Board of Directors

Warren Simmons
Executive Director
Annenberg Institute for School Reform

Warren Simmons directs the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. The Institute was established in 1993 to generate, share, and act on knowledge that improves conditions and outcomes in American schools, particularly in urban areas and in schools serving disadvantaged students. The Institute pursues its mission through five strands of work: leadership, rethinking accountability, district redesign, school/community partnerships, and comprehensive school reform. In each of these areas, the Institute conducts applied research, provides professional development, and offers technical assistance designed to illuminate, share, and extend promising practices.

Prior to joining the Institute, Dr. Simmons headed the Philadelphia Education Fund, a nonprofit organization that helped the school district of Philadelphia fund, develop, and implement new academic standards, content-based professional development, standards-based curriculum resources, and comprehensive school reform as part of the Children Achieving reform agenda.

Over his 20-year career in education, Dr. Simmons has held a variety of positions, including senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where he developed and funded initiatives on community development and urban school reform. He also served as director of equity initiatives for the New Standards Project, a coalition of 17 states and 6 school districts that designed a performance-based examination system to drive curricular and instructional reforms. In addition to his work on national and state education reform initiatives, Dr. Warren served as special assistant to the superintendent of schools in Prince George’s County, MD, where he planned and/or implemented district-wide initiatives on improving the achievement of disadvantaged students; these included the Comer School Development Project, the College Board’s Equity 2000 Project, and the school system’s multicultural education and black-male-achievement initiatives.

He serves on boards and advisory groups of numerous education reform initiatives, including the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, the Clark Foundation’s Program on Student Achievement, the Merck Institute, the National Research Council’s Board on International Comparative Studies in Education, Educating Children for Parenting, the Public Education Fund Network, the Disney Learning Partnership, the Grammy Foundation, the Wallace/Reader’s Digest Funds’ Leaders Count Initiative, and the Toyota Family Literacy Initiative.

Dr. Simmons received his bachelor of arts in psychology from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, and he earned a doctorate in psychology from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

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