City School Stories

Reflections: Then and Now

Submitted by Frank Murphy, Sept. 16, 2010

Vaux High School opened as one of thirteen Renaissance Schools in September of this year. It is being marketed along with five other schools, under the title of “Promise Academies”. These Promise Academies are considered to be turn-around schools that are managed by the School District of Philadelphia. A turn-around school is one that has been determined to be a low-performing school. Once identified, the school’s principal is replaced and a maximum of 50% of the former staff may potentially be “rehired”. The district is spending an additional $7.2 million on these six Promise Academies. This money will cover the cost of items such as new curriculum materials and additional enrichment activities. The students who attend Promise Academies will have an extended school day and school year.

Schools were selected to be Promise Academies based on their PSSA test results, climate data, and in the case of the high schools, graduation rates. It isn’t surprising that Vaux was included in this targeted group of schools. When examining its test scores, suspension rates and graduation rate, it is clear that it is a low-performing school.

Vaux is a small high school. Many of the students who are enrolled in this school were not selected to attend any of the citywide or magnet high schools. Vaux is their only high school option. These are the youngsters who either scored in the Below Basic range on the PSSA math or reading tests, received average or less than average report card grades, had poor attendance records, a number of disciplinary infractions or all of the above. These students are the most likely to become disengaged and disinterested with school and therefore, are at risk of becoming involved in serious misbehavior or dropping out of school. Given the homogeneous population of low achievers that it serves, it isn’t surprising that Vaux High School is among the lowest performing schools in the city.

Providing extra money, resources, and instructional time to the students of this school makes sense. These are the children who are most in need of experienced and capable teachers. If they are provided access to a talented and seasoned corps of teachers, they will make steady and incremental academic progress. They will also benefit from being members of a school community in which the teachers are experienced and knowledgeable about how to set and uphold clear and reasonable standards for appropriate behavior.

Access to teachers of this type is not what they will receive in a Promise Academy.
According to published accounts in the local media, 25% of the teachers who will staff these schools will be new teachers. At Vaux, the number of new teachers will be slightly higher than 50%. Only 28% of the teachers at the Promise Academies will have taught at the school in the prior year. Less than half of all current Promise Academy teachers taught in the district last year.

Interestingly, during the protracted contract negotiations between the School Reform Commission and Philadelphia Federation of Teachers in 2004, the main point of contention was the SRC’s determination to achieve the right for principals to choose their staff at every school in the city. It was communicated that site selection was an important tool that principals needed in order to put together a staff of experienced and effective teachers. The SRC won a partial victory as a result of that contract negotiation. It was agreed that a site selection process would be utilized to fill a minimum of 50% of the vacant positions at all schools.

In the current PFT/SRC contract, the number of positions filled by school site selection was expanded even further. In the creation of Renaissances Schools, both parties agreed that the site selection process would be utilized to fill all of the staff vacancies at these schools.

It is the belief of the district leadership that the negotiated contract language allowing for the creation of Renaissance Schools is a school reform victory. The resulting Promise Academies such as Vaux, will give the district the authority to place its most highly effective teachers in the lowest performing schools.

The implementation of Promise Academies is barely under way and it is already clear that few highly experienced teachers are being employed at these schools. For years, the school district’s leadership has argued that it was a high priority to redeploy its best teachers to the schools that most needed them. Now when they finally have the ability to do so, they chose to primarily employ new or relatively inexperienced teachers.

How ironic is this?