Will Bunch, Philadelphia journalist, reports rumors that state officials may be planning to privatize all of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia schools tried privatization a decade ago and it didn’t work. But this seems to be the cheapest way to get rid of the Philly problem instead of giving the kids and schools what they need.
Public officials in Pennsylvania are trying to starve public education until it dies. They have a constitutional obligation under the state and possibly the federal constitution to provide equal treatment to all. The students hurt most by state budget cuts are disproportionately black and Hispanic. Someone should sue to compel the state to provide education to all students.
Schools have been stripped of essential personnel. And that’s not all. They can’t even provide a sound basic education.
Read this comment by a teacher in Philadelphia:
“I’m a teacher in Philadelphia and I spent my Saturday this weekend finding out throughout the day which of my friends and co-workers had been laid off. Weingarten is absolutely spot on when she says that the students of Philadelphia are not the concern of Hite, the SRC, or the state. Most of my co-workers laId off were history teachers – an untested subject in PA. What is happening in Philadelphia is a complete travesty and a failure of democracy, and not just because I might lose my job or because the union might lose some dues. If I return to the classroom in the fall, the “education” I will be able to give my students will not look anything like what I was taught education should be. And that’s a travesty.”
Why did Wendy Kopp hail Philadelphia’s “progress” on the same day that the state-run School Reform Commission slashed the city’s public school budget to the bone, eliminating librarians, arts programs, athletics, and counselors, stripping bare an impoverished district? Maybe she was confused. Or misinformed. Or maybe she meant it.
Kopp quickly apologized but Philadelphia journalist Daniel Denvir thinks it was no accident. He sees the same kind of thinking displayed daily in the acts of PennCAN, the spinoff of the privatization group called ConnCAN, then 50CAN. These groups are “flush with cash,” although the students and families of Philadelphia are not.
He says, “The doomsday budget is morally unacceptable. It must become politically impossible.”
An earlier post today described the devastating budget cuts to public education by Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Corbett. Districts across the state are laying off staff, cutting librarians, teachers of the arts, and school nurses and guidance counselors. No city has been harder hit than Philadelphia, which has been under state control for over a decade. The following commentary was written by Ken Derstine, a retired teacher in Philadelphia.
Ken writes:
Philadelphia’s Democratic Mayor Nutter’s role in these events should be noted. Nutter, currently the President of U.S. Conference of Mayors http://www.usmayors.org/about/orgleaders.asp,
is Mayor of a city whose public schools are in crisis. After ten years of starvation budgets to build up charter schools http://tinyurl.com/kphmwmm, last week the School Reform Commission passed a Doomsday budget which will devastate an already struggling School District cutting school staff to only a principal and classroom teachers.
It is in this situation that Nutter on Tuesday held a special press conference in Harrisburg with charter school operators to lobby for Corbett to fund schools….so that Philadelphia can expand charter seats! His only prescription for the struggling public schools has been that there must be “shared sacrifice” in the new contract of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers starting September 1st, with wage and benefit concessions of $133 million.
Nutter is hoping to capitalize on Corbett’s ALEC inspired agenda of privatization of public schools. The Philadelphia School District was taken over by the state in December, 2001. The School Reform Commission which runs the District has brought in the Philadelphia School Partnership and Boston Consulting Group to oversee the privatization of public schools. In FY09, charters were 15% of the District budget. In FY14 they will be 30% of the budget.
The charter management companies have come into conflict with the SRC over the last few months. The SRC in March called a moratorium of expanded charters at this time because of the budget crisis. A number of charters defied this moratorium and enrolled students even though it violated the contractual enrollment caps in their charter. When the SRC refused to pay for this over enrollment, the charter companies went to Corbett’s Secretary of Education and he took the money out of state funds that had been approved for the Philadelphia School District. It is in this situation that Mayor Nutter is in Harrisburg lobbying for more money for charter schools. 21 charters want 15,000 new seats which the District estimates would increase charter costs to about $110 million annually.
Pennsylvania blogger Yinzercation reports that parents and concerned citizens are pressing their legislators to reverse Governor Corbett’s policy of defunding public schools.
Philadelphia has been under state control for a decade. Now parents and activists are demanding the restoration of a democratically elected board. The School Reform Commission “passed a draconian budget, wiping out public education as we know it. The plan cuts 3,000 more employees (including teachers); completely eliminates counselors, librarians, and secretaries; provides only one nurse for every 1,500 students; and gets rid of athletics, music, and art. [Philly.com, 6-4-13] As Philly parents have pointed out, this is a plan to warehouse students, rather than educate them. [Philly.com, 6-2-13]”
“Allentown has just proposed a plan to cut over 150 employees – nearly all teachers, and most of those in art, library, and physical education.”
Districts across the state are reeling because of Corbett’s ALEC agenda of cutting the schools while bestowing generous tax breaks on corporations.
In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter seems to be deeply concerned that state funds are not available to permit charters to expand their enrollment, even though many existing charters are either failing or under investigation for corruption. Nutter has not spoken up for public schools, which most of his city’s children attend, only the privately-managed charters.
This teacher describes how the testing mania–the evil spawn of No Child Left Behind–has consumed his school without changing the odds against the students. They are still behind and certain to remain far behind.
