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Assessing Philadelphia Public Schools' Real Problems
Philadelphia's schools are a textbook case of chronic, systemic failure.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, scolds the Journal's editors (Letters, Sept. 30) for blaming public-school "Failure in Philadelphia" (Review & Outlook, Sept. 25) on unions. Instead, she points a finger at Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett who is "robbing" Philadelphia's schools of needed funding, targeting teacher pay and benefits for cuts and leaving school children exposed to tragedies without adequate counseling resources.
Ms. Weingarten's staunch defense of teachers unions sidesteps the editors' assertion that, "Philadelphia's schools are a textbook case of chronic, systemic failure." Philadelphia's parents are desperate to get their children into charter schools, while district-run school enrollment is down 25% in the past decade. Philadelphia student performance on any standardized test on any subject, when compared with any relevant peer group (U.S. average, Pennsylvania average, large-city average), ranges between poor and embarrassing. Yet Ms. Weingarten ignores the matter of academic failure (implying with anecdotes that student needs in Philadelphia are extraordinary) and focuses instead on preserving teacher pay and benefits that far exceed that of the average Pennsylvanian footing the bills.
If Ms. Weingarten had her way, no Philadelphia schools would have closed despite dwindling enrollment; taxpayers would be forced to plug an education budget gap of several hundred million dollars and teachers churning out students with unacceptable reading and math skills wouldn't be held accountable (protected by seniority and insulated from pay-for-performance standards). Given the cost and failure of Philadelphia's public-school system, a defense of the union status quo is, to borrow a word from Ms. Weingarten's letter, unconscionable.
Dale Griffin
Wilmington, Del.
I agree with Ms. Weingarten that teachers have a bad rap. Regarding Philadelphia, the best teachers in the world can't educate a classroom of undisciplined, uncivilized children. Lack of discipline, family life and poverty are all powerful negatives, identified in all urban areas.
Ms. Weingarten determines an additional $45 million, held up by Gov. Tom Corbett, would get the process moving. There is too much money now, implemented by a variety of government gifts, grants, guarantees, mostly spent on hardware, not knowledge. Mr. Corbett holds out for using the money wisely.
Richard Lamb
Kennett Square, Pa.
Ms. Weingarten states, in part, "Just days before the start of school in Philadelphia, a middle-school student drowned. But when students returned to their school, there was no school counselor to help them process this tragedy." During World War II, when I was in high school, thousands of people nationwide, many of them school students, were notified daily that loved ones had been killed in action. Many of those killed were young boys who had enlisted while still in high school or were upperclassmen who had just graduated. There were no school counselors then to help us process these tragedies. We seemed to have turned out to be pretty well-adjusted adults.
William S. Sturges
Royersford, Pa.
Ms. Weingarten wants more money allocated to a district that according to the website openPAgov.org spent an average of $10,546 on 212,000 students in 2000-2001. Ten years later there were 46,000 fewer students, but the inflation adjusted budget had risen 31% so that the cost per student equaled $17,452. Can Ms. Weingarten point to a 31% rise in the graduation rate or a 31% rise in state test scores as proof that money is the issue?
Ms. Weingarten says that in some schools students have to sit on radiators because there aren't enough desks. So three years ago with a budget of $2.9 billion no one either planned properly or thought about ensuring all the children would have seats? I would be somewhat reluctant to send my child to an institution that was so poorly managed. What happened to the desks of the 46,000 students who left the district?
Mike Valente
Philadelphia
Randi Weingarten calls Philadelphia teachers among "the poorest paid" in Pennsylvania. But according to the state education department's 2012-13 summary of teacher compensation, available online, the average Philadelphia teacher earns $70,790 per year, 12% higher than the statewide average of $63,218. The average cost of benefits for the Philadelphia teacher adds another $40,000 a year, in part because Philadelphia is one of the few districts in the state where teachers don't contribute to the cost of health care.
A version of this article appeared October 4, 2013, on page A22 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Assessing Philadelphia Public Schools' Real Problems. |
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