Former Philly schools administrator to head new education leadership center at Penn

A former top school district official is returning to Philadelphia to launch a center for educational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.

Cheryl Logan, a well-regarded former Philadelphia School District chief academic officer, will lead the McGraw Center for Educational Leadership at Penn’s Graduate School of Education. Logan is currently superintendent of the Omaha, Neb., school system.

The new center was made possible by a record-setting $16.25 million gift from the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation, named for the former chairman and CEO of McGraw-Hill, the educational publishing and financial services company. As the new center’s executive director, Logan is charged with developing programs and convening gatherings aimed at helping students, scholars, practitioners, and others solve complex educational challenges across all learning sectors.

Logan, who spent years as a Spanish and ESL teacher and principal in Maryland before coming to Philadelphia as an assistant superintendent under William R. Hite Jr., left the district in 2018, when she became chief of Nebraska’s largest school system, which educates more than 50,000 children.

Logan, who earned her doctorate in educational leadership at Penn during her time in Philadelphia, won the 2022 McGraw Prize in K-12 Education for her groundbreaking work leading Omaha schools through the pandemic. Under her leadership, the district was among the first large, urban systems to return to in-person learning.

Though Logan has spent a lifetime working with and for children, she’s excited to take on a new challenge, and for “the opportunity to work with a lot of smart people to help other really smart people figure out problems in education.”

It’s a unique time to do this work, Logan said. Education “is really iterating. People who have trained as leaders are struggling for a lot of reasons — the rapid pace, the disagreement about what education is really for,” she said.

Pam Grossman, Penn GSE’s dean, was “thrilled” to welcome Logan, who she said is “poised to play an instrumental role in the development of the next generation of education leaders.”

“We believe that her innovative and visionary approach will help shape the direction of our center and ensure that the center becomes a driving force for positive change in the field of education,” said Grossman, who is leaving Penn in June. “We are excited to have her on board and look forward to the impact she will make in this new role.”

Logan will finish the school year in Omaha and begin her work at Penn in July.