“All of us wish to acknowledge the substantial debt we owe Dr. Ackerman for her hard work and dedicated service to the District. In 2008, when she was recruited to leave her tenured professorship and come to Philadelphia, less than 50 percent of the District’s students were at or above statewide standards for reading and math proficiency. Dr. Ackerman immediately set out a comprehensive plan to target reforms that would close the achievement gap while raising the District’s performance across the board. The aggressiveness of Dr. Ackerman’s five-year strategic plan, Imagine 2014, was outweighed solely by her personal commitment to demonstrating that given the right systemic reforms, all of our children can achieve.
“We see tangible evidence of the progress the District has made toward that goal in just three short years under Dr. Ackerman’s leadership. Dr. Ackerman and her team earned praise from President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for an intervention approach aimed at turning around the District’s struggling schools under the Empowerment, Renaissance and Promise Academy initiatives. Dr. Ackerman did not shy away from taking on the tough issues that had been neglected for decades such as rightsizing the District through a five-year master facilities plan aimed at better utilizing our resources and implementing new accountability measures for staff. And Dr. Ackerman demonstrated real results: three years of gains in test scores; a 29% decline in violent incidents; 7% gains in the six-year graduation rates; and lastly, Parent University where more than 40,000 parents took courses throughout the past three years.
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