CURMUDGUCATION: Outsourcing Subs: A Big Fat Philly Fail

CURMUDGUCATION: Outsourcing Subs: A Big Fat Philly Fail:

Outsourcing Subs: A Big Fat Philly Fail

Last summer, reaction abounded over Philly schools' plan to outsource its substitute teaching to the temp company Source4Teachers.

In July, some quick googling told me this about the company:

S4T has run into trouble in some of the markets it has moved into. With typical complaints about the service including unqualified subs and ballooning costs (but stagnant sub wages). In at least one case, S4T's contract was terminated after allegations of hitting a student.

Reviews at glassdoor.com were not encouraging:

CEO is socially awkward and the President of the organization has a God complex and depending on the day of the week or which way the wind is blowing your guess is as good as anyone's as to how you might be treated on a given day. Benefits are non-existent, leadership is void. The COO is a former administrator that couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag.

S4T's plans for Philly were, shall we say, counter-intuitive. They were hired not just (or maybe even CURMUDGUCATION: Outsourcing Subs: A Big Fat Philly Fail:


One Wrong Move

Back in November, Hannah Rosin started a ball rolling with her Atlantic cover story about the high rate of student suicides in Silicon Valley. Two high schools in Palo Alto have a 10-year suicide rate between four and five times the national average.

If students from wealthy families in one of the most affluent communities in the country are feeling driven to these sort of extremes-- what the heck can that mean.

And it's not just the issue of suicide. Rosin writes:

The rich middle- and high-school kids [Arizona State professor Suniya] Luthar and her collaborators have studied show higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse on average than poor kids, and much higher rates than the national norm.* They report clinically significant depression or anxiety or delinquent behaviors at a rate two to three times the national average. Starting in seventh grade, the rich cohort includes just as many kids who display troubling levels of delinquency as the poor cohort, although the rule-breaking takes different forms. The poor kids, for example, fight and carry weapons more frequently, which Luthar explains as possibly self-protective. The rich kids, One Wrong Move