelphia School District and the Annenberg Foundation on something as important as improving leadership."

The Annenberg Foundation, www.annenbergfoundation.org, is a private foundation established in 1989. It exists to advance the public well-being through improved communication. As the principal means of achieving its goal, the Foundation encourages the development of more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge.