Bio | Theodore Hershberg Ph.D. | The Center for Greater Philadelphia

Center for Greater Philadelphia

Operation Public Education

Theodore Hershberg

Theodore Hershberg Ph.D.
tedhersh@pobox.upenn.edu

Theodore Hershberg is Professor of Public Policy and History and Director of the Center for Greater Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1967. He served as Assistant to the Mayor (Philadelphia) for Strategic Planning and Policy Development during a leave from Penn (1984-85). He was Acting Dean of Penn's School of Public and Urban Policy and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in American history from Stanford University and studied sociology at Columbia University as a Social Science Research Council Fellow. In his long career at Penn, Prof. Hershberg has had three major research interests.

Education Reform
In 1995, his interest in human capital development led to an applied examination of public education. Following four years of work with a consortium of 31 public school districts that he organized to work collaboratively on standards-based reform, Prof. Hershberg founded Operation Public Education in 2000 to develop a new set of rules and incentives to govern K-12. OPE is now introducing its model for comprehensive school reform to education stakeholders across the nation.

Recent publications include "Value-added Assessment and Systemic Reform: A Response to America's Human Capital Development Challenge," Aspen Institute (Feb. 2005); "Value-Added Assessment: Powerful Diagnostics to Improve Instruction and Promote Student Achievement," AASA Conference Proceedings (2005); "The Revelations of Value-Added," The School Administrator (Dec. 2004); "Measuring What Matters," American School Boards Journal (Feb. 2004); "Adequacy, Equity and Accountability," Education Week (Feb. 19, 2003); "The Case for New Standards in Education," Education Week (Dec. 10, 1997); "Human Capital Development: America's Greatest Challenge," The Annals (March 1996).

Regional Cooperation
From 1981 to 1995, Prof. Hershberg pursued applied public policy with a focus on regions. After returning to Penn from his leave in 1985, he founded the Center for Greater Philadelphia (CGP) to promote regional cooperation in metropolitan Philadelphia. As a neutral third-party convener, the CGP provides objective analysis and jargon-free reports on key public policy issues. It convened ten annual Southeastern PA State Legislators' Conferences, the Regional Agenda-Setting Process, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Municipalities Conference.

In May 1995, the CGP organized the Call to Action Conference, attended by 2,000 business, civic and political leaders who gathered to consider the Greater Philadelphia Investment Portfolio, containing 89 regional initiatives. Prof. Hershberg has authored reports on many regional topics including economic development, tax reform, transportation, and labor force and education. Selected publications include "The Regional Imperatives of Global Competition," in Planning for a New Century (Island Press, 2000); "Regional Cooperation: Strategies and Incentives for Global Competitiveness and Urban Reform," National Civic Review (Spring 1996); "The Case for Regional Cooperation," The Regionalist (Sept. 1995).

Urban-Industrial Transformation
From 1969 to 1981, Prof. Hershberg founded and directed the Philadelphia Social History Project, a cross-disciplinary research effort supported by 11 federal research grants that resulted in the publication of several books, over one hundred articles and papers, and sixteen doctoral dissertations in five disciplines. His scholarly writings analyzed Philadelphia's industrial development and the experience of its diverse immigrant groups. He also authored the Philadelphia entry in the World Book Encyclopedia.

In recent years, Prof. Hershberg has spoken to audiences in over 80 cities hosted by the National School Boards Association, American Association of School Administrators, New York State School Boards Association, Teacher Union Reform Network, Association for Supervision and Curricular Development, Urban Land Institute, and chambers of commerce nationwide.

Prof. Hershberg serves on the board of the National Civic League and the Institute for the Regional Community. He appears on national and local news shows, and his views are cited in the nation's leading newspapers.

The Center is funded by grants from the Annenberg Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the William Penn Foundation and major corporations.

Prof. Hershberg was born (1941) and raised in Chicago. He lives with his wife, Betsy, a fiber-artist, in the West Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia. They have two children, Daniel, born in 1984, and Jessica, born in 1986.

January 2005