Ackerman releases 5-part accountability program

Philadelphia School District Superintendent Arlene Ackerman yesterday unveiled a new accountability system that will go far beyond standardized test scores to determine how well each school and region is performing.

"We're really trying to come up with a clear system of accountability that . . . parents can understand, that students can click on and understand, that teachers can understand," Ackerman said following a meeting of the School Reform Commission.

"We're looking at schools much more broadly than test scores," she continued, "and we're trying to give schools and principals a target for making accelerated progress."

To create the "performance matrix," Ackerman and her leadership team borrowed ideas from the New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Raleigh, N.C., school systems.

In September, each school will get performance targets in five assessment areas based on data from the three previous school years. In June schools will learn if they hit their targets, missed but made progress or missed and lost ground.

The five assessment areas are: student achievement, which could include success on state tests and graduation rates; school operations, which could include teacher vacancies, class sizes and serious incidents; constituent satisfaction, which will look at results of student, parent and teacher surveys; school-selected indicators, which could include the percentage of students passing advanced classes, for example; and extra credit, which would be improvement in areas identified as challenging, such as increasing the number of students in the advanced category on the state's math and reading test.

Schools that achieve the highest proportion of performance targets will be designated as "Best Practice" schools, Ackerman said, while those reaching the fewest goals will receive additional supports.

Job evaluations for the district's regional superintendents and central-office administrators will be tied to the school report cards, officials said.

"We hope these report cards are the beginning of a conversation at the school level . . . [about] what schools value," said David Weiner, deputy director for accountibility.

Free-ride policy stays

An infusion of new state money and policy changes at SEPTA have resulted in the school district dropping a proposal that would have cost 7,300 middle- and high-school students their free weekly public transportation service to and from school.

Michael Masch, district chief business officer, said that Gov. Rendell's new budget includes $30 million for the program, up from $10 million last year, and that SEPTA has agreed to give the district $3.5 million to run the program. SEPTA also has agreed not to charge the district for passes that are given to students but never used. *