Claudio Sanchez of NPR did an excellent analysis of the tragedy unfolding in the Philadelphia public schools. The schools have been under state control for a dozen years. When Paul Vallas was in charge, he implemented a bold privatization experiment, which failed. Now the schools are vastly underfunded by the state of Pennsylvania. Governor Tom Corbett can find any amount of money to give corporate tax breaks, but he wants to extract $300 million from the Philadelphia schools. His big idea is to squeeze the money out of the budget by cutting jobs and teachers’ salaries. The schools have been cut to the bone. Many lack guidance counselors, arts programs, librarians, social workers, and in addition, thousands of teachers were laid off.
The governor (whose approval rating is currently about 20%) wants more charters so that private operators can take charge of the kids. The city’s superintendent, Broad-trained William Hite, talks about “right-sizing” the district by closing as many as 60 public schools.
As Sanchez points out, the city’s elite civic and business leadership and big foundations want more charters, even though the existing charters do not outperform the regular public schools (and 19 of them have been investigated for fraudulent practices).
His segment ends thus:
Foundations say that money [for charter schools] is giving struggling kids a shot at a better education. In Philadelphia, though, most charters are actually performing the same — and in some cases, worse — than traditional public schools, and yet charter school enrollment has skyrocketed.
And that makes some parents nervous.
“It looks like they’re trying to do away with public schools and make everything charter. That’s the way it looks now to me,” says parent Donna Mackie. She has an 8-year-old at A.S. Jenks Elementary, a high-performing neighborhood school in South Philadelphia. She says parents’ biggest fear is that the district is going to shut down their school in a year or two to save money.
School district officials have talked about closing up to 60 in five years. They call it “right sizing” the system.
Jennifer Miller, also a Jenks mom, calls it a mistake.
“I feel bad, and I feel like I have nowhere to go. I mean, I live here. I can’t leave the city. I can’t afford private school. This is my only choice,” Miller says.
Sometimes, Miller says, she can’t sleep at night, not knowing whether her school and city will survive this crisis.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I heard this on the drive to work this morning and thought, “That was refreshingly balanced!”
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I heard it during my morning commute too, and was thrilled to hear these issues exposed. I am guessing that the segment was not “brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
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Does state control mean every aspect is controlled by the state education department? (hiring, firing, policies, spending allocation, etc, whatever would typically be done by a local education agency?
If so, I don’t see how that would ever solve problems.
Second (not related to Philadelphia, but just to the notion that everything gets turned into charters)—-I recall an antitrust attorney I know telling me about eighteen years ago (in casual conversation) that he figured one day public education would be run by private entities. I had the pleasure of running into him this past summer at a cocktail party and I quoted him to him and asked him if he would elaborate and he said he did not recall ever saying anything like that and that I probably dreamed it.
I suppose he forgot, because I don’t think education is on his radar anymore (he is retired). But I swear I heard that from him (less significant is who he is but rather the role he had and the conversations he might have been privy to in an antitrust and business litigation world). Or maybe I am reading too much into it and he just read an article in the New Yorker that alluded to it or something.
Anyway. . .it is hard to believe that we’ve arrived at this point without there being some intentional energy towards such an outcome, even if that energy resulted from what was left undone as much as what was done.
Intentional energy towards a different outcome is the only thing that will change the course. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but I’m trying to figure it out (hence, me adding to the 8 million hits on this blog).
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Me too, Joanna. I’m trying to figure it out. But I think your attorney acquaintance was right. I wish I knew WHY he thought privatization was inevitable. My own view is that neither state nor federal governments should be running education because such administration is contrary to nature and people will simply eventually rebel and take back control of their own lives. All human hearts beat for liberty and state run anything is antithetical to it. We put up with a certain amount of “frameworking” for society, but education is not an intrinsic necessity for state functioning, unless the administrators of the state want slaves. Ergo . . . you can see the point.
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“. . . that neither state nor federal governments should be running education because such administration is contrary to nature and people will simply eventually rebel and take back control of their own lives.”
Well considering that each state’s constitution mandates public education for all the first part or your statement is moot. “Nature”, is this that mythical realm that some philosophers have conjured up as more “natural” than that in which man finds himself? How can somethig be “contrary” to a mythical realm other than within that made up world itself where no living breathing human is?
“All human hearts beat for liberty and state run anything is antithetical to it.”
Are there, should there be any limits to that supposed “liberty”? If so how is that to be modulated?
HU, you’re turning into a hard core anarchist with this type of thinking.
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Not anarchist at all, but smooching with libertarianism certainly.
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Fabulous piece at Yinzercation….
What They (PA Candidates for Governor) Should Be Saying…..
by Helen Gym, Parents United for Public Education, Philadelphia Rebecca Poyourow, Ph.D., Parents United for Public Education, Philadelphia Jessie B. Ramey, Ph.D., Yinzercation, Pittsburgh Susan Spicka, Education Matters in the Cumberland Valley, Shippensburg
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NPR has another excellent report of Philadelphia schools:
Unrelenting Poverty Leads To ‘Desperation’ In Philly Schools
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/21/246413432/weighing-the-role-of-poverty-in-philadelphia-s-schools?sc=ipad&f=1001
The Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools and Media Mobilizing Project have made this video about our situation in Philadelphia.
Our Schools Are Not For Sale
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Charter Schools In Philadelphia: Educating Without A Blueprint
Part 3 of the NPR series about Philadelphia Schools
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/22/246413696/charter-schools-in-philadelphia-educating-without-a-blueprint
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Detroit’s abandonment by the state of Michigan is the result ofinstitutional racism can abetting human tragedy in “The Other’s City.”
Phila school district abandonment is same thing on smaller, crueler scale because the intended beneficiaries of SDP are the city’s children.
My wife is not political in any way shape or form. She heard this on the radio and was crying when relating it to me.
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I’m a high school teacher in the School District of Philadelphia. My photography students just completed a mural project in response to the drastic underfunding:
kcapaphoto.squarespace.com
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How many charter schools in Philly offer photography????? I’ll bet none. They are nothing but a rip-off with a narrow curriculum. Education on the cheap!!!! How sad.
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I looked at it. Great job. Also, how many charters have bands or the fine arts? It is a crime!! I saw the mayor of Philly on tv defending the spread of charters. unreal. Another bought out politician.
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Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
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