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Education Consultant Faces Career Challenge as Philadelphia School Chief
By William Celis 3d
March 22, 1995
ImageEducation Consultant Faces Career Challenge as Philadelphia School Chief
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David W. Hornbeck, one of the nation's leading education consultants, has sometimes been called a Dr. Fix-It for ailing public schools. Now he has set out to redesign one himself, choosing one of the country's most distressed school systems, Philadelphia.
"I got tired of telling people how to fix their schools," said Mr. Hornbeck, the new Philadelphia schools superintendent, who earned his nickname by helping 20 states revamp their school systems and by serving on national education commissions.
"I concluded that there should be a school district somewhere where a huge proportion of students is achieving," Mr. Hornbeck said. "There is not a school district in the U.S. where that's happening."
The concept, however, has been met with skepticism.
In trying to silence his critics, Mr. Hornbeck, a theologian by training who also holds a law degree, has unveiled a four-year plan, Children Achieving. Its estimated cost is $1.3 billion.
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Under the plan, which was announced in February, Mr. Hornbeck proposed setting high standards for all students through rejuvenated curriculums. Students would be tested in core subjects in the fourth and eighth grades. The district's central administration would be reduced, local schools given more authority, and teachers given more time for staff development.
"This is a first for an urban school system," said Chris Pipho, an education consultant at the Education Commission of the States, a non-profit education research and policy group.
In no other big city, Mr. Pipho said, has a new superintendent introduced a comprehensive plan with specific goals stretching over a set time. Only two states -- Kentucky and Mississippi -- have made the effort, he said, because it is exceedingly difficult and expensive.
Throughout Philadelphia's school system of 209,000 students -- 63 percent of whom are black, 23 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic and 4 percent Asian -- the needs are great and resources thin. And, despite Herculean efforts in the past to jump-start student performance, achievement remains spotty. Half of the district's ninth graders do not graduate in four years, for example, with 49 percent failing the first year of high school.
Mr. Hornbeck's proposal -- already approved by the school board -- also tries to carry out the edicts of of a state judge last fall regarding compliance in a 24-year-old desegregation case. Basically, the judicial orders call for improving educational offerings for all children.
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The only way to address the problems of urban school children, Mr. Hornbeck said, is the kind of comprehensive approach he has charted.
Mr. Hornbeck wants to introduce full-day kindergartens in all elementary schools in poverty areas by September and in all elementary schools a year later. At present, fewer than half of the elementary schools have such programs. To address violence in the schools, he is opening six alternative schools for middle-school students who have disciplinary problems. They will have an operating cost of $1.1 million this year.
He also envisions creating 22 mini-school districts to make the current bureaucracy easier to navigate. Philadelphia's school district now has six mammoth sub-school districts.
The effort is expected to cost about $120 million in the 1995-96 school year and continue to increase for the next four years. Mr. Hornbeck has already gotten a $50 million Annenberg Foundation grant, which carries a matching stipulation that could lift the total gift to $150 million.
Even with the grant, though, the plan faces financial hurdles. The district has a projected deficit of $112 million out of a total proposed budget of nearly $1.5 billion for the next school year.
Adding to the pressure of turning around such a troubled school system is that Mr. Hornbeck's contract links his salary to the district's success.
If he fails to introduce the plan in a timely fashion, Mr. Hornbeck, 53, will lose 5 percent of his $160,000-a-year salary beginning in the 1995-96 school year. In the next year, his salary is tied to the level of student achievement.
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"Under the best of circumstances, it is going to be excruciatingly difficult," said Mr. Hornbeck, whose tours on national commissions included the post of chairman of a group that two years ago called for an overhaul of the Federal Title 1 program, formerly known as Chapter One. Title 1 is a $6.6 billion program designed to bring disadvantaged youngsters up to grade level in reading and math.
"Will we have all children achieving at high levels?" he asked in a recent interview. "No, we won't. Will we have even half of that? The answer is, Probably not. If we can do enough of what I have proposed, it will be much more difficult to turn back."
Witness the efforts of Kentucky, where Mr. Hornbeck has perhaps had his biggest impact. In 1989 the Kentucky Supreme Court declared the state's public education system unconstitutional because of fiscal and educational deficiencies, and Mr. Hornbeck was summoned to be one of the lead experts in restructuring it. The system now has tougher standards for the curriculum and graduation and students are showing academic improvement on statewide tests.
As the quiet-spoken Mr. Hornbeck tours schools here, there is virtually unanimous agreement over his assessment on what Philadelphia needs.
"Nobody can argue about the sensibility of what needs to be done," said Florence Campbell, the principal at West Philadelphia High School. "The issue is how in the world are we going to do this?"
Indeed, the needs of West Philadelphia High are widely evident. Students in Carol Merrill's English class bought their own copies of a Zora Neale Hurston novel because the district lacked the money to buy them. Ms. Merrill's class size on a recent day was small -- just over 20 students -- not by design but because absenteeism here and in other schools is so high. With all students in attendance, her class would have had close to 30 attending.
"We might learn a little more if the class size was smaller," said Aaron Edwards, an 18-year-old senior in Ms. Merrill's class.
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Quansheila Clay, 16, a sophomore, added, "Because you won't have to take the time for the slow students."
The high absenteeism might give teachers some respite, but it is indicative that "what is going on right now isn't working," said Ms. Merrill, who said she felt the wearing effects from her large classes. "My student load is 150 students. That's a lot."
Teachers say morale is sagging in many schools. And there are reservations not just about whether Mr. Hornbeck's plan will succeed, but also about whether any of it will be put into effect in the face of fiscal restraints and skepticism from administrators and teachers.
There are whispers that Mr. Hornbeck, who at 30 was the Deputy Education Commissioner of Pennsylvania and at 34 was the Maryland Education Commissioner, has never been a public school teacher, principal or superintendent. As a result, teachers say, he is clueless about the dizzying list of needs that students bring to school.
"You know what the attitude is here?" asked Ted Kirsch, the president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the local union, which has more than 20,000 members. "It's, 'Here we go again.'
"Every time there is a new superintendent, there is a new program. Then they leave, and we're left with the remnants of a failure. That's why the other superintendents aren't here. Their programs failed."
Like many school administrators, Mr. Kirsch said he agreed with the common-sense approach of the Hornbeck plan. "But how are you going to achieve all these things without more money?" he asked.
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Mr. Hornbeck said he was not oblivious to the mounting challenges that teachers face.
As a traveling education consultant, Mr. Hornbeck, who earned theology degrees from Oxford University and Union Theological Seminary in New York and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, has already seen all the hand-wringing over financing. In Texas, Delaware, Ohio, Missouri, Washington, Ohio, Connecticut and other states he has worked for, the issue has been the same: not enough money.
"The only place we're going to find money is in Harrisburg," said Mr. Hornbeck, referring to the Pennsylvania Legislature. "But we have to convince them that they will get better results from their money."
To that end, he said, he is reviewing the Philadelphia district's operations to see whether any, like custodial services, can be performed by private contractors.
But the "biggest problem we have," he said, "is not believing all kids can achieve."
A version of this article appears in print on March 22, 1995, Section B, Page 7 of the National edition with the headline: Education Consultant Faces Career Challenge as Philadelphia School Chief. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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