AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A man runs across a sign in the street in front of the Philadelphia School District during a Wednesday protest against Philadelphia public-school budget cuts.
Philadelphia has a reputation for not giving the warmest of welcomes, and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney couldn't have expected a lot of brotherly love from the residents of an urban Philly neighborhood full of black folks when he arrived there yesterday to hawk his education policy.
Philip Rucker, reporting in The Washington Post, quotes Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter quipping at the protest that Romney "suddenly somehow found West Philadelphia.” His constituents weren't so jokey:
Seeking to broaden his appeal heading into the general election, Romney was venturing for his first time in this campaign into an impoverished black neighborhood to hear the concerns of local educators and community leaders. But here in the streets of West Philadelphia, the emotion surrounding his contest with the nation’s first black president was raw, as dozens of neighborhood residents shouted, “Get out, Romney, get out!”
Imagine their anger if they then heard what Romney had to say once he was behind closed doors with local school and civic leaders at (naturally) a charter school. According to the Post, Romney continued his recent emphasis on education by hawking his plan to use federal money to "follow the student" to a charter or parochial school, thereby enabling "more choice." (Read: more school vouchers.) He'd also like to direct federal funds to states to ensure that they don't prevent "digital" learning, and increase teacher proficiency.
Romney -- who, if elected, would shrink or otherwise make insignificant the Department of Education -- is calling the failure of public education to help minority students "the civil rights issue of our era." Why this visit was an important one has little to do with grandiose rhetoric and a campaign focus on education, one of the only positive things about Romney's record as Massachusetts governor on which he can actually campaign. It's more about the fact that Romney's plan seems to have quite a bit in common with one being pushed through currently in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia City Paper reporter Daniel Denvir, who will be Melissa's guest tomorrow, explained it best in his expansive investigation of the decentralization proposal, "Who's Killing Philly Public Schools?" That headline was not hyperbole, since the plan is:
...a plan to shutter 40 schools next year, and an additional six every year thereafter until 2017. The remaining schools would be herded into "achievement networks" of 20 to 30 schools; public and private groups would compete to manage the networks. And the central office would be reduced to a skeleton crew of about 200. (About 1,000-plus positions existed in 2010, and district HQ has already eliminated more than a third of those.) Charter schools, the plan projects, would teach an estimated 40 percent of students by 2017.
Let's boil that down: there will be dramatically fewer schools, and the ones that are left will be broken up essentially into teams, and can be run by Random Corporation, Inc., or whoever bids the highest -- even if they have zero experience in running a school district. This is of little surprise to the plan's critics, given that it was devised by a Boston consulting firm with a record of recommending drastic school cuts, undermining teachers' unions, promoting what amounts to the privatization of public school districts.
Despite yesterday's grandstanding about Romney, Mayor Nutter supports the plan. Denvir adds in his report that others, well, don't:
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan, however, called it "a cynical, right-wing and market-driven plan to privatize public education." And New York University education historian Diane Ravitch said Knudsen's plan has no basis in research, and criticized Nutter for giving up on schools. "I think he should be advocating for public education," she told CP.
Thomas Knudsen is acting as the interim Philadelphia Public Schools chief through his duties as Chief Recovery Officer, despite no experience in education. Upon his announcement of the plan in late April, both he and it were met with immediate public protest. Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church -- where, in the interests of full disclosure, I have been a member since 2005 and served as a trustee for the last two years -- quickly hosted a contentious public meeting on the issue, and loud, angry protests have continued all the way through this week -- both about the Philly plan, and the additional cuts Republican governor Tom Corbett is proposing for state education budgets.
What is happening to Philadelphia schools right now requires our full attention, and thanks to the loud voices of concerned Philadelphians and reporting like Denvir's, it's starting to get it (see last night's segment from "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell below). Romney may be bringing some, inadvertently, because of his campaign focus on education. But as much as he may deem the failure of urban public education the "civil rights issue of our era." It very well may be, and that may make for dramatic rhetoric that excites the news cycle. But that doesn't mean that he is proposing any real ideas that do anything but shift the blame away from systematic privilege and inequities, and place them at the feet of teachers and their unions.
The same can be said for a Philadelphia city school district that seems less interested in fixing the problem, and more so in creating opportunities for private enterprise to do the job of governing for them.
Size doesn't matter? Mitt Romney tells a group of Philadelphia educators that size doesn't matter when it comes to classrooms. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and NEA VP Lily Eskelsen say think again.
Leave a Comment:
I would be curious as to what these private corporations will be paying for these public school buildings.....and what will be the rate of real estate taxes.
Excellent program but a necessary question regarding Unions might be, did they hire these supposed "bad Teachers?" Obviously we know the Unions did not so why are they responsible for these Teachers?
The Tennessee study is one of the best research investigations in education, the methodology was sound and proved a cause and effect relationship between class size and academic acheivement in the early grades. It also makes intuitive sense that children get more attention when the ratio of teacher to student is lower.
