Answer No 3: Philadelphia's Vietnam

Within the next year, the mayor and the School Reform Commission will hire someone to replace Arlene Ackerman.  All I can say to that new superintendent is: Welcome to the Big Muddy.

Declaring victory and withdrawing is not an option in the Philadelphia School District.  With its 150,000 students, 200-plus schools, and $3 billion budget, its job is to educate tomorrow's workers. The good news is that there have been consistent gains over the last 10 years on student performance on standardized tests designed to measure proficiency.

The rest is mostly bad news: the Ackerman regime left the district shell shocked. The district has had to cut its budget and workforce in drastic ways.

It's easy to be drawn into the morass of district power politics (teachers vs. administration, kids vs. kids). You can easily get lost.  The best way to measure the district's success is to ask a simple question: How many young men and women graduate from high school with a solid grasp of reading, writing and math?  An ancillary -- even simpler question is -- how many graduate, period?

The graduation rate has increased in recent years -- and Mayor Nutter has a goal to get it even higher.  Currently, 57 percent of Philadelphia students graduate high school on-time (i.e. within four years.)  The number goes even higher -- to 62 percent -- if you measure graduation rates over six years of entering 9th Grade. (It reminds me of John Belushi's observation in Animal House that "sophomore year was the best three years of my life!" )

Like everything else in the district, if you want to have hope, it's best not to peer too deeply into the numbers.  For instance, while the citywide on-time graduation rate has gone up, most of the rise has been fueled by 90-percent-plus graduation rates at the district's many magnet schools.

The story is different at the city's neighborhood high schools, which educate the majority of students.  Only four of the neighborhood high schools do better than the city average. Twenty-five do worse.  Some significantly worse.

The cliché is that an educated workforce is the key to a better future. So, what is the antithesis of that: A workforce of dropouts is the key to....?  I hesitate to fill in the blanks.