Let the Fire Burn: A 10-Year Retrospective on Public School Reform in Philadelphia

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Philadelphia has been a significant national site of urban school reform. At the end of the 2012-2013 school year, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) closed more than 20 schools and laid off more than 4,000 educators, while charter management organizations gained more control of traditional public schools. These events seemed to signal the dismantling of public education in Philadelphia. And these reforms primarily impacted Black students and low income communities throughout the city. During AERA 2014 in Philadelphia, I (Camika Royal) convened a symposium for Division G, titled, “Philly Under Fire: Counter-Narratives on School Reform, Pedagogy, and Community Voices.” The discussant for that 2014 symposium was Gloria Ladson-Billings, a 1965 graduate of SDP who began her career with SDP as a social studies teacher. Our symposium examined the sociopolitical implications of public school reform at the macro, meso, and micro levels in Philadelphia. It also considered implications of leadership in and the possibilities of transformation for a public school district that was then under state control and governance. Some of the district’s tensions are between the market ideologies of traditional public schools, whether neighborhood-based or citywide magnet schools and programs, and those turnaround public schools that were under charter management.

Much has happened in and to SDP since the last time AERA was held in this city. The superintendent who oversaw those school closures and mass workforce layoffs ended his ten year tenure in 2022, and a new superintendent began shortly thereafter. The governor-appointed School Reform Commission, which was formed in 2002, disbanded itself in 2018, and governance of the schools returned to mayoral control via appointments, not election. Several public schools deemed in need of “turnaround,” which had been placed under education management organizations initially in the early 2000s and then shifted to charter management between 2009 and 2011 have been returned to District control. SDP also created its first ever Office of Equity and appointed its first Chief of Equity, an educator and researcher who participated in the abovementioned AERA 2014 symposium. This year’s proposed presidential panel will explore and discuss the state of school reform in SDP from 2014 through 2024 and its national implications.

This panel will take up questions regarding the purposes of and implications for the reforms that have been enacted on Philly’s public schools since the mass school closures and layoffs of 2013. It will also question the functionality and necessity of the stratification of schooling evident in the different types of schooling inherent to SDP. It will also examine the afterlife of the politics of reform, given the COVID-19 contexts and the concern regarding violence throughout the city. The political contexts and consequences of school reform are far reaching and ever-present, locally and nationally. This panel will disrupt notions of schooling and reform as apolitical at various levels, given the different points of entry for panel participants.

This panel is well suited to be a presidential panel for a number of reasons. First, context matters, so it is essential that AERA’s participants have access to a session elevated in significance on schooling in AERA 2024’s host city that examines it from the perspectives of Black and Brown scholars and practitioners who have experienced SDP in a number of capacities and continue to do so. I (Camika Royal), chair of the session, am a scholar of urban school reform whose Harvard Education Press (2022) published text, Not Paved for Us: Black Educators and Public School Reform in Philadelphia, uses Black educator narratives and the Board of Education minutes spanning more than 50 years to inform and examine what has transpired with SDP since 2014. I am also a 1995 graduate of SDP’s public schools. Marc Lamont Hill, the discussant, is an education anthropologist, media expert, Philadelphia bookstore owner, and a 1996 graduate of SDP. Edwin Mayorga is a Philadelphia-based parent-scholar-activist whose work challenges notions of community-rootedness in public schooling, especially for Latinx communities. Sabriya Jubilee is SDP’s Chief of Equity. Prior to assuming that role, she worked in various positions in SDP for ten years. She is also a 2001 SDP graduate. Melissa Lawson is a 20-year veteran school counselor in SDP, who has worked in neighborhood high schools and now a “boutique” high school. As an SDP school-based counselor, she has weathered forced-transfers of 2011 and the 2013 layoffs, both in the name of “reform.” Tamir Harper is a second year SDP educator who is also a 2018 graduate of SDP. He was a student activist who worked directly with the former schools’ superintendent and sought to push SDP leaders on issues of equity. All panel participants’ work demonstrates their commitments to dismantling racial injustice in schooling, and they will specifically focus on what is necessary for this to happen in AERA 2024’s host city given what has happened since AERA 2014. Further, Philadelphia’s public school system is the second oldest in the nation. SDP has been rife with racialized policies and practices, almost since its inception in 1818 (Royal, 2022; Foster, 1990). While SDP has made a commitment to cultivating an anti-racist organization in which all students and adults enjoy a safe, supportive, and welcoming environment that is culturally and linguistically inclusive, it has yet to deliver on these promises and actively puts barriers in place to prevent this commitment from being actualized. Lastly, it is our hope that this panel on ten years post the 2013 Philadelphia disaster can shift narratives and ideologies around destruction of public schooling and state takeovers as necessary to public policy. With the Houston Independent School District’s recent takeover by the state of Texas, with states such as Florida and Arkansas using state policy to create inequitable schooling and reinforce racist practices, it is our hope that these panelists’ perspectives and presentations will aid in developing paths of resistance to such elements around the country.

Sub Unit

• Spotlight on Philadelphia and the Region

Chair

• Camika Royal, Morgan State University

Papers

• Lighting the Way Toward Liberation - Sabriya K. Jubilee, The School District of Philadelphia

• Philly’s Struggle for Community-Driven Schools in the Midst of a “Changing Same” (2013–2023) - Edwin Mayorga, Swarthmore College

• Nickels in a Dime: Diminishing Returns on Investing in School Counselors - Melissa Lawson, The School District of Philadelphia

• Taking the Weight: A Youth Activist Becomes an Educator - Tamir Harper, City of Philadelphia

• Reaping What We Sowed: How Fixing Failed and Created Chaos - Camika Royal, Morgan State University

Discussant

• Marc Lamont Hill, Graduate Center - CUNY