Tom Corcoran and Jolley Bruce Christman
Consortium for Policy Research in Education
November 2002
In this report, Corcoran and Christman examine the impact of the Annenberg Challenge in Philadelphia - and the Children Achieving reform it funded - nearly eight years after it first began. This enormous reform effort began in 1995, when Walter Annenberg awarded $50 million to Philadelphia (which was matched with $100 million in funds raised elsewhere) and then-superintendent David Hornbeck created an ambitious plan to turn around Philadelphia's abysmal public schools. The report reads like a case study in the problems associated with changing a vast and bureaucratic system. The reform began with promise - and the right ideals - as Philadelphia implemented standards, testing, and accountability and then decentralized decision-making to give schools flexibility in meeting these standards. Test scores improved modestly, but the visions of great change never materialized. Ultimately the reform efforts unraveled from both the bottom - where schools were ill-prepared for additional responsibility and teachers were given little time to adapt to the new standards - and the top - where politics and battles over funding disillusioned the community and ultimately led to Hornbeck's resignation. Perhaps the most universal lessons are that implementation is paramount, massive school reform is incredibly unpredictable, and continually cultivating support from teachers and the community is imperative. This report provides a conclusion to the unfinished stories told in previous reports, including a chapter from Fordham's own Can Philanthropy Fix our Schools: Appraising Walter Annenberg's $500 Million Gift to Public Education, in 2000 (see http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=41) and CPRE's Children Achieving: Philadelphia's Education Reform, A Second-year Evaluation, in 1998. The current report, along with CPRE's previous efforts, can be found by surfing to http://www.cpre.org/Research/Research_Project_Children_Achieving.htm.
