According to this article, Philadelphia will spend an additional $7,000 per student to open many new charter schools. It will cost the district $139 million over the next five years.
24% of the district’s students are currently in charters. The School Reform Commission, acting on the advice of the Boston Consulting Group, wants to increase that proportion to 40%.
What is the record of charter schools in Philadelphia to date?
Does the business community and civic leadership remember what happened the last time that Philadelphia adopted privatization? Or did they forget?
Philadelphia has been under state control for years. No one is pushing for privatization but the elites who don’t send their children to public schools in Philadelphia.
Maybe the state and the School Reform Commission should let the citizens take charge of their schools and find out what the parents and citizens of Philadelphia want to do with their schools and their children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What about people’s taxes? Here on Long Island, all we e er hear about is how high our school taxes are. If this is public money, don’t then tax payees pick up the tab?
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Boy, that article is a fluff piece for charters, isn’t it?
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Maybe it’s good that the district will be spending more per pupil. But the problem is, where is that money coming from? And how much of that 7 grand goes to exorbitant administrator salaries and profits for the various companies? Monies that could be better spent on the actual teaching and learning process.
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Great idea, parent-teacher administration of public schools at the local level.
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Philadelphia charters are not the only growth industry in Pennsylvania:
Cyber charters in Pennsylvania growing despite issues
from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“In the fall of 2000, the Pittsburgh area was introduced to a new, though largely unwelcome, educational venue when Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School opened, allowing students to attend school online from home. That statewide school — now known as Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School and based in Midland, Beaver County — attracted 505 students, and another cyber charter, Susq-Cyber, more localized around Bloomsburg, Columbia County, enrolled 77. This fall, enrollment in 16 cyber charter schools — including four new ones — is expected to grow beyond last year’s 32,000, demonstrating the increasing popularity of online education among families of children in grades K-12.” http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/cyber-charters-in-pennsylvania-growing-despite-issues-651523/
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I agree that parents and the schools know what is best for their children.
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Philadelphians need to take to the streets. Since when does the BCG know squat about schools? Why will it end up costing more, with unknown results? They might as well hire a tutor, responsible for ten kids and pay them 85k a year. They can shave 50% of the educational costs and I’ll bet the results will be stellar compared to this latest proposal. Wow. I didn’t know Philly was so flush with money and so willing to abandon its obligation to educate Philadelphians. I wonder how the parents will react. I wonder what city service is next.
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I remember when one of the bedrock, like-a-tree-standing-by-the-water arguments put forth in the public arena by charter proponents, was that charters would be much more cost effective than public schools. Charters would light the way to a more fiscally sound future, making better and greater use of the same or even less resources than shamefully wasteful public schools.
The article was such a “puff piece for charters” [from Duane Swacker’s post above] that the mention of the $7,000 extra cost could hardly be called an intentional swipe at charters.
If there were any dignity and honor left in the charter movement, this blog should have dozens of posts from the pro-charter crowd denouncing even the idea that a cash-strapped school district would spend, on average, $7,000 more per pupil on such a risky venture.
The dog that didn’t bark…. The silence is deafening.
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The article fails to mention Mastery’s recent admission that it did not admit some special ed students.
And no matter what Commissioner Dworetzky says, he has voted for charter approval in most cases.
No doubt, it is time to take to the streets
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Philadelphia,the city of brotherly love. Its children’s education is now being excoriated by corrupt officials and office holders, corporate reformist who are hell-bent to mine the area for all the profit that’s available. Elitist reformers of public education care only for their own and have little or no regard for anyone else. Yes, I agree with philalisa: it IS time to take to the streets.
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The article makes Mastery charter schools sound like a good investment despite the additional cost. Aside from wondering if the taxpayers can afford these charters, the article does not address any of the issues repeatedly identified with charters from executive compensation to discipline codes and teacher attrition/burnout. There is a disconnect in this article between the discussion of the economics of privatization and the quality of the programs. I am left with the feeling that maybe we ought to be figuring out how we can replicate programs like Mastery at a sustainable cost. I have a feeling that there is more to the story.
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