Elmer Smith: Victory Academies: A plan we can all be for

STATE SENS. Vincent Hughes and Anthony Hardy Williams can usually be found in the same foxhole when the shooting starts in Harrisburg.

When they do disagree, they tend to seek middle ground. Even when they can't work it out, the tiff rarely spills out into the public arena.

This time, it's different. They're on opposite sides of a wide philosophical gulf on the issue of school vouchers. There is no middle ground.

Williams has been crisscrossing the state like a traveling evangelist advocating Senate Bill 1, which he co-sponsored. It would give vouchers to students who want a way out of the state's 144 lowest-performing schools.

He has cast himself as the champion of low-income children "trapped in persistently failing schools."

Hughes is just as adamant in his opposition to the voucher bill, which he sees as offering "a way out for some kids instead of improving outcomes for all kids.

"Our goal must be to save every student and revitalize our poorly performing schools," Hughes said.

Up to now, Hughes has been quiet about his opposition to vouchers. But yesterday he went public with a bill he framed to offer an alternative to lawmakers who don't like vouchers but feel the need to do something.

Senate Bill 930, introduced by Hughes on Friday, would turn the 144 lowest-performing schools, including 91 in Philadelphia, into what he calls "Victory Academies."

He would fund interventions including reduced class sizes, longer school days, Saturday and summer classes and partnerships with neighborhood social agencies, some of which would move into the schools.

"I thought it was time to do what we know works," Hughes told me on the way to a press briefing at West Philadelphia High School, where he unveiled the bill.

"I'm obviously not for vouchers. But I wanted to have something to be for. All of the things I'm advocating are time-tested, evidence-based reforms.

"There's not an academic setting anywhere that does not prove out the value of smaller class size or longer school days.

"Victory Academies will have the option of reconstituting themselves in their current school environments, or they can choose to utilize a charter program, but only those charter programs that are the top-performing charter programs in the state."

Most of what he is proposing would be included in the district's most intense reform model, Renaissance Schools. But he said his plan "is a little more aggressive."

It would mandate a student-teacher ratio of 15 to 1 for elementary schools and 20 to 1 for high schools. The district now allows a maximum class size of 33. But that is likely to increase when the budget is slashed to make up an estimated $600 million deficit.

What is even more ominous is that the budget cuts may put some Renaissance Schools programs out of reach, crippling the district's only intensive reform plan.

Hughes is swimming against the tide. The mood in the state is for less spending, not more reform, despite steady improvement in achievement scores funded largely by increases in state education funds.

"In the last eight years we've improved test scores for about every constituency in our schools," Hughes said.

"We still have significant issues to deal with [in] respect to students in this bottom tier. But we have no intention of experimenting."

That experiment has already been done. Vouchers have failed. Miserably.

Hughes said he has seen significant opposition to the voucher bill in Harrisburg from both parties. But he says legislators need something to support.

"Can we come up with something we can be for?" Hughes said his colleagues have asked him.

Hughes said the Senate Appropriations Committee has costed out the first year of S.B. 1 at $54 million. Hughes claims his bill would finance real reform "for the same money."

There may not be enough votes for either bill. But I'd sooner swim against the tide with Vince Hughes on this one than to see Williams' voucher bill become law.