HISTORY

It all started when…

In January 2017, the ECMC Foundation and Children Can Shape the Future Foundation awarded Big Picture Philadelphia a one-year planning grant for the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative (formerly the Student-Centered Deeper Learning Collaborative - SCDL), a regional, cross-sector group of schools and universities with a shared commitment to student-centered, deeper learning practices. In that year, PLC took a series of critical steps to formalize and launch the Collaborative:

1. Convened a cross-sector working group to define success criteria,

2. Defined key areas in which the collaborative will work,

3. Drafted a set of distinguishers for PLC schools,

4. Developed action plans in each area,

5. Framed out an organizational structure and set of functions mapped onto these plans

Planning and coalition building with area PLC school leaders has produced two key results: broad and diverse consensus about the need and value of the PLC and a clear sense of the work it will do. With additional funding from the ECMC Foundation, the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative was launched in June 2018 with 14 member schools and four university partners.