Michael Casserly - Philadelphia Schools Forum

Remarks for the “Great Expectations” Forum of the Philadelphia Inquirer
By Michael Casserly
Executive director, Council of the Great City Schools
April 5, 2007
Thank you very much for the invitation to be here. It is always great to be back in Philadelphia. I went to college here and remain very fond of this city.
I do not have to tell anyone in this room that America’s urban schools are under more pressure to improve than any other institution—public or private—in the nation.
We are being told to produce results or to get out of the way.
We are being told to improve or see the public go elsewhere.
We are being told to be accountable for what we do or let someone else do it.
Some of this criticism is justified; some of it is not. Either way, we are being challenged in the court of public opinion and by history to raise student achievement to levels we have not seen before.
Many groups might have folded under the pressure, given up in the face of such scrutiny and demand. But urban public schools have not. They are, instead, rising to the occasion and working to give the public what it wants.
The results, however preliminary, are encouraging: student achievement in big city schools across the country is increasing; operations are improving; and public confidence is showing signs of revival.
These gains have not stopped the criticism or muted the pressure, but the trend lines—fragile as they may be—suggest that urban schools across the country are on the right track.
I think this can also be said of the School District of Philadelphia. It is nowhere close to the Promised Land, but it is on the right road, heading in the right direction.
Our organization, the Council of the Great City Schools, spends a lot of time in districts and classrooms studying why some urban school districts improve faster than others do and recommending strategies for improvement. We have done about 140 major studies in 35 to 40 major cities over the last seven years. We did six of those studies here in Philadelphia, reviewing your instructional program, your human resources department, your facilities, transportation, and food services operations, and your federal programs. Many of the recommendations we made have found there way into how your district has designed its programs, including your instructional program. When we see progress in student achievement in urban schools, we usually see it because the school districts have pursued reforms in ten or so critical areas: governance, goal setting, accountability, curriculum, professional development, classroom monitoring, data and assessments, early childhood and elementary school instruction, secondary reform, and strategies for boosting the performance of your lowest performing schools and students.
The fastest moving urban school districts are particularly adept at locking reforms in these areas together in a systemic fashion, and pursue all of them simultaneously.
In general, Philadelphia’s instructional reforms are consistent with—if not more aggressive than—the reforms in other major cities.
Philadelphia was taken over by the state, changed its governance system, and made those governance changes work in ways that other cities have not made work.
The district has set clear goals districtwide and school-by-school, articulating the kinds of gains you were shooting for.
The district has worked to hold its administration accountable for attaining those goals.
It has put into place an aggressive managed-instructional program in reading and math—something that came out of one of our studies.
It has aligned its instructional program with state standards and assessments.
It put in a regular instructional pacing system and strengthened its instructional interventions.
It put into place instructional coaches and intensified the professional development for its teachers.
It increased the amount of time devoted to reading and math instruction.
It instituted a large summer school program and a mandatory afterschool tutorial program.
It closed underperforming middle schools and restructured the curriculum in other low-performing schools.
It expanded its early childhood program, adding a literacy component to it.
It increased the number of Advanced Placement courses in its high schools, increased the number of dual enrollment programs, and boosted the percentage of your highly qualified teachers under “No Child Left Behind.”
Now, many technical and operational details still need to be improved in these areas. And there are many complaints that I know people have. But the reforms that the district has put into place are the right reforms, are consistent with what you see in other fast improving systems, and are the reforms that are responsible for your gains.
What sets Philadelphia apart is how many reforms you are pursuing all at one time. The efforts are clearly producing results:
The percent of elementary and middle school students reading and doing math above proficiency levels has increased substantially, and the percent of students below basic levels of attainment has declined significantly.
In addition, the percent of students at the national norm on the TerraNova test has increased by a substantial margin.
In fact, some of these gains are now among the fastest that we are seeing anywhere in the country.
It is also clear to us that the gains are the result of the internal instructional reforms that the district has made, not the portfolio of schools that get so much attention from the press and some advocates. I see little evidence that the diverse-provider model used here in Philadelphia, and the competition it was supposed to foster, was responsible for the gains that the school system has made. The gains were made because the system itself changed how it pursued the instruction of the students under its aegis.
I also want to be clear that substantial problems remain to be resolved here in Philadelphia. You know them better than I do.
The dropout rate remains too high.
Behavior problems continue to plague the schools.
Classes are too big. Too many teachers are hired after the school year starts—delaying good instruction when it is needed most.
And high school academic gains are still slow.
Two big-picture problems worry me most, however. The first involves potential fissures in the governance system that could make it harder to sustain, much less accelerate, the gains the district has already made.
And the second involves the financing of the school system. The district is bleeding money in all the wrong places and is inadequately funded by both the city and state. The system, in fact, is one of only 12 major school systems in the country whose average per pupil expenditure is at or below statewide averages. Fifty-five other major urban school districts are funded at levels above their respective statewide averages. Both of these problems—continuity and funding—will require leadership and political will to solve, which is where you come in, but they are imminently solvable.
If they are not addressed, however, the district may soon hot a wall in its ability to sustain its reforms. If they are, then I see continued progress for the district, for the reforms you are pursuing are among the most aggressive and most productive that we are seeing anywhere in the country.
Thank you.