Reflections: Then and Now
“AYP Anyway I Can Get It”
Submitted by Frank Murphy on July 19, 2011
In light of cheating scandals in Atlanta, Washington, Los Angeles, Houston, and now Philadelphia, it is a good time to reexamine the school reform tactics of one of Paul Vallas’ chief aides during his tenure as CEO of the Philadelphia. In Confessions of an Urban Principal I refer to this administrator as “Deputy Slide”. I bestowed this title upon her after listening to the advice she offered regarding how to achieve the AYP goal for my school.
She explained to me that she and Paul wanted to see a significant increase in the number of schools in the District that would make AYP. In order to do so, she said that she would take AYP any way she could get it.
The conversation I had with Deputy Slide was instructive. Before meeting with her I had suspected that the test