The original Elementary and Secondary Education Act was intended to add resources to schools that enrolled the poorest students. Its goal was equality of educational opportunity, not higher test scores. But forget about it. The goal of federal and state policy is raising test scores.
What about equity? What about equality of educational opportunity?
Read and view this portrait of Philadelphia’s filthy public schools and ask how Americans can tolerate such conditions? This is shameful.
Every member of the Pennsylvania legislature should walk through the schools of the City of Brotherly Love and ask themselves: Why did we cut the budget? Why are the children of Philadelphia less deserving of decent learning conditions than the children in suburban districts?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where is Zuckerberg when you need him?
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Zuckerberg only removes mouse poop from charters schools
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Jonathan – I’m not even sure he does that much. I think he hires consultants to lead professional development on removing mouse poop from charter schools.
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Wonder what happened to the school Bill Gates funded and built in Philadelphia?
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You can find very similar condition in every major city. The saying goes “Why fix it if we are going to close it in 5, 10 years.”
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I studied the census figures for St. Louis and Chicago……I have not looked at Philadelphia. Is there any possibilbity that the number of poor black citizens who have moved out of the city because the schools are so bad would show something the politicians smile quietly about, without daring to say…..the city’s demographics are becoming more to our liking….the crummy schools are helping in that regard. Maybe not……maybe there is a lot of white flight, and despair about who has been moving out…….I wonder.
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Where is the National NAACP on this? They need to find their voice and make it heard, as they did when they switched positions and supported annual testing. In every institution I can think of, those with the power to help are so far removed from the ground (our politicians included) that they lose perspective of what is important. They may mean well, but the every day people (in this case our children) are being allowed to live and learn in squalor. This is a national disgrace. Jonathan Kozol was right. This is “The Shame of the Nation.” The President who promised hope has been an accomplice in “The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.”
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Yeah since they are very concerned with civil rights and all or they were when it came to testing, test scores, firing teachers and closing schools.
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However there’s money for testing, tech for testing, added admin for teacher evals, consultants, coaches, etc and all due to federal waivers and mandates that will not ease under the bogus ESSA – Every Student Surveilled Act.
Certainly these conditions will never exist at Sidwell Friends for the Obamas nor the Chicago Lab School for the Duncans and the Emanuels
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There cannot be and will not be equity and equality with the newly signed Not-Every Student-Will-Succeed Act and 50 States of Public Education.
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Ha, as if NCLB had us on track for educating poor kids well! Here’s a more accurate claim: there cannot be and will not be equity until schools start filling poor kids’ brains with the same mental library of world knowledge that wealthier kids get at home. NCLB hurt poor kids because it narrowed the curriculum to knowledge-free literacy skills drilling and math. Until we recognize that mental development is about mental nourishment and not just mental weightlifting, poor kids will continue to be ill-served by schools –both charter and public.
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ponderosa, that would be the E. D. Hirsch theory that has yet to life a single child out of poverty by teaching them the ‘secret’ knowledge upper middle class white people hold.
Poverty, racism, drug addiction, crime, gang activity, neglect and abuse, lack of medical and dental care, food deserts, and lack of political and financial clout will not be cured by teaching poor children of color about the Magna Carta.
Is the Hirsch curriculum sound? Many find it boring but, like all curricula, it can be made interesting and it can be taught well. Is it the long-awaited panacea? No.
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The long awaited panacea certainly is not standards that focus on empty, isolated skill sets and are completely devoid of content knowledge. Common Core standards seemed designed to maintain the status quo.
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The long awaited panacea certainly is not standards that focus on empty, isolated skill sets and are completely devoid of content knowledge. Common Core standards do NOTHING to advance opportunities for the disadvantaged and underprivileged.
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Chris, imparting a body of general knowledge (not “secret” knowledge) is not sufficient, but it’s necessary. Show me one good reader who has little general knowledge.
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I did some subbing in Chicago while I was working full time in the suburbs. The CPS system was always on a slightly different schedule and I’d sub 8-11 days a year. I got called by Sub Center South.
I’d see schools with holes in the floor and windows that wouldn’t open. There was no air conditioning. There were old text books and unfit desks where students’ knees were above the writing level of the desks.
Often teachers’ parking lots had weeds and broken glass..
Some schools had better conditions. I attribute that to the hard work of certain principals.
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Due to the way we fund education, mostly through property taxes, urban students often get shortchanged. This huge disparity accounts for some of the decay, but ignoring the problem, I think, is a subtle form of racism, that remains a problem in our nation today. This worst conditions seem to exist in schools that contain a mostly minority population. Integration helps to ensure that all children can attend a safe, clean, well resourced school. http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2015/12/the-compelling-research-on-diversity.html
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And that is a big reason why charters and vouchers are so popular in the south and in red states. Ending racism is the farthest thing from the desires of the reform movement.
Principal and teacher turnover is a feature, not a bug. Not having long-term employees mean no or fewer obligations to pay for benefits and perquisites.
We may be outraged at these things but the reformers and their supporters are absolutely delighted.
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retired teacher: perhaps not so subtle…
At this remove in time I obviously cannot verify but must rely on memory, but as I recall my middle school from the 1960s in Detroit, where I was one of five white students amongst 1500 black students, we all used worn marked-up textbooks that were said to have been donated by schools in the white suburbs just outside Detroit.
Those textbooks literally were used until they were so ragged and falling apart that they were completely unusable.
Thank you very much for your comments.
