School district reform plan released

After fielding ideas and concerns at more than a dozen meetings attended by an estimated 3,000 people since the first week of March, the Philadelphia School District has released the final draft of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's signature reform plan.

"Imagine 2014, a 64-page document containing the "strategic direction for our schools for the next five years," was posted on the district's Internet site - www.phila.k12.pa.us - last night.

Due to community input, the number of reforms contained in the final plan has grown since Ackerman made public the rough draft on Feb. 18.

Added to the plan are: a call to decrease the student-to-counselor ratio to 500-to-1 in elementary schools; request to expand opportunities for middle school students to take world languages; and changes in class schedules at high schools to create smaller class sizes.

In addition, the plan says English language arts, math, science and social studies courses will be updated so that they are more integrated, rigorous and relevant in preparing students for college and careers.

The core curriculum will be linked to real-world and field experiences to provide students with instruction that is relevant to their everyday lives and reflects the diversity of the student population, the plan says.

School communities will be "integrally involved" in the process of reforming failing schools, the report says. The plan calls for placing 10 such schools under new management by September 2010, and a total of about 30 schools by 2014.

While the plan states that the district has made steady progress over the last seven years under state control, major problems remain.

Just 43 percent of schools are making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act; just 33 percent of 11th graders are proficient in reading on the state's annual exam; and in math, a 28 percent point gap exist with white and Asian students outpacing African-American and Latino students.

The School Reform Commission is scheduled to review the plan during its 2 p.m. meeting tomorrow at the district's headquarters, 440 N. Broad St. The commission will vote on the plan at its April 22 meeting.