Compete or Close
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In districts from Chicago to New York to Washington, DC, neighborhood public schools are being forced to compete with charter schools for students and resources, often under the threat of school closure. In Compete or Close, Julia A. McWilliams provides a compelling ethnographic study of one such school, a neighborhood high school in Philadelphia--a district where rising privatization and chronic underfunding cast these common tensions into sharp relief. The book poses two questions: What strategies do schools deploy to minimize market risk and signal their value to stakeholders--district administrators, funders, parents, and students? And how do these strategies conflict with the schools' mission to serve all children? An astute and compassionate observer, McWilliams paints a devastating portrait of a neighborhood public school under siege, in which educators are panicked by the threat of closure and determined to survive at all costs. McWilliams's book is a powerful indictment of the role of competition in American education today and offers empirical evidence and a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms through which market forces may conflict with the preservation of education as a public good.
American School Reform
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Dissecting twenty years of educational politics in our nation's largest cities, American School Reform offers one of the clearest assessments of school reform as it has played out in our recent history. Joseph P. McDonald and his colleagues evaluate the half-billion-dollar Annenberg Challenge--launched in 1994--alongside other large-scale reform efforts that have taken place in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They look deeply at what school reform really is, how it works, how it fails, and what differences it can make nonetheless. McDonald and his colleagues lay out several interrelated ideas in what they call a theory of action space. Frequently education policy gets so ambitious that implementing it becomes a near impossibility. Action space, however, is what takes shape when talented educators, leaders, and reformers guide the social capital of civic leaders and the financial capital of governments, foundations, corporations, and other backers toward true results. Exploring these extraordinary collaborations through their lifespans and their influences on future efforts, the authors provide political hope--that reform efforts can work, and that our schools can be made better.
Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities
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Discuss real estate with any young family and the subject of schools is certain to come upOCoin fact, it will likely be a crucial factor in determining where that family lives. Not merely institutions of learning, schools have increasingly become a sign of a neighborhoodOCOs vitality, and city planners have ever more explicitly promoted OC good schoolsOCO as a means of attracting more affluent families to urban areas, a dynamic process that Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara critically examines in "Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities."aFocusing on PhiladelphiaOCOs Center City Schools Initiative, she shows how education policy makes overt attempts to prevent, or at least slow, middle-class flight to the suburbs. Navigating complex ethical terrain, she balances the successes of such policies in strengthening urban schools and communities against the inherent social injustices they propagateOCothe further marginalization and disempowerment of lowerclass families. By asking what happens when affluent parents become OC valued customers, OCO "Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities" uncovers a problematic relationship between public institutions and private markets, where the former are used to leverage the latter to effect urban transformations.
Embracing Risk in Urban Education
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At a time when American urban public education is under broad attack, and in which America is perceived as a nation at risk that is losing the race to the Top, educators and politicians from across the spectrum are promoting increased emphasis on standardized testing, business models of school reform, zero tolerance, no excuses, promoting cultural assimilation, and building a standardized curriculum. Ginsberg argues that in the effort to reduce the achievement gap and mitigate the pejorative label of at-risk, " we are in danger of eliminating risk from education entirely. This is especially the case in urban schools with large numbers of poor and minority students. Ginsberg explores alternative approaches to student achievement at four dynamic Philadelphia public schools. This book provides a grounded, close look at alternative and innovative pedagogies which embrace risk through an emphasis on critical inquiry, cultural diversity, global awareness, project-based learning, collaboration, community partnerships, and student activism. The result? Schools which can nurture a new generation of students who are not only smart and literate but can think help preserve American Democracy while furthering the quest for peace, unity, equity, and social justice.
Giving Our Children a Fighting Chance
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This is a compelling, eye-opening portrait of two communities in Philadelphia with drastically different economic resources. Over the course of their 10-year investigation, the authors of this important new work came to understand that this disparity between affluence and poverty has created a knowledge gap--far more important than mere achievement scores--with serious implications for students' economic prosperity and social mobility. At the heart of this knowledge gap is the limited ability of students from poor communities to develop information capital. This moving book takes you into the communities in question to meet the students and their families, and by doing so provides powerful insights into the role that literacy can play in giving low-income students a fighting chance.
Philadelphia's Student Population, Part 1, August 12, 2020 - Economy League
Teacher Mobility in the School District of Philadelphia, 2009–10 through 2015–16, Philadelphia Education Research Consortium, September 2018,
Teacher Quality Roadmap, Improving Policies and Practices in the School District of Philadelphia - National Council on Teacher Quality. May, 2013.
Evaluation of the School District of Philadelphia English Language Learner (ELL) Program 2010–2011 School Year (PDF) December, 2011
A School Funding Formula for Philadelphia Lessons from urban districts across the United States - Report from Pew Charitable Trust, January 2015.
Growing Smarter: The Role of Center City's Public Schools in Enhancing the Competitiveness of Philadelphia, - November 29, 2004
Public schools of Philadelphia : historical, biographical, statistical
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Public schools of Philadelphia. Published by the Local committee on arrangements for the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association
Report of the survey of the public schools of Philadelphia, by the Pennsylvania state Department of public instruction..
Public schools of Philadelphia. Published by the Local committee on arrangements for the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association ...
South Philadelphia High School
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South Philadelphia High School (SPHS) opened in 1907 as the Southern Manual Training School to prepare immigrant boys for work in various trades. The first class graduated in 1910, and the school was later expanded to include girls. In 1955, the original building was replaced by a new structure and became known as South Philadelphia High School. South Philadelphia High School has been called "The School of the Stars" because of the large number of former students who have achieved fame in music, movies, and television. However, this designation represents only a part of the school's significance. Southern's graduates have also achieved distinction in many other fields, such as medicine, law, civil service, military service, athletics, scholarship, writing, and teaching. It is an urban public high school serving a diverse population of immigrant, low-income families. South Philadelphia High School's history is a testimonial to what is possible when educators provide positive guidance and support to their students.