He writes:
I teach fourth grade in a Philadelphia public school. Though the school has made AYP for the past two years, most of the students are not performing at grade level in math or reading. So, at this school, like most urban schools, the standardized tests have become our god, informing every aspect of our teaching.
For instance I am required to teach reading and math only. If I submit lesson plans with science or social studies or something else, I am out of compliance and will be told to get back into compliance. The principal is a competent and supportive school leader who is simply navigating the academic culture that has developed since NCLB and high stakes testing began. From the district, to the region, to the school, and finally the classroom, every one is under intense pressure to get the test scores up. From day one we are focused on teaching test taking skills. ( and this is in a context where teacher evaluation is not yet tied to the test scores. )
Why is it so difficult to get the students to perform better? I could write a five page blog describing the actual challenges our children contend with that profoundly effect every aspect of their lives, which also happens to include their school experience.
After more than a decade of “academic improvements” and increased oversight and “support”, the student population that has struggled the most, still struggles. Isn’t it obvious by now that we are not addressing the real problems, but are persistently dealing with the symptoms? Where is the real support for our children?
Philadelphia is once again facing catastrophic budget cuts that threaten to gut public education.
Who is killing Philadelphia’s schools, asks journalist Daniel Denvir. Here is the sordid story.
The state has had control of the Philadelphia schools since 2002. It took control because of a budget deficit. The state School Reform Commission made the deficit worse.
Paul Vallas took over as superintendent and launched the nation’s most sweeping privatization plan. It failed. Vallas left the district with an even bigger deficit.
Now the School Reform Commission wants to have another go at privatization, even though a number of the city’s charters are under criminal investigation. The Mayor supports a pro-voucher group that has become increasingly vocal.
Governor Tom Corbett has slashed the state’s support for public schools. The state is threatening more cuts. Will public education survive in Philadelphia?
Does anyone have the nerve to say “it’s all for the kids”?
A parent activist in Philadelphia sent me this astonishing story about how hard it is ( impossible?) to close a charter school.
In 2009, an employee filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Department of Education about financial misdeeds at Community Academy of Philadelphia, the city’s oldest charter school. When federal investigators arrived to confiscate records, they asked her to identify herself. She did and was fired the next day.
She has sued the school, but can’t get a trial because the charter school says it is the subject of a criminal investigation and has won delays. Meanwhile the School Reform Commission is determining whether to close the school because of low academic performance.
The criminal investigation drags on.
Here is the nub of the whistleblower’s complaint:
“Harper alleged that Joseph Proietta, Community’s founder and chief executive, and other officials ran Community Academy and One Bright Ray “like personal fiefdoms or family businesses rather than the publicly funded school and nonprofit entities that they are.”
“A month later, more than a dozen federal agents appeared at Community Academy and One Bright Ray and spent the day collecting boxes of documents and copying computer hard drives.
“According to Harper’s suit, when the agents arrived, an agent from the inspector general’s office approached Anna Duvivier, the school’s chief operating officer, and asked: “Where is Adorable Harper?”
“Harper raised her hand. The next day Proietta and Duvivier fired her.”
Harper is a graduate of the school.
The school has 1,235 students, K-12.
I posted a few days ago about a panel discussion in New York City where Paul Vallas made this startling statement: “We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate.”
He spoke bluntly of the “testing industrial complex.”
Here Valerie Strauss briefly reviews Vallas’ role in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, where testing and privatization were key elements of his reforms. It is difficult to see any of those districts today as a template for reform of the nation’s schools. Chicago is in dire straits, As is Philadelphia, and the only thing sustaining the myth of New Orleans is a massive disinformation campaign by the funders of privatization.
I know Paul Vallas and there was a time about a decade ago when I thought he was the most promising leader of school reform in the nation. I was impressed by his energy and his quick intellect.
Because he is so smart, I hold out hope that he might be the first of the “reform” A-team to see the light, as I did around 2005.
By his remarks at the forum cited in the links, he recognizes that teacher evaluation by formula is a mess. From his Philadelphia experience he may have learned that privatization is no solution. He inaugurated the nation’s most extensive experiment in privatization a decade ago, and it failed.
Now Vallas has another chance to get it right, this time in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a small district compared to his previous assignments.
Will he lead the way away from the failed status quo? Will he be first to renounce the failed status quo?
Rebecca Poyourow, parent activist, wrote a terrific op-ed calling on Governor Corbett to stop the cuts that are devastating the schools.
In 2011-12, the governor cut $1 billion from the schools, and the cuts hurry Philadelphia the most. Class sizes soared, parents chipped in to replace staff, after-school programs were eliminated, even basic supplies had to given to the school.
While parents and teachers are pinching pennies, the state-appointed school reform commission continues throwing away money, she says. “We know that our actions, while laudable, will amount to very little if our schools are persistently and pervasively underfunded. We also know that our efforts to support our kids’ schools are undermined every time the School District and the School Reform Commission make spending decisions that squander what resources Philadelphia does have on charter expansion ($139 million last year), a questionable new cyber charter venture ($15 million proposed), and new contracts with testing companies ($11 million), as well as other contracts and programs that add little benefit to our children’s education.”
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20130510_Education_cuts_taking_a_toll.html#K57glBaz413ITu3S.99
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