The School Reform Commission today voted 4-0 to approve the hiring of Arlene Ackerman as the School District of Philadelphia's chief executive officer.

Ackerman, 61, will be paid a base salary of $325,000, which is $50,000 more than that of her predecessor, Paul Vallas.

Meanwhile, a new report says that six years after the state took control of the school district, steady progress continues to be made, but not nearly enough to reach the lofty achievement goals set by district officials.

The annual report from the district's Accountability Review Council (ARC), released today, also found that "charter schools are not performing substantially better nor substantially worse than district schools in raising student achievement."

ARC was created as part of the state's takeover of city schools in December 2001. The independent council evaluates and validates the district's reform efforts and reports its findings and recommendation to the reform commission annually.

ARC members, who are top education officials from around the country, presented their report during today's reform commission meeting.

Publicly funded, independently run charter schools were approved in 1997 by the state Legislature and by then-Gov. Tom Ridge to bring innovation and competition to traditional public schools.

The report found that, from 2002 to 2007, charter schools had the largest percentage increase in schools making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law, when compared with district-managed schools and district schools operated by educational-management organizations.

But charter schools, the report noted, have few subgroups of students, such as those with special education needs and those who are learning English as a second language.

"It's somewhat inconclusive. We could see that more study will have to be conducted. For example, the charter high schools are doing better than the elementary charter schools.  . . . We've concluded that we're going to have to spend a lot more time drilling down looking at individual schools and the success that they are having rather than just this monolith called charter schools," said James E. Lyons, Sr., ARC chairman and secretary of the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

Repeating concerns from last year, the report cautions that the goals in the district's Declaration of Education cannot be met by this year's deadline. Lyons said the timeline should be changed, not the goals.

The Declaration of Education is a set of beliefs and visions tied to concrete goals that the reform commission adopted in May 2004.

Among the goals that will not be reached by the end of this academic year: 80 percent of all students in grades 3 through 11 will perform at or above the proficient level in reading, math and science; 85 percent of all high school students will graduate; 100 percent of all high schools will offer honors or Advanced Placement courses.

"We're saying that there needs to be another look at that in terms of those goals and how realistic they are," Lyons said.