The Philadelphia Public Schools: A Case of Entrepreneurship or Deconstruction?

• In Event: Entrepreneurship in Education: An Academic Debate

Abstract

The Setting
Philadelphia schools are operating in a federal policy environment dating back to the Clinton and Bush administrations. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), passed by Congress in 2001, stipulated performance standards for all public schools and sanctions for those that not meeting the standards. Sanctions include closing low-performing schools, converting them to charter schools, or turning them over to for-profit or not-for-profit management companies. Performance targets are raised every two years, making it increasingly difficult for inner-city schools serving disadvantaged students to make “adequate yearly progress,” setting the stage for “mandated” intervention.
Coincidently, 2001 was the year the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took control of the School District of Philadelphia, disbanded the school board, and created the School Reform Commission (SRC), a majority of whose members are appointed by the governor.

The state of affairs
This brief account of the District’s policy environment provides the context in which the SRC is acting, and helps explain how it has been able to move a “reform” agenda that in many respects mirrors NCLB and Race to the Top policies. In the past year the School Reform Commission has agreed to:
• Expand charter school enrollment – from 50,000/200,000 (in 2012-13) to 80,000/200,000 (in 2014-15) – which will require transferring additional and proportionate funds from the district to charters.
• Borrow $300,000,000 for operating expenses.
• Close as many as 60 district schools over a two-year period and continue to convert “low-performing” schools to charters.
• Appoint a superintendent committed to the SRC’s agenda.
• Privatize Head Start.
• Open a district cyber-charter school to compete with state cyber-charters.
• Join a city-wide coalition to improve schooling across public, charter, and archdiocesan schools.
• Negotiate a teacher contract which would dramatically change wages and working conditions – by imposing a 15% salary cut, reducing benefits, extending the work day, eliminating seniority provisions and transfer rules, and increasing class size.
• Adopt an FY 2014 budget that required laying-off 3,700 employees, including all assistant principals, counselors and school secretaries, and 675 teachers.
While this has been happening, the School Reform Commission and superintendent have maintained that their intent is to increase school choice and the number and proportion of “high performing seats” - meaning places in schools with above average academic and climate records.
Leading a school in these conditions differs dramatically from traditional school management. Successful principals must take an innovative and entrepreneurial stance – competing for students and financial support, improving program quality with diminished resources, developing new human resource management strategies, creating and marketing a school’s “brand,” seeking partnerships, and adapting to rapid shifts in policy and regulation. Survival requires reinvention.
The large and looming questions behind the SRC’s “portfolio management” strategy are whether the democratizing function of public schools is being superseded by consumer-driven, choice and market approaches, and if so, will the city’s children be better served?
Philadelphia is a major test.

Methodology
Continue to follow media accounts of the District’s activities and performance through April 2014.

Author

• James H. Lytle, University of Pennsylvania