Education: A Citizen Voices Issue Framework

In this view, the Philadelphia school system is failing because it has lost its focus on student learning, for several interlocking reasons. The system, in this view, has for years been asked to do too much, to meet too many needs not directly connected to student achievement. As a result, it has grown too large, too politicized and too bureaucratic to focus as it should on what students learn.

The remedy, proponents of this choice believe, consists of several steps:

• Clarify the mission of the schools.
• Use the available resources to accomplish the mission.
• Hold students and adults accountable in a genuine way for results

A big part of sharpening that mission, in this view, is setting up academic standards that are once rigorous and pragmatic, that make it equally clear to students what the penalties for failure to learn will be and what the tangible rewards will be (jobs, college admissions, careers etc).

Accordingly, proponents of this choice want stakeholders in public education such as local corporations and universities to have major input into the schools’ new mission statement. Public educators have to become better attuned to the needs and standards of the people who will be evaluating Philadelphia’s graduates for job or admissions openings.

Accountability, in this view, isn’t just for students. Parents should be held accountable for their children’s readiness to learn. And teachers, principals, superintendents and political leaders responsible for the schools should know that they have a personal stake – in terms of compensation and reputation _ in whether students learn what colleges and employers need them to learn.

In this view, the Philadelphia school system might well need more or different resources to accomplish its goals. But with the system and its goals in their current, muddled state, it’s impossible to tell whether existing resources, if deployed correctly, might be enough. This choice sees it as unwise to campaign for more resources unless and until the district sharpens its mission, cuts away waste and clarifies accountability. But it sees no reason to abandon hope in public schools, or their mission.

Where they perceive that adult agendas have gotten in the way of student learning, proponents of this choice are willing to shake up the status quo – how the district is governed, how it is organized, how it deals with its employee unions. The byword of this choice is pragmatism – in standards, in policies, in political rhetoric. Decide what it is you most need the schools to do well, then do whatever is needed to achieve that goal.

• End social promotions and other policies that convey to students that a) the standards aren’t serious and b) adults don’t believe they can meet them.

• Make local businesses partners in public education, seeking their help developing curriculum and giving students real-world learning experiences.

• Seek additional resources for the schools not by raising taxes or begging Harrisburg, but by attracting support from corporations, foundations, universities and alumni. Offer those stakeholders tax incentives and increased input in return for contributions.

• Focus resources on academics, and leave it to human services agencies to take care of students’ social needs.

• Don’t let the special interest groups dilute the curriculum with fads or frills.

• In areas where size brings confusion and complexity, break the school system into smaller units. In areas where size brings economies of scale (e.g. buying supplies) make the entire district the operating unit.

• Set up strong alternative schools for disruptive children, so that they don’t destroy the atmosphere for children who want to learn.

• Create a valid system for judging student achievement by school.

• Create a real system for rewarding or penalizing teachers, principals and administrators based on whether the children in their charge achieve academically. Change state law on unions if need be to do this.

• Eliminate residency requirements or union work rules that prevent the school district from: hiring the most qualified teacher candidates; placing teachers in the schools where they would do the most good; getting rid of bad teachers.

• Ease the creation of charter schools that promise new approaches to education, then monitor carefully their success.

• Reinstitute broad summer school or lengthen the school year.

• Change school district governance to place the school system and school board more clearly under the direction of the mayor, then hold future mayors accountable at the polls for the schools’ performance.

• Make sure teaching training and professional development buttress the reforms you seek to put into place.

It also wastes precious resources.

• Letting adult agendas – whether economic or ideological – dominate the school system has led to waste, bad policies and fuzzy curriculums.

• The old argument about whether the city schools have enough resources can’t be resolved until the district cleans up its act.

• Standards, connected to clear penalties and rewards, will focus the minds of both students and school personnel on academics.

• Until teachers and administrators are held accountable for whether students learn, they won’t do all they can to make sure students learn.

• Any smart business listens to and learns from its customers. Employers and colleges are the customer of the school system’s product – its graduates. If the product is flawed, listening to the customer is the only way to fix it.

• A poor educational system destroys Philadelphia’s business climate and tax base; local businesses have a clear stake in investing in the city school system, but they have a right to input, information and results.

• The current system of governance, with its muddled lines of authority, lets the mayor, school board and City Council off the hook for how schools perform.

• Parents, not employers, teachers unions or big institutions, should determine what children should learn.

• The system can’t be fixed; it must be scrapped. Here is why: Public education, from its inception, has never had the needs of the individual students as its real priority. It always subordinates the individual to some powerful interest’s agenda – employers, teachers unions or a political party.

• Half-hearted experiments with charter schools won’t break the education bureaucracy’s monopolistic stranglehold. Only a full dose of free market competition will.

• All this catering to the needs of businesses risks treating students as no more than potential cogs in the economic machine. A good education deals with the whole person.

• Giving direct accountability to the mayor and Council will just politicize education even more, leading to more patronage, nepotism and bad policy.

• Schools are the logical place to centralize social services to students and their families; children who are hungry, ill or abused can’t learn.

• This talk of standards begs the question: Whose standards? America is too divided over basic cultural values now for any one set of standards to work.

Education as a pragmatic good. Enlightened self-interest. Efficiency. Accountability. Realism. Academic rigor.