ABSTRACT
Innovation in the Philadelphia schools in recent years has been indistinguishable from Dr. Mark Shedd, who was hired away from Englewood, New Jersey, in 1967 to become superintendent of the Philadelphia system. His appointment coincided with the election of a new progressive school board, from which he has had constant support. The Advancement School is a curriculum development center; as such, it is open for observation with the objective of stimulating changes in the rest of the system with its innovations. The Mantua community, in which five of the seven schools are located and from which all draw students, is a community of 17,000 people located one mile west of Philadelphia’s City Hall, a half mile north of the University of Pennsylvania, and several feet up from the Schuylkill River and the tracks of the Penn Central Railroad’s 30th Street Station.
