Shelly’s comments on Ackerman’s departure: “I do think she raised the issues very clearly of the need to do something extra for the most downtrodden among us, but she also was very divisive. She made a lot of very educationally good decisions, but her control needs undermined some of her educational ideas. In the end, the stirring up of the divisiveness was very regrettable.

There’s got to be a lot of healing time now, hard to know how that will play out given the economic tsunami. While she advanced some of the things that needed to be advanced, a lot of people who worked in education did not feel valued, I think we lost a lot of valuable people.”

The Philadelphia Public School Notebook – August 22, 2011 – Read article online