Promotion for this week's "All of the Above" conference.
On Monday, wealthy donors interested in the future of public education will gather for atwo-day conference at the Union League: "All of the Above: How Donors can Expand a City's Great Schools."
Attendance is restricted to those who make $50,000 in charitable donations per year. One might hope, given the apocalyptic state of Philly's resource-starved public schools, that they are here to plot a campaign to reverse deep state budget cuts — or, at the very least, to cut a check to rehire some laid-off school counselors.
Instead, they will meet with self-described school-reform activists who want to move yet more students out of the same "government schools" they have defunded and into privately-managed charters — and even straight-up private schools. The entirely broke School District of Philadelphia estimates that each student who attends a charter costs it an additional $7,000. That existential fiscal challenge posed by charter expansion will not, it seems, be on the agenda. Nothing about the sector's rampant corruption and lack of state or local oversight either.
No matter.
The visitors are here to learn from Philadelphia. Not as a cautionary tale, but as a roadmap for the privatization of public education. This is a city that shows what can happen when
