An Innovative Partnership

When the School District of Philadelphia joined in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania to support the establishment of the Teachers Institute, it represented a new step in a long relationship. The School District of Philadelphia is nestled amidst a plethora of institutions of higher learning. As a result it has nurtured and sustained partnerships with most of the local colleges and universities. Among the more significant is its partnership with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). This long-standing relationship with the District is characterized by Penn's significant presence in the District's West and Southwest Regions, the communities surrounding the university. There are a number of past relationships with Penn with productive effects on the regions' schools that we should cite.

Historically, one of the most enduring relationships with Penn has been with its Center for Community Partnerships (The Center). The Center has helped to create higher education-assisted community schools that function as centers of education, social services, engagement and activity for students, their parents, and other community members within a specified geographic area. In partnership with the Annenberg Foundation and Penn, the School District of Philadelphia is incubating the development of Professional Learning Communities throughout its schools. Participants in the Institute will bring an additional dimension to this initiative at their home schools as teachers involved in the Institute will be able to share exemplary practices and encourage collegiality among their peers. The ongoing need for improved health services in the West Philadelphia region has also led to the creation of a school and community-based health promotion and disease prevention center at the Sayre High School in West Philadelphia. This partnership is working to bring to bear the University of Pennsylvania's many health resources, as well as those of other local health resources, to improve the health of all children and adults in the West Philadelphia community.

The Teachers Institute at the University of Pennsylvania has evolved to be a new option for innovative partnership. The District gravitated toward this model because of its emphasis on deepening teachers' content knowledge and enhancing their skills to develop instructionally sound and rigorous lessons, which will result in improved implementation of the rigorous curriculum in the major content areas. Teachers will attend seminars taught by Penn professors. New lesson plans and materials will be created that adhere to the standards mandated by both the District and State of Pennsylvania. Furthermore, the Institute will nurture the leadership skills of teachers, which will have the impact of extending the benefits of participation to the entire school community.

We believe that the program offered by the Institute will be consonant with, and will contribute to, the School District's own efforts to improve the quality of our classroom teaching. We recognize the significant resources that Penn has allocated to the Institute. The School District intends to complement Penn's contributions with our own, in order to assist Penn in building a strong Institute that will enhance classroom offerings in the schools of West and Southwest Philadelphia directly, and in all city schools in the longer run.

The School District of Philadelphia views these partnerships as vital as it continues to systemically move forward reforms that have impacted positively on student achievement. Integral to the District's reform movement is the mandated PreK-12 Core Curriculum which is standards-based and provides teachers with clear and explicit guidelines for what to teach and when.

After a recent audit of the Core Curriculum by Phi Delta Kappan revealed that the written curriculum was not the taught curriculum in many cases, the District responded with an unwavering focus on eliminating the gap between the written, taught, and tested curriculum. We do this by providing and encouraging strategic professional development via a variety of delivery options. Here, the Teachers Institute program of academic professional development will contribute a valuable content experience for teachers in their subject areas, of a type that is not available elsewhere. The District is also planning its own archive of "Best Practices" curricular materials for classroom teachers' reference. In this light, we view the Teachers Institute's developing collection of an online archive of curricular materials and lesson plans, developed with the guidance of Penn scholars, to be a welcome parallel development. Both will enrich the resources from which our classroom teachers can draw as they plan their methods of applying the mandated curriculum to their classroom needs.

The fates of the University of Penn and the School District of Philadelphia are intertwined. We are neighbors, partners, and benefactors of a forged relationship. The new Teachers Institute is a logical and natural step in deepening a productive relationship, based on a common focus, to examine opportunities for improvement in the services that we mutually provide to our constituents.