Word: philadelphia
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Experts assembled from across the country to form a mosaic of perspectives and opinions. Speaking during the event were Elliot B. Davis of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Kathleen A. Foster of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Timothy A. Burgard of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Each participant presented a separate statement, delving into a particular aspect of the afternoon’s themes before briefly convening as a panel for a question-and-answer session...
...Shoemaker's halls quietly in single-file lines, the school's walls are graffiti-free, test scores have increased dramatically, and packages are presumably being delivered on time. If this sounds like an entirely different school, that's because it basically is. In fall 2006, the School District of Philadelphia gave the building over to Mastery, a local operator of charter schools - that is, ones that are publicly funded but privately managed. The adults left, the kids remained, and the once failing school has been turned around...
...properly, the early results are encouraging. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has cited Mastery Charter Schools as a shining example of how to right a capsized ship. So far, Mastery has used the same approach at each of the three schools it has taken over from the School District of Philadelphia since 2006: retain the students, spiff up the place, and bring in new teachers and administrators. (See the top 10 magazine covers...
...Philadelphia is about to find out. The city is launching a new initiative dubbed Renaissance Schools, which will try to overhaul perhaps more than 10% of the district's schools over the next few years. Given how hard it would be to find entirely new staffs for that many turnarounds, the city recently renegotiated its contract with the local teachers' union to extend the school day and year in Renaissance schools, where staff will get paid more and potentially receive bonuses based on performance...
...turnaround evangelists. But that's another lesson of school reform: half measures are often the best you can do. "There is an opportunity here to fix schools that haven't worked for a long, long time," says Ben Rayer, the chief charter-school liaison for the School District of Philadelphia and former COO of Mastery. "The money and the desire to do so are there now." It's easy to be paralyzed by the enormousness of the task, he adds. "But man, you just gotta start...