😎
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The corporate public school demolition derby wants the community based, non-profit, transparent, democratic public schools to rot, because that will help their power hungry, profit worshiping agenda to reach its 100% goal.
When parents see the gleaming, spotless, perfect looking halls and classrooms of those high-rent corporate Charters compared to the public schools with water stains on the clings from the leaks and the rat dropping on the floor, they will pay to get in line to move their children to the safer looking, cleaner classrooms.
That’s why the Koch brothers and the Walton family, for instance, are spend so much to defeat adequate funding legislation for public schools in every state and city while supporting more money for corporate Charters.
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What is the latest on the Gulen charter school situation….puzzling to me….the list I looked at showed only four in the state….and maybe just one in Philadelphia….Gulen, himself lives in Pennsylvania…..Pennsylvania
Vision Academy Charter School
2015
unknown
Pennsylvania
Young Scholars of Central Pennsylvania Charter School
2005
4200137-00879
Pennsylvania
Young Scholars of McKeesport
2015
unknown
Pennsylvania
Young Scholars of Western Pennsylvania Charter School
2011
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In other news, the 5 month stalemate between Gov. Wolf and the Pennsylvania legislature over approval of the state budget continues, as the state house led by tea party members rejects the compromise reached by the governor and the state senate to provide 350 million in funding for basic education. Instead the tea party stands on its position of no new taxes and more state takeovers of city schools leading to more charters.
When we comeback, the School Reform Commission announces plans to extend Supt. Hite’s contract for another 5 years. Another Broad Acdemy success story!
Check out Philly.com for all the exciting details.
Reign of Error indeed.
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As test and punish, and cutting resources to district schools while embracing and opening charters has flourished, the “bottom 5 %” or terms to that effect has effectively punished the impoverished for being poor. Where in the world to the reformers expect these kids to go when they close their schools, then don’t allow them into the charters, or if allowed, push them out, back to the public school, now since the neighborhood school has closed, across town an hour away, etc., where these kids have a hard time getting to because mommy works two jobs without a husband, and the oldest kid is stuck watching the youngest ones, etc., or mommy is a drug addict and daddy is in jail, or grandma is taking care of the lot…..its a recipe for disaster, and the reformers stand behind it. Truly, they don’t care about “those kids” and are more than happy with their results–shutting them out of education. Period.
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Wasn’t ESEA/NCLB supposed to fix this? A highly qualified teacher in every classroom hovel. Would love to see side by side comparison with
The 10 most affluent communities in the Philadelphia region:
1: Alapocas (New Castle Cty, DE)
Mean household income: $370,420
2: Villanova East (Lower Merion Twp)
Mean household income: $348,699
3: Bryn Mawr East (Lower Merion Twp)
Mean household income: $338,076
4: Washington Crossing (Solebury Twp)
Mean household income: $338,016
5: Gladwyne (Lower Merion Twp)
Mean household income: $335,5949
6: Ardmore South (Ardmore)
Mean household income: $331,867
7: Moorestown East (Moorestown Twp)
Mean household income: $328,400
8: Upper Makefield Township North (Upper Makefield Twp)
Mean household income: $306,081
9: Winterthur-Centreville (New Castle Cty, DE)
Mean household income: $294,510
10: Penn Valley (Lower Merion Twp)
Mean household income: $294,412
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/philadelphia-real-estate/The-richest-neighborhoods-in-the-Philadelphia-region.html#tMO7gpdZyBQiHkiI.99
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Shown a film of a student teacher struggling to teach in an inner city L. A. elementary school when the temperature was in the nineties, fans were blowing noisily, and children on the yard were playing loudly outside the classrooms open window, we mentor teachers were asked how we could help. A former Peace Corps member said that if he could teach African students in an open field with cows roaming through, this teacher could be successful.
I reminded him that L. A. was not a third world country. He must be on the school board today.
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There is no excuse for this. People of Philadelphia must demand quality, clean schools for all students.
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$20 million or $4.1 billion? How much to repair Philly’s schools?
The conditions found in Boston’s schools are a bit better, but not substantially different from those documented for Philadelphia – heat / cooling concerns, old buildings, lots of defered maintenance. The mayor’s office here has been floating a figure of a $1B estimate to correct deficiencies, and it is being used as justification to shutter some 36 schools. Activist parents see this as cover for turning the schools over to charter organizations. I wonder how accurate the $1B figure is?
Given the Gates Compact operating in many cities for closing schools and charterizing them, it’s hard not to see a pattern.
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On 60 Minutes, they had a segment where fashion and shoe designers were taking up the reigns and funding the restoration of Rome’s landmarks, including the cleaning the pollution off the coliseum and new plumbing for the Trevi fountain. They still had to deal with Italy’s bureaucracy.
Perhaps the legislation, instead of giving tax credits to funnel money to religious and private schools, could give tax credits to corporations to fund fixing public schools owned by taxpayers. Let the corporation getting the credit do the design and build to avoid school bureaucracy and waste.
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While what you suggest is noble, they prefer ROI.
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Absolutely deplorable.
How many millions in public dollars have been siphoned and diverted to charter schools? Are students in charter schools exposed to these conditions? Most likely, no.
I seem to recall that some reformsters visited Philly not too long ago . . . Surely they were shielded from witnessing the conditions that real public school students, teachers, and staff are faced with.
Since Philadelphia schools are under state control, the Pennsylvania state legislature and Board of Education should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this on their watch. Talk about child abuse and neglect, and dereliction of duties.
Occupational Health & Safety Violations abound.
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