Taking the High Road

By Robert C. Johnston

Philadelphia

Not long after David W. Hornbeck became the superintendent of the nation's sixth-largest school system in 1994, the Philadelphia Inquirer bluntly laid out his challenge.

The newspaper's scathing special report on the city's schools, "District in Distress," painted a bleak picture: Just 25 percent of elementary students were reading at or above the national average. One-third of middle school students had been suspended at least once in the past school year. And Philadelphia spent $1,160 less on the education of each of its 214,000 students than the average in the surrounding suburbs.

But the moral imperative to get something done for underprivileged children resonated with Hornbeck, a longtime children's advocate and a minister. He could also draw on his experience as a leading consultant in Kentucky's far- reaching effort to overhaul its school system in the late 1980s, and as the reform-minded state chief...