Earlier this year, the William Penn Foundation commissioned a report from the Boston Consulting Group on the future of the Philadelphia public schools. BCG, as is customary, recommended closing dozens of public schools and opening dozens of privately managed charters.
Parents and community leaders were outraged.
One group, Parents United for Public Education, complained that the William Penn Foundation was engaged in lobbying, and it sought a legal opinion from the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia to support its claim.
Please read the linked article. It reveals an intent to privatize public schools, not to study their needs dispassionately.
The hard-charging president of the William Penn Foundation has suddenly resigned, in what appears to be an ouster by the board. Is this a mini-replay of the Ford Foundation’s ill-fated intervention into school politics in New York City in 1968-70? No one knows, for now. Perhaps the foundation did not enjoy being cast in the role of villain in the city’s struggles.
The interesting story here is that Philadelphia parents (and give credit here to the tireless Helen Gym) pressed the theory that the new muscular venture philanthropy crossed a clear line from philanthropy to political activism.
In the past decade, a handful of very wealthy foundations have used their funding to steer public schools, without regard to the wishes of parents or to the democratic process. Philadelphia parents just threw a wrench into the gears of the privatization machine.
Follow the money! More journalists should be focusing on this national scandal.
This sounds a lot like what is happening in Seattle. We have a foundation, the Alliance for Education, that started, years ago, as a fundraising/cheerleading arm for the district but now, sounds a LOT like the William Penn Foundation. They are mostly business-types who are constantly trying to micromanage our district and its administration. Thanks for this heads up on possible avenues to limit their influence.
Thank God for Helen Gym and other parents like her who are fighting the rheeformers. We teachers are in a difficult position when it comes to this, made more difficult by the accusations that we are against rheeform for monetary reasons or for all those “perks” we get.
Kudos to Parents United for Public Education and their smart partnership with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. This is the kind of partnership that can create some pushback.
I drop a comment each time I especially enjoy a post on
a site or if I have something to contribute to the discussion.
It is caused by the passion communicated in the article I looked at.
And on this article Parent Power in Philadelphia | Diane Ravitch’s blog. I was actually excited enough to post a leave a responsea response🙂 I do have a couple of questions for you if you usually do not mind. Is it only me or do a few of these responses come across like they are left by brain dead folks?😛 And, if you are posting at additional places, I would like to keep up with you. Could you make a list all of all your public sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?