Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 26, 2011

Funding disparities between poor school districts and those of more affluent communities in Pennsylvania has long limited the opportunity of many students in our state to receive an equitable education.

Philadelphia, which is responsible for educating the largest concentration of the Commonwealth’s poor, has particularly struggled to accomplish its mission to educate every child well. During Governor Rendell’s administration, great progress was made in addressing funding inequalities between school districts.  In his last years in office, Rendell was successful in engineering a significant increase in the percentage of state aid to local districts.  The increase in funds that subsequently came to Philadelphia has helped to improve and expand the services provided to its school children.   As a result, student achievement has continued to steadily improve.

This progress is now threatened by the billion dollar cut to education funding that newly elected Governor Corbett has proposed.  The impact of these state cuts on the operational budget of the School District of Philadelphia will be huge.   According to Michael Masch, the District’s chief financial officer, the district will lose a total of $409 million in revenues next year.  This includes the loss of $116 million of federal stimulus funds and a $292 million decrease in state aid.  Reductions this great will require painful program cuts.

Any successful attempt to restore lost state revenue will require skillful negotiation with state officials.  This will not be easy considering the less than favorable perceptions that many of these legislatures have of the Philadelphia School District.

The unrestrained spending habits of Dr. Ackerman don’t make this task any easier. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 24, 2011

In the School District of Philadelphia’s 2011-2012 proposed budget, Dr. Ackerman has made it clear that she intends to move forward with her plan to create additional Promise Academies.  These schools represent one of the key elements of the “turn-around” strategy Ackerman has devised for a select group of low achieving schools in the city’s poorest communities.  Six district schools have already been converted to Promise Academies and an additional eleven schools will receive this same treatment in the upcoming school year.

It is estimated that an additional $24 million will be lavished on these seventeen schools, while all other schools in the District will bear significant cuts to their budgets.   Ackerman has claimed that it is her “moral obligation” to continue to move forward with Promise Academies, despite the fact that there is little substantial evidence to support their effectiveness. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 19, 2011

In its 2009-2010 School Finance Revenue Report, the Pennsylvania Department of Education included 113 charter schools in its inventory of public revenue-supported institutions.  The total amount of local, state, federal, and other funding received by these schools was listed at $835,424,755.   This averages out to  $7,304, 643 per charter school.

The charter school receiving the smallest share of revenue was Nitney Valley Charter School at $707,684.   The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School took in the largest portion of charter revenue at  $95,331,379.  The next three highest funded charter schools in the state are also cyber schools: Agora Charter School ($55,189,011), Commonwealth Connections Academy Charter School ($42,150,046) and Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School ($39,170,182).

Statewide, these four cyber schools received a combined total of approximately 231 million dollars in 2009, compared with about 309 million dollars allocated to the 66 individual charter schools operating in Philadelphia during this fiscal period.  This represents 75% of the total amount funds allocated to all of the brick and mortar Philadelphia charter schools in Philadelphia. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 17, 2011

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has imposed salary caps on pubic school superintendents in districts with less than 250 students, at $120,000.  In districts where enrollment exceeds 3,000 students, the cap is set at $175,000.

This is but one of several tactics unleashed by a group of newly elected governors who have exploited budget crises, whether real or fabricated as an excuse for cutting funding to public schools and demanding salary and benefit concessions from teachers and school administrators.

Elected officials such as Christie in NJ, Corbett in PA and Walker in WI have become prominent advocates of the strategies purported by corporate school reformers.  These politicians and business leaders argue that an educational system operating in accordance with free market principles will be more economically efficient and academically effective. Their goal is to create a diverse portfolio of school choices that are market driven.  In order to acquire the funds to do so, they discredit the efficiency of public school systems.  Then they advocate public revenue being redirected to charter schools and voucher programs.

These reformers lead the public to believe that the charter schools and voucher-supported private schools they favor, have a much lower overhead than public school systems.  This is not necessarily the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 12, 2011

In the olden times of the Twentieth Century, education tales made for boring stories.  Those were the days when children still played in sandboxes and had recess every day.  Back then what went on in schools was mainly of interest to the parents, teachers and children who were part of a school’s community.  Occasionally, a newspaper article or TV news clip would report to the broader society about some particularly cute event on the schoolhouse stage or at a schoolyard fair. But other than these special human interest stories, schools received little media attention.

