Abetted by the example of Race to the Top, as well as encouragement from the Gates Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, and the rightwing Corbett administration in Harrisburg, the state-appointed School Reform Commission in Philadelphia is poised to close an unprecedented number of Philadelphia public schools. The schools are under enrolled, says the commission, but the commission created the under-enrollment by opening charter schools. now Philadelphia will run a dual system, like many other cities, even though the charters are no better than the public schools.
Cui bono?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They can call the schools any thing they . School of science and technology, school for the performing arts. It doesn’t matter they always end up doing the same thing, teaching to the test’
Does anyone know how many students are enrolled in Philadelphia charter schools?
55,625 students. Comes to around 1 in every 4 students.
This is connected. It’s goes wider than schools. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sally-fay/is-larry-ellison-buying-t_b_1569399.html
We keep reading stories of malfeasance by Charter CEO’s, yet the SRC and powers that be, claim that parents choose Charter Schools. Many students have addresses without a neighborhood school. If these families want to send their children to public school, they have to make an application at the School District Headquarters, which may be miles from home. The former neighborhood schools have been converted to Charters and if the Charter is at full enrollment the students are denied admission.
The blatant disregard for the students is Philadelphia Public Schools is evidenced daily with the lay off of 100+ Certified School Nurses, School Police Officers and Librarians. The bare bones budgetary restrictions that principals must manipulate to run their buildings would be laughable if it was not so tragic. They are proposing “Community Partnerships” as one solution- so far this looks like student nurses coming to schools for their public health rotation. When student teachers are placed in schools to learn how to become effective teachers are they going to claim that this support is for the benefit of the classroom teachers? It is really heartbreaking to see the demise of public schools. There is no REAL choice for the students of Philadelphia.
Added to the list of venture “philanthropists” that are destroying public education In Philadelphia is the Broad Foundation. The current Superintendent is a graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy.
The previous Superintendent, until she was bought out of her contract for $1 million, was Dr. Arlene Ackerman. She was on the board of the Broad Foundation while she was Superintendent in Philadelphia. She (along with major cuts by Governor Corbett) left the School District with a $1 billion deficit through such things as pouring money into charters and Renaissance Schools even as public schools were being starved.
There are 84 charter schools in Philadelphia educating over 55,000 students – a little more than one-quarter of the District population. The School Reform Commission has announced that it will continue to “renaissance” more low performing Philadelphia public schools, potentially turning more schools over to big-operator charter organizations. A “plan” unveiled last year, bought and supported by private donors and the William Penn Foundation called for 40% of students to be placed in charters
Helen,
Have there been evaluations of the Philly charters?
Diane
Yes. Research for Action did an evaluation in 2008: http://www.researchforaction.org/publication-listing/?id=261. Of course the Stanford CREDO study took into consideration Philadelphia charters. These studies have tended to look at things like test data – and are probably now outdated. The District has ranked charter schools by a “school performance index”: http://webgui.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/a/accountability/school-performance-index-spi.
One very important issue that has often been overlooked in the “evaluation of charters” has been barriers to charter entry. The Notebook showed the distinction here: http://www.researchforaction.org/publication-listing/?id=261 Clearly strong assessment of both systems is lacking.
One other thing the story above leaves out is that the William Penn Foundation made a decision last spring to solicit millions of dollars in funds from private unnamed donors and contract directly with a private consultant – the Boston Consulting Group – in order to determine “contract deliverables” to present to the school district. Parents recently filed an ethics complaint, alleging that the act of contracting independently constituted lobbying. You can read more about this corporate and private influence on public entities here: http://parentsunitedphila.com/2012/12/06/public-deserves-to-know/
here: http://parentsunitedphila.com/2013/02/14/dear-philadelphia-we-are-above-the-law/
and here: http://parentsunitedphila.com/2013/02/14/on-public-integrity-and-our-ethics-complaint/
http://thenotebook.org/blog/135655/district-reduces-number-planned-school-closings
This story, in today’s edition of the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, reports on the district’s latest move. Some schools were removed, but, shockingly, two more were slated to be closed. Superintendent Hite claims that he has listened to the community, but no one in the community asked for MORE schools to be placed on the hit list. This kind of corporate-think leaves no room for considering how this affects the lives of students and their families.
Philly columnist Will Bunch links Corbett to corporate greed here, but does not take the step to link the influence of the 1% on education policy and leaders. As we move from closings into budget seasons, Philly civic voices and activists need to focus on removing a major barrier to a better way for our schools: our elected leader in Harrisburg, Governor Corporate
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Comcast-Corbett-and-the-1-Percent-Party-.html