Penn students get case study on urban district - in Philly
Grad students visited district headquarters to probe how the district handles data monitoring, school governance, other hot topics.
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A GROUP OF University of Pennsylvania graduate students got a case study on challenges facing urban school districts right in their own back yard yesterday - at the Philadelphia School District.
The students, who are taking a course on schools as organizations at Penn's Graduate School of Education, visited the district's headquarters to probe officials on various topics, including school design and the use of data.
Grace Cannon, head of the Office of New School Models, discussed the district's three new high schools, opened last year, which use a project-based, competency-driven method. She acknowledged that, while the schools are designed to engage students and be more hands-on, it's not easy to create a "startup" in a cash-strapped district.
"Who you hire, I think, is key to the model," she told the class, noting that the innovative approach requires educators to be adaptable.
Based on preliminary data, Cannon said, the numbers of students returning to the schools next year is encouraging, but the district is still evaluating academic outcomes.
The class also got a crash course on the School Progress Report, the tool created by the district to gauge school performance. The report assesses schools in the areas of academic performance, year-to-year progress, safety and attendance as well as college and career readiness for high schools.
Jura Chung, the district's deputy of strategic analytics, said the report is being used to help drive decisions on where to allocate more resources and what kinds of interventions individual schools need. And by evaluating more than just test scores, it can assess "equity" among schools, she said.
Rand Quinn, assistant professor of teaching, learning and leadership at Penn, said students in the course also will examine schools in Baltimore and New Orleans to see the changing landscape in urban education.
"Hopefully, when we get to Baltimore, then New Orleans, they can make connections, understand the distinctions between the cities, but then also how the challenges are similar," he said.