Problem #3: Public Schools, Pt. 2- Fixing Pennsylvania's and Philadelphia's Public Schools

Problem #3: Public Schools, Pt. 2- Fixing Pennsylvania's and Philadelphia's Public Schools

The success- or failure- of public schools anywhere, is dependent on an interaction of three factors. These are the quality of the teaching, parental involvement, and funding. While all of us have, at various points, encountered teachers who should never have been allowed in front of a classroom, the majority of teachers are dedicated to, and passionate about, their profession. The importance of quality teaching cannot be overlooked, but neither should one fixate upon it as the sole factor in improving public schools.

Parental involvement is an odd factor, in that it is largely a matter of a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is to say that, if parents invested in their children’s education send their kids to a school, then the school will be good; but such a school will likely be good specifically because parents invested in their children’s education send their children to it. But, what parent wants to send their children to a school whose funding is being cut to the bone?

And that leads to the third point: school funding. If you wanted to design a society in which the rich would stay rich and the poor poor, one of the first things that you’d do is base public school funding on local property taxes, thereby guaranteeing that wealthy children had better-funded schools than poor ones. This is the exact method of funding most prevalent in the United States, and it has had the effect of creating wildly variant levels of school funding. Locally, Chester-Upland schools spent an average of about $15,000 per student in 2010 (http://www.chesteruplandsd.org/), while Radnor schools spent about $19,000. Again, funding is not the sole determining factor in quality of education, but the fact that one district can spend almost 30% more per student than another cannot be ignored. And it’s not only a matter of city schools doing poorly when compared to suburban ones; rural districts do just as poorly, or even worse.

Fortunately, funding is actually the easiest of the three of the factors to fix. While the linkage between property taxes and school funding should be kept, all funds should be sent to a single pool, from which they can be redistributed throughout the Commonwealth, normalised for differences in cost of living (it costs a lot less to educate a child in, say, Perry County than Allegheny County). The problem, of course, is whose ox is gored. In this case, it’s suburban schools, which will likely see a reduction in funds per student when compared to the current system. For them, enlightened self-interest should come into play. For one thing, better-educated city and rural children are likely to wind up as higher-earning- and therefore higher tax-paying- adults. For another, better-educated children are less likely to turn to crime. And, finally, better-educated children are less likely to require state assistance as adults. In this case, a rising educational tide truly will lift all boats- including those docked in the suburbs.

Given that our family is in Philadelphia, and that Philadelphia is both the most populous county and the one with the largest school district, some solutions specific to it deserve mention. The first involves charter schools. Since the first charter schools opened in Philadelphia, they have increased in number until they make up a whole district unto themselves. And, very problematically, charter schools are both largely accountable to the district as a whole and, on average, lower-performing than District-run schools (duly noting that some charter schools are excellent). If charter schools are to continue to receive public funds, then a zero-tolerance policy should be applied to them. Charter schools which do not outperform district schools should have their charters cancelled- immediately. If the District continues to tolerate poorly-performing charter schools, the only effect is to drain money from better-performing schools. As a side note, for-profit educational management organisations should be placed under special scrutiny. Our children do not exist so that some out-of-town EMO can profit off of them while saddling them with an inadequate education

Second: eliminate the school reform commission. The SRC’s edict was to rein in spending and improve Philadelphia’s public schools. The $300 million deficit and continued existence of failing schools manifestly proves that it has failed in both of these jobs. And why should Philadelphia be the only district in the Commonwealth to not have local control of its schools?

Finally: eliminate outside consultants. Did the SRC need to pay Boston Consulting Group any more than minimum wage to tell it the blindingly obvious: close underutilised schools? Every dollar going to an outside consultant is a dollar not used to educate our children.

There is a possibility that young parents like us, who are largely responsible for Philadelphia’s population growth over the past 10 years- literally the first time that this has happened since the 1950s- will leave for the suburbs when the choice arrives between that and staying put and either paying college tuition-level costs for private school or accepting failing schools. That, combined with the obligation given in the Pennsylvania Constitution to provide a “thorough and efficient” education, should spur the City and Commonwealth to take immediate action to fix Pennsylvania’s failing schools.