School district to unveil 5-year reform plan tomorrow

Massive reforms are once again coming to the city school district, seven years after the state took control of the system due to academic and financial failure.

Tomorrow afternoon, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman is scheduled to reveal a draft of a five-year "strategic" plan meant to transform persistently failing schools, overhaul district business operations and implement policies to recruit and retain good teachers and principals.

"What we want to talk about is not only what we do to support underperforming schools, but what do we do to give parents great choices," said Ackerman, who suggested that this overhaul will look different from previous reform efforts.

Ackerman's plan has been culled from a stack of recommendations presented by nine work groups comprising district employees and community members who have worked since December.

The group tasked with studying "interventions and rewards for successful and failing schools" has recommended that the most chronically underperforming schools undergo a "turnaround strategy" similar to the approach taken by Chicago public schools.

"These are schools that have not responded to years of interventions and incremental changes," reads the group's report. "These schools require fundamental change that facilitates a transformation of the learning environment."

Thus, the group said these schools should be placed under four reform models: charter, contract, innovation and performance schools.

Charter schools are the most familiar, as the district already has 63 charters, each governed by its own board of directors.

Though most charters were started from scratch by their founders, the report notes the Mastery Charter organization has converted three existing failing schools into what are now successful charters.

Contract schools would be operated by management organizations under contract to the district. They would have the independence of charters but the district would maintain governance of the schools and would have new staffs and academic programs.

Innovation schools would also get new academic programs and staffers, who will remain district employees. The schools would be managed by the district outside the traditional management structure to allow for greater autonomy in exchange for greater accountability for school performance.

Performance schools would get new leadership teams but would keep the same district staff. These schools also would operate outside the district's traditional management structure with more autonomy in exchange for being held more accountable.

The "dropout prevention" work group recommended transforming large neighborhood high schools by breaking them down into smaller schools autonomous from one another. The group also recommended developing individualized graduation plans for each incoming 9th-grader and conducting summer acceleration programs to prepare them for the academic rigor of high school.

An "achievement gap" work group recommended that the district review its practices that it said maintain inequities between schools with regard to the distribution of resources and qualified and experienced teachers, among other areas.

Following Ackerman's presentation at tomorrow's 2 p.m. School Reform Commission meeting, the district will solicit comments during a series of community meetings that have yet to be scheduled.

The final version of the strategic plan will be presented for SRC approval at its March 18 meeting.

A number of education advocates said they were hopeful that Ackerman's plan will focus heavily on neighborhood high schools — the district's lowest-performing schools.

"The big issue is to get serious about transforming high schools," said Eric Braxton, small-schools-project coordinator for the Philadelphia Education Fund. "A little reform here or a little reform there will not do it when our schools are hemorrhaging students."

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said, "What I hope will be in it is a commitment to increase career and technical opportunities for kids in high schools.

"That would go a long way in reducing the dropout rate because students will be able to connect what they are studying to getting a job." Jordan also wants new methods of retaining teachers to be included.

Gerald Wright, a founding member of Parents United for Public Education, has two daughters enrolled in the school district.

Besides high-school reform, Wright said, "First and foremost the district has to be more transparent and inclusive of parents. I'm not sure where that fits in the plan." *