The Philadelphia Story: A Critical Conversation Between Researchers and Stakeholders

• In Event: Action Space for School Reform: Taking Stock of Philadelphia, the 1990s and Today

Abstract

Objective
During this part of the symposium four panelists will engage with action-space theory, applying it to the case of Philadelphia school reform efforts in the 1990s and more recently. The 4 panelists who will speak from their perspectives both as key actors during the Annenberg Challenge and their current positions as informed observers of education locally and nationally.

The Panelists
Jolley Bruce Christman, moderator, is a founder of Research for Action, and co-principal investigator of the evaluation of Children Achieving.

Warren Simmons, panelist, is the Executive Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. He was the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Education Fund, a nonprofit intermediary organization that works with the School District of Philadelphia, for several years during Children Achieving.

Germaine Ingram, panelist, works on a number of initiatives and non-profit boards with a focus on arts and humanities for young people in Philadelphia. She served the Philadelphia School District 1994-2001, first as General Counsel, and then as Deputy to Superintendant David Hornbeck.

Dale Mezzacappa, panelist, is currently contributing editor at the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a bimonthly independent and non-profit publication with a mission to draw attention to injustices facing students in urban schools. She teaches a journalism course at Swarthmore College. She covered education for the Philadelphia Inquirer during Children Achieving.



Presentation
Christman will provide brief opening remarks aimed at providing the audience with a broad sweep of Philadelphia school reform of the past two decades. She will then moderate the conversation, posing questions such as:
 What were the key reform arguments that from your perspective drove the Children Achieving reform era? How did you as key actors in that reform try to “wrestle them to ground” into workable blueprints for system-wide improvement?

 Where do you see those ideas in play today – in Philadelphia and beyond? What do they look like in their current form? What lessons from the past do they take into account? What have they ignored? Why and with what consequence?

 Considering action space theory – the dynamic interactions of professional capacity, civic capacity and resources – what power do you think it brings to an analysis of Children Achieving? What limitations?

 In her final question, Christman will ask panelists to offer their perspective on a quote from McDonald’s book:

The Children Achieving reform project is widely regarded today as a failure—as is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the New York Networks for School Renewal. But “failure” is not the same as collapse, and matters of failure and success are highly contingent on perspective. Both can have a slow incubation and a long reach. (McDonald et al., 2014, p. 173)

Authors

• Jolley B. Christman, Research for Action

• Warren Simmons, Brown University

• Dale Mezzacappa

• Germaine Ingram, Philadelphia Public Schools