In Pennsylvania, there’s a school system where a superintendent with a national reputation as a reformer has attracted strong support and praise from business leaders and philanthropies. Five years into his program, he has begun to declare noticeable results.

There’s also a school system in Pennsylvania where half of the high school students either drop out or flunk, where buildings crumble and textbooks routinely disappear, where the superintendent is repeatedly denounced as high-handed and out of touch by the teachers union, state lawmakers and some parents. It’s a school system often cited as the chief reason people move out of the city it serves.

What’s fascinating is that those two school systems are one and the same: the Philadelphia School District in the fifth year of the David Hornbeck era.

When Hornbeck came to Philadelphia in 1994, he brought with him his 10-point Children Achieving plan. It called for high expectations, rigorous standards _ and heightened accountability for students, teachers and principals. It broke the district up into smaller "clusters," trying to reduce top-down management. It called for schools to become community centers with services for whole families.

Tellingly, Point 10 of the plan was: Do all of points 1 through 9. Five years out, Point 10 is a long way from being honored.

The teachers union has battled Hornbeck at most turns, saying his "accountability" plans amount to blaming teachers for a chronic lack of resources and parental involvement. His hunt for the resources he says are needed to put his high standards in reach of students – for smaller classes and remedial programs - has gotten nowhere with the state’s political leaders. By hinting that their reluctance to increase state aid for the $1.5 billion system was racist, he chilled relations with Harrisburg to Arctic levels. A threat to close down the system early this spring if more state aid were not sent wilted when Harrisburg passed a law authorizing state takeover of the city schools.

Against this backdrop, this mayoral campaign has featured more talk about education than any in recent memory. The trendy idea has been to call for a new system of school governance, giving the mayor wider and clearer power.

Citizens are aware of such talk, but at their grassroots level - that of taxpayer, parent and employer - the choices are framed differently. They go to fundamentals:

What ought education’s mission be, and who should determine it: parents, professionals or the community? Can the city schools be turned around by a sharper sense of mission? Or by a more supportive connection to the community? Or should it be scrapped and replaced with charters, vouchers and home schooling?

No city problem has generated more interest among Citizen Voices than this:

Citizens see three main choices for addressing this problem: