Vicki L. Phillips

Vicki Phillips, Superintendent of Portland Public Schools, has built a strong education reform record throughout her career, at all levels from individual schools to the federal government. She has worked to improve education as a teacher, in state government, as leader of a non-profit education foundation and as superintendent of a large urban school district.

Phillips has also served as Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's appointed Secretary of Education/Chief State School Officer since January of 2003. She and Rendell pursued an aggressive agenda to improve schools throughout Pennsylvania. Her major initiatives include:

• Accountability Block Grants for local districts. The grants allocate $175 million in new money for school districts to implement research-based programs to boost student achievement in 2004-05. The 501 public school districts in Pennsylvania can use these flexible grants to support programs such as pre-school and full-day kindergarten, reduced class size in early grades, tutoring for struggling students, teacher professional development and coaching, and family resource networks to help keep children safe and healthy.
• Making school funding more equitable statewide. Pennsylvania pays only 25 percent of local education costs, leaving 75 percent to local taxes. As a result, rich districts are able to spend far more on their children's education, while students in poor districts suffer. As a step toward equitable funding, Gov. Rendell and Phillips are working to increase state funding closer to 45 percent, allowing local districts to lower property taxes.
• Making state tests scores more meaningful. Phillips is leading efforts to make the states' standardized test results more understandable and useful to parents. Individual teachers will also receive reports on their students' success at core standards, so they can use the test scores to improve their instruction.
• Closing the achievement gap and raising the bar. Through a new effort, the State Board of Education will select 20 schools to receive intensive support (including training and consultation) to build a rigorous curriculum, train teachers, and engage the community to close the achievement gap. These pilot schools would then be models for other Pennsylvania schools.

Vicki Phillips has spent more than 20 years working in education. Born in Kentucky, she grew up on a small tobacco farm. She was the first in her family to go to college, and earned first a BS in Elementary Education then a MA in School Psychology from Western Kentucky University.

The superintendent earned her Doctor of Educational degree in Educational Leadership and Management from the University of Lincoln, England, in 2002. Her dissertation was entitled: Designing New Systems of Accountability in Education.

Early in her career, she worked at a care facility for individuals with disabilities, and as a middle and high school teacher. In 1989, she worked for the US Office of Education in Washington, DC.

Highlights of her career include:

Kentucky Department of Education (1986-1993). In several senior positions, Phillips designed new strategies to help students with emotional behavior disabilities, led an initiative to improve state support for at-risk students, and served on the executive team that designed and led implementation of the comprehensive and far-reaching Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990.

National Alliance for Restructuring Education (1993-1995). Phillips was deputy director/chief of staff for the partnership of states, schools, corporations, foundations and non-profit organizations working together on changes in education. She managed the budget and day-to-day operations during rapid growth, helped the alliance move from depending on grants to self-sufficiency, and shaped agendas in five areas of education reform.

Executive Director, Children Achieving Challenge, and Director of Greater Philadelphia First Partnership for Reform (1995-1998). The Partnership was composed of top business and civic leaders that support improvement of the Philadelphia School District. The Challenge was set up to implement a comprehensive five-year reform agenda, which included setting high performance standards, accountability for results, shrinking the central bureaucracy to let schools make more decisions, better professional development, updated technology, and engaging the public in school reform. Phillips worked with the Philadelphia Superintendent and the business community to raise $100 million in matching funds for the $50 million Annenberg Grant and was responsible for managing the funds.

Lancaster Schools Superintendent (1998-2003). Based on her record of school reform, the School District of Lancaster hired Phillips as its superintendent in 1998. Lancaster, in Southeastern Pennsylvania, is an urban school district of approximately 11,500 students, serving highly diverse population with high levels of poverty. As Phillips took office, the district was struggling: Test scores were so low that the state placed Lancaster on its "Empowerment" list, and demanded an improvement plan.

Phillips immediately set to work turning the district around, working with teachers and administrators to plan and implement sweeping changes in the Lancaster Schools:

• Implementing full-day kindergarten at all schools for the first time.
• Increasing parent involvement at schools, with staff dedicated to helping families engage in their children's education. Attendance at back-to-school nights and similar events soared.
• Establishing small learning communities in high school.
• Building strong community engagement and support for the schools, including reinvigorating a foundation to support Lancaster Schools.
• More than doubling the amount of state, federal and private grants awarded the district, to $10.4 million in 2003.
• Establishing a performance-pay system for administrators that tied compensation to student achievement, along with personal, instructional and community leadership.
• Reorganizing middle schools to challenge students at standard, provide intensive support for struggling students and allow teachers planning and professional development time.

The work paid off, as student achievement increased significantly. In 1998, almost half of Lancaster students scored "below basic" on state reading tests. That share dropped by almost 11 percentage points in three years, while students rated "advanced" or "proficient" increased from 25 percent to 37 percent. Similarly, math scores improved with those "below basic" dropping by almost 17 percentage points as students at the highest levels rose from 19 percent to almost 32 percent. Attendance also improved at every level, and the number of high school graduates increased markedly.

Gov. Ed Rendell recognized that achievement when he chose Phillips as his first Cabinet-level appointment (the state Senate later unanimously confirmed her to the post). "The reason I selected her," he told the Lancaster New Era at the time, "is because of the things that she, working with all of you, has done here in the last five years."