Of course there has always been a national interest in the overall success of our schools in preparing its students for their roles as future citizens in a democratic society.   Local school districts have traditionally assumed the responsibility for providing those educational experiences that would ensure that success. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 10, 2011

In Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has signed controversial legislation that radically expands the authority of emergency financial managers.   The new powers bestowed by this law have already been utilized to essentially dissolve the government of Benton Harbor, Michigan.  Governance without representation has become a reality for this local community.

The potential impact of this law on the governance of schools within Michigan is likely to be significant.  Governor Snyder has developed a list of 23 school districts, which he will  declare as being distressed.  This declaration will enable him to assign an emergency financial manager to take charge of these districts.  This looks like another strategy to turn public schools over to private managers.

We would be wise to take careful note of these developments. For in these times of corporate school reform, bad ideas seem to spread rapidly from one state to another.

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Notes from The Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 5, 2011

Newly elected Governor Corbett has pledged to not raise taxes in the state of Pennsylvania.  Consequently, to address a projected budget shortfall, he has proposed 2.6 billion dollars in spending cuts. Over 60% of these cuts will be achieved by slashing allocations to the state’s education budget.  This will result in 1.6 billion fewer dollars for the state’s public schools and state-supported universities.

The citizens of our state will not share equally the financial impact of this proposal, however.  For college students who attend a state supported university, tuitions are likely to increase by as much as $10,000 per year.   This is a quite an additional economic burden for students and their parents.  In individual school districts, Corbett’s savings plan will have devastating effects on the quality of education for the state’s public school children, as local districts are forced to make difficult choices to offset the revenue shortfall. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes From The Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 3. 2011

Typically when analyzing the struggles of schools to achieve No Child Left Behind’s “Adequate Yearly Progress”, the discussion focuses on student achievement scores.  But failing to make sufficient test score gains in a given year isn’t the only way a school can fail to make AYP.  A school whose average daily attendance rate is less than 90% for the year, will be considered a failure under the rules established by the No Child Left Behind Act.  This will be so regardless of the test scores of its students.

On the face of it, this NCLB requirement appears to be reasonable.  Students who attend school on a regular basis should have an increased likelihood of success in school.  Creating an expectation that no more than 10% of the student body can be absent on any one day actually sounds like a fair way to track this important goal.  But this is not necessarily the case.  One or two low attendance days in a month can seriously skew the average daily attendance for a school, thus giving a false impression that students are frequently absent. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, April 26, 2011

In Philadelphia the heads of local citizens are spinning from a whirlwind of events that are keeping their school district in constant turmoil.  A massive budget shortfall, charter school corruption, anticipated school closings and scandal, are but a few of the problems that are plaguing the district.

Chaos seems to be the new normal in Philadelphia Schools.  In the view of Eli Broad this is a good thing. Broad is a billionaire philanthropist. He along with Bill Gates is one of the most influential advocates of the educational entrepreneur reform movement that is currently shaping the future of America’s public school systems.

Broad believes that public schools should be run as though they are businesses.  He advocates for the continual reorganizations of schools, staff firings, and experimentation in order to create chaos or churn.  The Broad view sees this as a productive strategy in that it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.  In order to advance his educational agenda he has created the Broad Foundations.

It is essential to understand the objectives of these foundations and the scope of their work in order to make sense of recent school reform efforts.  Parents Across America a grassroots advocacy group has prepared an excellent guide for parents that examines the educational policies of the Broad Foundations. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, April 21, 2011

For the years that I was the principal of a low resource school in Philadelphia, there was never enough money to do everything that needed to be done.  Making ends meet was difficult.  Providing all of the elements that a high quality instructional program should posses was a monumental challenge. In this financial climate, an important skill that I mastered over time was the ability to get the most for my school’s dollars.

Finding more money and resources was a constant endeavor.  Lobbying district leaders, applying for grants, creating partnerships with arts and sports organizations, seeking gifts from individuals and organizations were active pursuits of mine.  Every contribution was welcomed regardless of its size.  A five hundred dollar donation might pay for a music assembly.  A fifty dollar gift would be spent buying books for classroom libraries.  Every extra dollar received helped to build a better school environment. Read the rest of this entry »