14 Phila. schools eligible for improvement program

Setting the stage for more dramatic change in city classrooms, the Philadelphia School District yesterday announced that 14 chronically low-performing schools are eligible for radical restructuring in the fall.

An undetermined number of the nine elementary, two middle, and three high schools, scattered throughout the city, will open under outside managers, as charters, or as district-run schools with big changes in the school day, staffing, and curriculum.

"We're saying enough is enough," Benjamin W. Rayer, the district's chief of charter, partnership, and new schools, said at a public announcement of the overhaul plans.

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said she saw the movement as positive, not punitive.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these school communities to have some say over their destiny," she said.

But it's hardly the first time an administration has promised sweeping reform for city schools.

Half the 14 schools in the pool for the so-called Renaissance schools were part of the district's first experiment with outside educational managers in 2002. All were returned to district control. If selected for this restructuring, those seven schools would undergo their third overhaul in eight years.

District leaders promised that they had learned from the mistakes of reforms past.

Renaissance schools will be different, they said, because they will incorporate community input, contain performance metrics, and give the operators autonomy and control previous managers didn't have.

"We are not going to experiment with the children in these schools," Rayer said. Providers "need to show us a school or schools where you worked with urban children and successfully operated that school."

Schools landed on the Renaissance list because they scored below similar schools on tests and other measures, including student progress, attendance, violence, and parent and teacher satisfaction.

Renaissance schools will not close, and the students who attend them now will be eligible to remain in the fall.

Principals, teachers, and parents learned of their Renaissance-eligible status yesterday, the same day the School Reform Commission adopted a policy formalizing the Renaissance process.

The overhauled schools will follow one of four paths. They could be operated by charters or by outside managers, with staffs that are no longer district employees, or they could be district-managed schools run by a turnaround team selected in part by the community or by individuals identified by the superintendent or central office.

Ackerman said she would take special interest in the last group of Renaissance schools, the Promise Academies. These will be developed and supported by the superintendent and a small group of her staff, she said.

"I'm going to be very hands-on," said Ackerman. "I wish I could be a principal in one of these schools."

Beginning next week, central-office staff will meet with teachers and parents at all the affected schools. A firm will also audit each one.

"We want to make sure that there aren't things happening in those schools that would lead us to say, 'You know what? Maybe not right now. Maybe we need to give that school time to fix the things it's doing,' " Rayer said.

The Renaissance schools list will be settled March 12, also the deadline for groups to apply to run schools. Then newly formed advisory councils led by parents with children in the affected schools will meet and make recommendations on which model and which provider they want for their community.

The district has final say, however, in which option is chosen.

The matches between school and provider will be announced by May. Each operator will sign a five-year contract and be bound to performance standards.

Principals at some of 14 schools reached yesterday said they were intrigued by the possibilities of becoming a Renaissance school.

"I think potentially this is a great thing," said Saliyah Cruz, principal of West Philadelphia High School. "When I heard that we were a Renaissance-eligible school, it made us excited about the possibility of what that might look like."

Cruz, who in 2007 was brought in to transform the formerly troubled school, said she was particularly interested in the model that allows a school to work with its community to decide on improvements.

Ackerman eased the fears of principals when she met with them yesterday to inform them that their schools were on the list, said Michael Lerner, head of the principals' union, who attended the meeting.

Lerner said the biggest beef he had heard from his members was that the Renaissance model had been developed by Ackerman's team and that principals had played no role.

He said principals agreed that change was needed to improve chronically low-performing schools but were not convinced the solution was giving up district control to education management organizations and charter operators.

"If they do worse, or they do the same, then let us keep control," he added.

Ackerman and Rayer characterized the meeting as difficult but ultimately positive.

The superintendent said she had told principals that they had been leading schools that have been failing for almost a decade, and that change was necessary.

"I don't want to say these schools aren't making progress. They are," Ackerman said. "But they're not making it fast enough."

Some teachers may fear working at schools with new management structures and longer workdays, but some will see it as an opportunity, Ackerman said.

Lisa Haver, a teacher at Harding Middle School, said teachers were worried.

"There are so many questions," she said. Many teachers wonder if there will be a job for them if they don't want to go to a Renaissance school, she said. Others say they can't work longer days and Saturdays because of family commitments.

Also yesterday, the district announced 12 low-performing Alert schools that will get more support but could eventually land in the Renaissance category.

As of yesterday, those schools are on a watch list and join 95 other so-called Empowerment schools, which get additional resources from the district, but are also subject to much more scrutiny.

Another group of schools will be rewarded for their progress with greater autonomy. Twenty-five Vanguard schools will have more flexibility in areas like curriculum and budgeting.

Alert schools (12): Among the lowest-performing, they will get more resources and central office direction. They are Alcorn, Barry, Elkin, Fairhill, Kelley, Meade, Mifflin, M. Hall Stanton, and Wilson Elementary Schools and Audenried, Kensington Business Finance and Olney West High Schools.

Vanguard schools (25): These high-achieving schools will have more autonomy in areas like curriculum and budget. They are Cayuga, Comly, Conwell, A.B. Day, Decatur, F.S. Edmonds, Emlen, Anne Frank, Greenberg, Loesche, Logan, Marshall, McCall, McClure, Meredith, Moffet, Penn Alexander, Pollock, Wagner and Welsh Elementary Schools and Bodine, Central, Girard Academic Music Program, Masterman, and Motivation High Schools.EndText