Phila. school progress steady but slow

It was back to school yesterday for 600 Philadelphia School District administrators, and Superintendent Arlene Ackerman greeted them with good and bad news.

On the up side: For the seventh year in a row, test scores are up. Forty-four percent of Philadelphia schools, or 118 of 265, made "adequate yearly progress," meeting their goals under the federal No Child Left Behind law, Ackerman said. That's an increase of five schools over last year.

Sixteen schools that had never met state standards before did so. The dropout rate was 44 percent in 2008-09, down from 47 percent the previous year. And violence is down by 15 percent, Ackerman said at the first day of a weeklong principals' summit at Girard Academic Music Program in South Philadelphia.

But amid the jubilation of smiling principals receiving oversize $1,000 checks for meeting their goals, Ackerman also struck a sober note in her charge to the group, responsible for 265 schools and 167,000 public-school students.

Only one-third of district schools met targets set at the beginning of the year. And if the district continues its incremental progress in meeting state standards, it will take until 2123 until every child in the city is reading and performing math on grade level.

It would take 15 years to wipe out the dropout crisis if the nation's eighth-largest school district continued on its current course, she said. The city's black and Latino students underperform the white and Asian students, as in most school districts, but Philadelphia is also struggling with boys' lagging girls in achievement across the board.

"There's still a lingering feeling of disappointment," Ackerman said. "It weighs heavy in my heart."

Everyone must work harder, Ackerman said. Schools must accelerate progress for all students.

On its current course, the district will doom large swaths of students - "sentence them to a permanent underclass," the superintendent said. "We know they're going nowhere without a high school diploma."

The superintendent announced that starting this school year, there will be more supports and tighter controls for the district's most struggling schools. Last year, 85 "empowerment" schools received an extra $12 million in resources and more scrutiny.

This year, she said, there will be even tighter controls and 10 new empowerment schools. A bigger budget will pay for master teachers and reading specialists at each.

The empowerment schools cost $30 milllion last school year and are expected to require more funding this year; district officials last night could not say how much more.

But for a group of schools that have met goals for three to five years, oversight will be relaxed. A yet-undetermined number of "vanguard" schools will be given much more freedom from district scrutiny, though they must still meet targets, Ackerman said.

Still, she said, even those schools with stellar reputations must do better. A "dirty little secret" is that magnet schools in the city have tended to push out those students who struggle academically, she said.

"I'm going to ask you, please, please, please don't push those students out," Ackerman told the principals. In an interview, she said that beginning this year, meetings will be required with principals and central administrators before students will be permitted to transfer from magnet schools.

Thirty new principals will welcome students on Sept. 8. Some are former district assistant principals or are moving from one school to another. But others - about two-thirds, Ackerman estimated - are new to the district.

Some are replacing retired principals, but others are taking the place of principals removed at the end of last school year. Ackerman had promised to remove ineffective leaders from their positions.

The district could not provide a list yesterday of which principals had been replaced. It also declined to say which schools passed the state exams because it has not been authorized by the state to do so.

School leaders yesterday learned how they fared on their first-ever report cards - goals measuring not just test scores, but violence, parent satisfaction, teacher turnover, and other things. Ninety out of 265, or one-third, achieved 80 percent of their goals, the bar Ackerman set for passing.

"I didn't think it was going to be as hard as it was," Ackerman said. But, she added, "this is the highest bar that I've ever set in any school district."

For the first time, the district is rewarding schools with cash for hitting their targets, said Ackerman, who previously led districts in Washington and San Francisco. Principals whose schools made adequate yearly progress or met 80 percent of their report-card goals got $1,000 to supplement their budgets.

"We should award greatness," Ackerman said. "I believe it should happen at every level of the organization."

She emphasized that all schools could meet her targets, no matter the challenges their students face.

Ackerman would like to pay individual teachers and principals for results, but unions have resisted. Both groups' contracts expire at the end of the month, and pay-for-performance is on the table, Ackerman said.

After Ackerman's speech, Marie McCarthy, principal of Farrell School in the Northeast, was flushed and happy. After two years of narrowly missing state standards, she learned that Farrell made adequate yearly progress.

"I knew that we really worked hard this year, but I wasn't sure if we were going to make it," McCarthy said. About half of Farrell's 830 students live below the poverty line; its population is about 50 percent white and 50 percent minority; and 16 percent of students need special-education services.

McCarthy was excited about the extra $1,000, which she said she probably would spend on something to reward the whole school, and she said she's ready to take on Ackerman's challenge of raising the bar even higher.

"We're just going to keep at it," said McCarthy. "For all kids."