Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania
August 2001
With the 1995 inception of an initiative called Children Achieving, Philadelphia became one of the first urban districts to implement systemic school reform. Superintendent David Hornbeck's sweeping reform plan - carried out in conjunction with the Annenberg Challenge in that city - sought to boost student achievement through standards-based instruction; school-level autonomy; and increased collaboration between parents, educators, and school officials. Evaluations of Children Achieving have been conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) and its partner Research for Action (RFA) since 1996. In "Contradictions and Control in Systemic Reform: The Ascendancy of the Central Office in Philadelphia Schools," (available online at http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cpre/Publications/children03.pdf) author Ellen Foley considers the role played by the district's central office in Children Achieving. What she found was a "gradual, but consistent, retreat" from the concept of school-level autonomy, attributable to the central office staff's struggle with "the competing demands of accountability, decentralization, and equity," as well as the alienation of key district partners - including parents, the teachers union, state officials and business leaders--put off by the central office's overbearing behavior. Foley concludes that, while Children Achieving - effectively dismantled in August 2000 with Hornbeck's departure--"fell far short of the vision of re-energized learning communities that motivated its architects," it did have notable success in raising test scores and framing the city's school reform debate around standards and accountability. (For a slightly more critical look at Philadelphia's Children Achieving initiative, see "Grant Brings High Hopes, Modest Gains to Philadelphia School Reform," by Carol Innerst in Can Philanthropy Fix Our Schools? , published by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in April 2000. It can be found at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=41)
A second paper, "Clients, Consumers, or Collaborators? Parents and their Roles in School Reform During Children Achieving, 1995-2000" (available online at http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cpre/Publications/children04.pdf), finds that, while many Philadelphia schools established structures and processes to heighten parent participation, few actually engaged parents meaningfully, especially in racially isolated and low-income schools. As the report explains, teachers and principals jealously guard their authority and power - despite much rhetoric about building stronger bridges between home and school - and frequently underestimate the time and resources necessary to cultivate parent participation. Two notable exceptions - both involving parents from poor and minority neighborhoods - are profiled to illustrate how parents and educators can forge true working partnerships with the help of intermediary groups. To learn more about Philadelphia's successes and failures in its systemic reform experiment, view these studies online or order free copies from CPRE at 215-573-0700 x233 or [email protected]. (See http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cpre/Publications/Publications.htm for links to additional papers.)