I teach in Texas. Over 25,000 school employees have been laid off. nearly 11,000 of them teachers. Over 7,000 districts have asked for classroom size waivers. I challenge anyone to teach 32 six year olds how to read all at once. And then still be held accountable to high stakes testing.
Conservatives talk about how terrible it is to leave such a huge debt to the next generation. It is much worse to cut education and leave them without a solid foundation for academic success, which will affect their economic status even more than the deficit.
Charter schools do "skim" the cream of the students. Here's how: charters that require "high parental involvement", automatically eliminate a parent (and their child) who is working 2 or 3 jobs to survive, and has neither the time nor the energy to be highly involved.
Also, while charters may accept children based on a lottery they are under no compulsion to KEEP a child, particularly a child who doesn't "get with the program". Traditional public schools are required to accept children "as is" with whatever academic, emotional, physical, or behavioral issues they have, and educate those children.
I'm surprised that I have not heard more from the teachers' union on the "fellowship" and "residency" programs that NY is promoting in an attempt to replace unionized teachers with well-intentioned, but unqualified, or barely-qualified warm bodies. When the warm bodies quit within 5 years, it will provide cover for politicians to throw up their hands, and say, "We tried. It didn't work. Bring on the vouchers and private corporations."
Brown vs Board of Education decision was handed down May 17, 1954. However, in the small town of Franklinton, NC in which I grew up public school integration would not be realized until the fall of 1970. A move that for the record I believe destroyed the Black family. That said, it has become increasingly evident that most right-wing Americans (Whites) continue to cling to the idea of White superiority and that separation of race throughout society be the norm, unless of course assimilation represents servitude. One need only examine with a discerning eye the policies and legislation suggested and implemented over the last twenty years and in particular the last 3 1/2 years to see that these policies target two specific groups, women of color and women of color. No that was not a mistake. 1) state laws that either restrict or completely eliminate access to affordable health-care e.g. Planned Parenthood etc affects as a majority women of color (Blacks/Latinos) 2) state laws that nullify Constitutionally protected abortion rights affect as a majority women of color 3) reduction in food stamps and aid to dependent families again mostly women of color 4) state ID laws that affect voter registration and ballot participation, women of color 5) reductions in state education budgets, children of women of color. I could go on and on and on. The fact that New York City schools are 90% Black and Latino is not by accident, it is by design. In fact this all is by design. a design to ensure that another person of color ever takes up residence in the 'WHITE HOUSE'. Remember the "Willie Lynch Manifesto", White folks don't do anything without a big picture plan.
I retired after having spent 26 years in an inner city high school as a Social Studies teacher. It was one of those schools with high dropout and poverty. I watched and listened to the assumptions made by your panel.
There is such a thing as the culture of poverty.The ones that really know about the problem are not the people who pontificate, but those of us who are in the classroom. So far, every wellmeaning person on both sides of the issue talks and talks without having the actual experience or seeming to understand. It would be a miracle if the panels had actual teachers from those specific classrooms on your education panels so that could talk about the difficulties and maybe we would get over the idea of such a thing as a "bad" teacher. Let the critics of teachers try to teach in one of the schools which they decry.
Cross posted from chiss hayes;
It fascinates me that the entire education debate pointedly ignores the one reform that is the easiest to accomplish and most likely to succeed. The whole debate is about finger pointing. Blaming teachers, blaming parents, blaming administrators, blaming government.
When one seriously looks at the history of American eduction, three things become instantly apparent; 1) the system was functionally designed to produce large numbers of factory works who took orders well and did not ask questions, innovate, or think critically, 2) it is succeeding at this staggeringly well, and 3) that success is exactly the problem. The US education system is succeeding staggeringly well at exactly the thing we do not need it to be doing.
The next time you (or anyone) does a roundtable on public education, try this. Place all the participants chairs in a square facing the moderator, and see how well the discussion goes. That is the problem with American education, The class rooms are no structured to facilitate thinking, they are structured to facilitate obedience and absorption. If we want to have an education system that prepares our children for an entrepreneurial market that requires critical thinking (or thinking at all) we need to functionally restructure classrooms in a roundtable format. The teacher in front, and the students in a circle around the classroom. And yes, you would have fewer students to a classroom...why are you saying that like its a bad thing, may i ask?
Yesterday, Jonathon Alter said teacher salaries need to be higher and teacher accountability and the right to fire bad teachers also need to be easier. Unfortunately, Alter and his side really only pay lip service to increasing teacher salaries but actually fight for holding teachers more accountable, tying test scores to teacher evaluations, and making it easier to fire tenured teachers. One critical element of teacher reform includes attracting and retaining the "best and the brightest." This can only be done with salaries that compete with other more lucrative fields to which the top 20% of college students are drawn. Look to Finland for this successful model.