Pittsburgh is a textbook example of the importance of electing a school board that supports public schools, instead of one that is controlled by billionaires.
This is a story of how a community saved its school, which the old board had decided to close.
The new elected board listened to the community, which wanted to keep Woolsair Elementary open. The old one said enrollment was too low; with community activism, enrollment is up. The school adopted a STEAM focus (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics). The STEAM theme is given credit for renewed interest, but frankly, I think that is merely the cherry on top of the whipped cream. The real change agent here was the community activism.
Be it noted that the Pittsburgh school board severed ties with TFA.
This is a city energized to save and improve its public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pittsburgh has a terrific parents organization and instead of handing over schools to private charters (who will happily educate the easiest students while encouraging all difficult and expensive students to leave), Pittsburgh has a strong network of magnet schools. It’s not perfect, but the magnet schools are overseen by the public system, which means they can’t simply make a child of 6 or 7 feel “misery” until they leave. Or suspend a 5 year over and over because he isn’t learning fast enough and acts out when he is constantly berated by an inexperienced teacher who knows only one way to teach. There is oversight by a publicly elected board who is concerned with more than just whether the test scores are good. The methods to achieve those good test scores are also examined — something the charter oversight entities in many states absolutely don’t care about and feel is far beneath them to do. In other states, as long as test scores are good, your methods are never examined closely. That can’t happen in Pittsburgh magnet schools.
It’s ironic that a “network” like Success Academy is being allowed to expand and only teach the students they choose to teach. They are nearing (or have already surpassed) the size of the entire school systems in smaller cities like Pittsburgh. But they don’t have any of the expense of educating ALL the students, despite already growing that large. Can you imagine how much extra money the Pittsburgh public school system would have if they just got rid of the quarter or third of students who were too difficult and let them rot? I’m sure the kids who are able to learn easily — rich and poor — will benefit from having all that extra money to spend on them, but at what cost? Unfortunately, we have charter networks who do exactly that, except all the savings from ridding themselves of expensive students goes directly to the managing company and executive salaries. And promoting their “brand”.
I like this website by Pittsburgh public school parents. Gives me hope that right will win out over might, eventually.
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Thanks, Diane for giving me a piece of good news I can re-post on “The Treasure Hunter” and for making me aware of a website I should follow.
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The people of Pittsburgh cannot forget that there will be other school board elections and the deformer oligarchs will be back writing bigger and bigger checks with the continued goal to end public education in the United States. This is but one victory in one city.
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I wonder if teachers are seeing the loss of the humanities and languages in their schools due to STEAM courses.
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An article in today’s NYTimes describes the public’s “growing disillusionment with democracy”. It’s a good read. My conclusion: If we hope to restore faith in our larger institutions, we need to begin at the lowest levels…. and voter turnout in “off-year” elections, in school board elections, town meetings, and school budget votes is a disturbing sign that we are moving in the wrong direction. I hope that what is happening in Pittsburgh is infectious! Here’s a link to the Times article:
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