Guest Post: Pennsylvania is failing Philly's schools – so, close the schools?
Students walk the halls at De Burgos Elementary School. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
by Daun KauffmanDaun Kauffman is North Philadelphia public school teacher. This article is posted on his blog LucidWitness.com
December 28, 2015
The Pennsylvania Senate's effort to amend the PA School Code (H.B. 530), is part of the backroom wrangling over our state budget.
Senate amendments to the bill require the state to directly take over or close five individual schools every year. This Senate incursion into education is a textbook example of aggression and obstruction with no advance intelligence, no input, from "frontline ground troops." So politicians with uninformed philosophies push more and more state bureaucracy into sectors where the state is ignorant and, in fact, failing.
It is impossible to continue silently enduring simplistic views of learning and teaching practice (by non-practitioners) and simplistic "solution pills" to "fix" or increase learning, which instead continue generating more and more collateral damage: academic damage, systemic damage, financial damage, social damage, personal damage, and more.
Newsflash: There is no simplistic, quick fix, or someone would have done it long ago! In fact, Pennsylvania took over the School District of Philadelphia 15 years ago already! The state's record of academic decline, and their consistent record of Schools Matter: Guest Post: Pennsylvania is failing Philly's schools – so, close the schools?: