Proposal to close 25% of Philadelphia Schools

Reposted from Rethinking Schools.

by Jody Sokolower
Philadelphia teachers and parents—and educators throughout the country—were horrified a few weeks ago when Thomas Knudsen, the School District of Philadelphia’s chief recovery officer, unveiled a five-year plan to close 64 schools (25 percent of the system), move 40 percent of students into charters, slash the central office to 20 percent of its former capacity, and divide the rest of the district into “achievement networks” run by third-party operators.
Mayor Michael Nutter said the district faced near “collapse” and that the plan was something Philadelphians needed to “grow up and deal with.” Can you believe that city officials later admitted that the charters and achievement networks wouldn’t actually save the district any money?
We are proud that one of the voices of sanity and resistance came from Helen Gym, a Rethinking Schools editorial associate and longtime parent activist in Philly. We are reposting her open letter to Knudsen here—not only because it analyzes so articulately what is happening and what is at stake in Philly—but also because Philly is not alone. Similar “saving the district from collapse” scenarios have already played out or are in progress in cities as widespread as New Orleans, Detroit, and Chicago.

Commentary: You’re not speaking to me, Mr. Knudsen

by Helen Gym
I am the mother of three children in District and charter schools in this city. I have been actively involved in stopping good schools from decline and helping low-performing, violent schools turn around. I believe in the essential role that a high-quality public school system plays and have fought for that vision. My 7th grade son will soon have outlasted four superintendencies, including yours. And I’m here to tell you that you’re not speaking to me.
You’re not speaking to me with this brand of disaster capitalism that tries to shock a besieged public with unproven, untested, and drastic action couched as “solutions.” You’re not speaking to me when you invoke language like “achievement networks,” “portfolio management,” and “rightsizing” our schools – and say not a word about lower class sizes or increasing the presence of loving support personnel or enriching our curriculum.
You’re not speaking to me when you plan to close 25 percent of our schools before my son graduates high school. You’re not speaking to me when you equate closing down 64 schools – many of them community anchors – as “streamlining operations,” yet you’ll expand charter populations willy-nilly despite a national studyshowing two-thirds of Philly charters are no better or worse than District-managed schools.

An open letter to Arne Duncan

Rethinking Schools, Summer 2009

From Herbert Kohl

Dear Arne Duncan,

In a recent interview with NEA Today you said of my book 36 Children, "I read [it] in high school … [and] … wrote about his book in one of my college essays, and I talked about the tremendous hope that I feel [and] the challenges that teachers in tough communities face. The book had a big impact on me."

When I wrote 36 Children in 1965 it was commonly believed that African American students, with a few exceptions, simply could not function on a high academic level. The book was motivated by my desire to provide a counter-example, one I had created in my classroom, to this cynical and racist view, and to let the students' creativity and intelligence speak for itself. It was also intended to show how important it was to provide interesting and complex curriculum that integrated the arts and sciences, and utilized the students' own culture and experiences to inspire learning. I discovered then, in my early teaching career, that learning is best driven by ideas, challenges, experiences, and activities that engage students. My experience over the past 45 years has confirmed this.

We have come far from that time in the '60s. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, "We are learning how to do good on the tests." They did not say they were learning to read.

It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test. In the panic over teaching students to perform well on reading tests, educators seem to have lost sight of the fact that reading is a tool, an instrument that is used for pleasure and for the acquisition of knowledge and information about the way the world works. The mastery of complex reading skills develops as students grapple with ideas, learn to understand plot and character, and develop and articulate opinions on literature. They also develop through learning history, science, and technology.

Reading is not a series of isolated skills acquired in a sanitized rote-learning environment utilizing "teacher-proof" materials. It develops through interaction with a knowledgeable, active teacher—through dialogue, and critical analysis. It also develops through imaginative writing and research.

It is no wonder that the struggle to coerce all students into mastering high-stakes testing is hardest at the upper grades. The impoverishment of learning taking place in the early grades naturally leads to boredom and alienation from school-based learning. This disengagement is often stigmatized as "attention deficit disorder." The very capacities that No Child Left Behind is trying to achieve are undermined by the way in which the law is implemented.

This impoverishment of learning is reinforced by cutting programs in the arts. The free play of the imagination, which is so crucial for problem-solving and even for entrepreneurship, is discouraged in a basics curriculum lacking in substantial artistic and human content.

Add to this the elimination of physical education in order to clear more time to torture students with mechanical drilling and shallow questioning and it is no wonder that many American students are lethargic when it comes to ideas and actions. I'm sure that NCLB has, in many cases, a direct hand in the development of childhood obesity.

It is possible to maintain high standards for all children, to help students learn how to speak thoughtfully, think through problems, and create imaginative representations of the world as it is and as it could be, without forcing them through a regime of high-stakes testing. Attention has to be paid to the richness of the curriculum itself and time has to be allocated to thoughtful exploration and experimentation. It is easy to ignore content when the sole focus is on test scores.

Your administration has the opportunity, when NCLB comes up for reauthorization, to set the tone, aspirations, and philosophical and moral grounds for reform that develops the intelligence, creativity, and social and personal sensitivity of students. I still hold to the hope you mentioned you took away from 36 Children but I sometimes despair about how we are wasting the current opportunity to create truly effective schools where students welcome the wonderful learning that we as adults should feel privileged to provide them.

I would welcome any opportunity to discuss these and other educational issues with you.

Sincerely, Herbert Kohl

Oakland's Coalition of Essential Schools Goes Beyond NCLB's high-stakes-tests - Showcases Alternative Assessments; Happy 4th Birthday June Jordan

At the local level here in the San Francisco- Oakland Bay Area, CES is working with our district to hopefully begin a new Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice in the Fall. But on a national level they are promoting an innovative campaign to showcase models of alternative assessments which challenge the NCLB-promoted high-stakes-tests and to hopefully impact policy at the national and state levels.

The Second Annual National Exhibition Month (May, 2007) highlights exhibitions as a preferred form of student assessment and features over 100 public schools in 25 states that will open their doors to the public to showcase student exhibitions.

According to Lewis Cohen, Executive Director of CES, ... exhibitions are presentations that students make in front of outside “experts” to demonstrate what they know and what they have learned. “We are inviting community members and policy makers to witness the deep learning and engagement that this type of assessment requires,” Cohen said.

While standardized tests may show a “slice” of what students have learned, exhibitions offer up the whole pie, providing a 360º look at what students know and what they can do with that knowledge. Unlike machine-graded assessments that test textbook memorization, exhibitions require students to develop and use a wide range of analytical and communication skills.

[see CES' youtube clip -


“You can't get a driver’s license without a road test. Exhibitions, like road tests, demonstrate that the student knows how to put knowledge into practice. This is a better way of certifying competence than a written test alone,” said Marcy Raymond, principal of Metro High School in Columbus , Ohio . “And it is no wonder that students who are required to demonstrate what they've learned are better prepared for college and the professional world, where the ability to synthesize information, think critically and present publicly are paramount.”

More info on CES and their Exhibition Month: http://www.essentialschools.orgl

One San Francisco High School that has developed excellent alternative portfolio assessments is June Jordan High School for Equity. I am proud to say that one of my nieces will be graduating in the first JJSE graduating class. She has been accepted to the University of California, Davis [my alma mater!] and will likely be attending there in the Fall.

SF School Board President Mark Sanchez and I will be honoring June Jordan students, parents and founders Kate Goka, Shane Safir and Matt Alexander at the school's 4th Anniversary Celebration on May 3rd.

Danger: School Privatization - the Right-Wing Fordham Foundation's role

It's a 'chilly' but sunny 60 degrees here in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, but I wish I were in Miami this week with Mike Klonsky, Pedro Noguera, Debbie Meier and many others for the 6th Annual Small Schools Workshop gathering. Klonsky's latest blog points out the conflicts of interests with the conservative Thomas Fordham Foundation's role as both an authorizer and operator of charter schools. Foundation head Checker Finn is a former Reagan administration assistant secretary for education.

... I still can't help wondering how the Fordham Foundation, with close ties to the Bush Dept. of Education, can be both a charter school authorizer and operator of a chain of charter schools. I guess I've already answered my own question.
As privately-managed charter schools increasingly become the answer to the question "where does school reform go now that school reform is dead?" the conservative think tank led by Checker Finn has obviously been doing some thinking. Why sit around and complain, as Finn often does, about the failure of charter school accountability under NCLB? Why not get into the business ourselves?
So, as Edweek's Eric Robelen , who makes private management seem almost heroic, puts it, Fordham has "taken the plunge" and will operate nine charter schools in southwest Ohio, which has become charter school's version of Mecca.
According to Robelen's account, the nine schools serve some 2,700 students, mostly from low-income and minority families. They run the gamut from two charters operated by the for-profit Edison Schools Inc. to a school started by a Baptist minister.

Full Klonsky post.

More on the Small Schools Workshop

More on Pedro Noguera -more on his newest book with Jean Yonemura Wing

Noguera on Racial inequality in the education system

Rethinking Schools - Teaching About Everyday Heroes in our schools/communities; RIP - Yvonne Golden

Photo of Smithsonian exhibit on Linda Brown and heroes of Brown v. Board of Education.
Who are your HEROES? I often begin and end my Ethnic Studies classes with those questions to my SF State Students. One of my heroes - Ms. Yvonne Scarlett Golden passed away on Tuesday of cancer in Daytona Beach Florida where she was Mayor. Ms. Golden was a longtime teacher, principal and African American social justice leader in San Francisco. I met her some 20 years ago when I was working with KPOO 89.5 fm [poor people's radio in the Filmore District] as we fought together against Apartheid in South Africa and in American schools as well. More on her amazing life: Rep. Barbara Lee. Nanette Asimov's Obit from the SF Chronicle.

Portland teacher and Rethinking Schools editor Linda Christensen talks about EVERYDAY HEROES in her insightful article in the recent Rethinking Schools about the Katrina aftermath in New Orleans and the struggle for educational justice, the right to return and self-determination for the African American and other communities of color there.

In his article "Unsung Heroes," Howard Zinn discusses the need for us to find alternative heroes.
Should we not replace the portraits of our presidents, which too often take up all the space on our classroom walls, with the likenesses of grassroots heroes like Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi sharecropper? Mrs. Hamer was evicted from her farm and tortured in prison after she joined the Civil Rights Movement, but she became an eloquent voice for freedom. Or with Ella Baker, whose wise counsel and support guided the young black people in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the militant edge of the civil rights movement in the Deep South?... Our country is full of heroic people who are not presidents or military leaders or Wall Street wizards, but who are doing something to keep alive the spirit of resistance to injustice and war.

Christensen shifts the dialogue in her classrooms from dominant mainstream 'heroes' to everyday heroes like her mother, her students' own 'abuelitas', folks from New Orleans - everyday ordinary people, who in times of intense crisis, tend to do extraordinary and courageous things. Linda and Bill Bigelow and the Rethinking Schools crew were out here in SF for our Teaching for Social Justice Conference in October. They and other ordinary teachers doing extraordinary things are also unsung heroes in my book.

Some of these photos are heroes of mine as well -

Allan Cheung and the Asian Student Union, PACE and LFS at SF State; Asian American Movement organizations and individuals represented in the Pilipino Mural on the North Side of the SF State Student Union; and

my 'abuelita', my 'paw-paw' - Ms. Cum York Owyang Lee - she turns 103 years old tomorrow, and my 6 and 2/3 year old kid Jade and I will be driving to Sacramento where she still lives for a visit to sing her happy birthday in English and Cantonese. As the mural below says - we stand on their shoulders!