The Philadelphia School Reform Commission voted to fire three principals at its meeting on January 16, 2014. These individuals have been implicated in a test cheating scandal. School district officials after a two-year investigation have accused 138 Philadelphia educators of misconduct in the administering and handling of students’ Pennsylvania State Assessment Tests.
School Superintendent William Hite expressed great disappointment regarding the alleged behavior of the accused principals and teachers. This is such a turn of events since the early days of school reform in Philadelphia when the astronomical test score increases of a Philadelphia elementary school were celebrated on the opening day of the 2004-2005 school year.
This was originally posted on September 13, 2010. Back then it seems that politicians, school district leaders, and the press were all willing to believe that impossible test score gains were possible.
Incidentally the school referred to in this post was closed at the end of the 2012-2013 school year.
Confessions of an Urban Principal
by Frank Murphy
Installment (3 of 8)/The Bell Ringing
Yesterday was the first day of school. School District CEO Paul Vallas, Mayor John Street, School Reform Commission Chairman James Nevels and other dignitaries participated in an opening day ceremony at a nearby elementary school in North Philadelphia. This school was chosen as the site for the official “bell ringing” ceremony because of the significant increase in the percentage of its students scoring at the advanced and proficient levels of on the Pennsylvania System of State Assessment (PSSA).
In a Philadelphia Daily News article, Mayor Street was quoted as saying, “The schools, students, parents, teachers and staff are proving that with the right attitude and resources, Philadelphia’s schools will excel.”
According to the Daily News, the latest round of state standardized test scores showed that the number of students at this North Philadelphia school scoring at the advanced or proficient level increased in reading from 13.1 % to 70.7 %. In math, the numbers rose from 18.7 % to 46.7 %.
The officials at the ceremony were quite proud of this accomplishment. They pointed out that although the school is in a very poor community, this achievement demonstrates how the dedication of teachers and the effectiveness of school district reforms are making a difference. Only two years ago, the test scores were so low in this school that it was one of the sixty schools targeted for dramatic reform in the district. It was designated as a “restructured school” and began to receive extra support.
I take careful note of the success of this school, whose demographics are so similar to my own. I want to celebrate their success but I am somewhat skeptical of the validity of their achievement. Increasing the percentage of students at the advanced or proficient level in reading by over fifty-seven points in one year is nothing short of a miracle.
Perhaps these percentages were a misprint, I thought. I went to the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s website to check the numbers. What was reported in the newspaper was the same as the information provided by the Department of Education.
The author of Daily News report didn’t reference any of the actions taken at this school in order to achieve these spectacular results. I was interested in knowing what they had done differently than the teachers in my school. It seems that this poor, urban, historically low-achieving school has discovered a reform strategy that we should try to replicate.
If I were the CEO of our district, I surely would want to know how such an accomplishment was made in such a short time. I would want all of my schools to know how to create such growth in student achievement. This is the kind of success the state was looking for when it took control of our district. What is the secret? I wonder why isn’t it being shared with the principals of all of the schools who aren’t making this kind of dramatic test score improvement.
My recollection of the exact moment when I decided that I would not be the principal of an empowerment school is a vivid one. I was attending a bi-weekly regional principals’ meeting at a school located not far from my own. We met in the school’s library.
Not long after Congress passed the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, I attended a principals’ meeting where a regional staffer briefed us on the future implications of this new piece of legislation. Schools in districts across the state had been participating in the administration of the PSSA test for several years prior to this new federal accountability mandate. At that time, test results for the three grades being assessed (grades 5,8, and 11), were reported back to individual districts simply as average scale scores for each of their schools. With NCLB, all students in grades 3- 8 and grade 11 would now be required to take the PSSA. This would be phased in over a few years to give the state time to develop tests at each grade level. NCLB also dramatically changed the manner in which states and school districts would be expected to communicate test results to the public. From this point forward, scoring bands labeled Advanced and Proficient were introduced to describe those students considered to be demonstrating academic achievement that was on grade level or above expectations. For those students who did not do as well on the test, the labels Basic or Below Basic were applied.
When I decided to create City School Stories this past year, I set a personal writing goal for myself. My objective was to post an installment of Confessions of an Urban Principal on Mondays and Wednesdays from the beginning of September 2010 to the end of June 2011. This past Wednesday I achieved this objective when I posted the final segment of 
The purpose of