PCCY has long advocated for a restoration of the nearly $1 billion cut from public education during Governor Corbett’s first year in office. Now there is a new argument against restoring the cuts: they never happened. In fact, the Governor and some of his supporters are claiming that he actually increased education spending by $1.5 billion. The budget can’t be both up and down by a billion dollars, so have we been wrong all this time? Has education spending really increased?
No. Halfway through Governor Corbett’s new reelection ad, he claims, “State spending on public education is at the highest level ever” and cites the Commonwealth Foundation for that quote. That should raise two red flags for anyone who pays attention to the Pennsylvania budget. The first is that he quoted someone, rather than the actual budget. The second is that it was the Commonwealth Foundation, the group that recently compared the School District of Philadelphia to communists building the Berlin Wall to “keep students trapped in schools,” and claimed that no spending cuts whatsoever were made in 2011. The Governor’s citation is based on the claim that “The $1 billion in ‘cuts’ was the expiration of temporary federal stimulus money.” Except, of course, it wasn’t.
Take, for instance, the Reimbursement of Charter School Expenditures line item. In 2009-10, it was more than $220 million in funding, covering a large chunk of school districts’ charter expenses. The budget clearly states that it was all state funds with no federal stimulus money. And there were certainly no stimulus funds used going back to the 2001-2002 school year. In 2011, the program was completely eliminated and all state funding cut. Even the Commonwealth Foundation admits that. So how again were no state education funds cut?
Semantics. Pay close attention and you’ll see that the claim is that the Governor “increased spending in the education department $1.5 billion over what it was when he came into office.” Education Department spending, not spending on education. Newsworks points out, “When Corbett claims higher spending on education, he includes larger pension contributions, which past governors didn’t count in their calculations of education spending.” So the increased spending he brags about is really just increased pension costs. Pensions he has tried to cut. Budgets can be tricky things. If you are loose enough with your definitions, you can claim they say all kinds of things. But changing definitions isn’t going to fill the giant budgetary hole created by the 2011 budget cuts. The undeniable truth is that nearly $1 billion was taken out of public education and it has not been returned. No carefully worded claims can change that.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Friday, April 11, 2014
What's Really Causing The Chaos At Bartram High?
While the city continues to reel from the assault on a conflict-resolution specialist by a student at Bartram High School, we must look at the conditions that allowed it to happen and what can be done about them. Dangerous things can happen when you mix increasing enrollment with dropping staffing. In the 2009-10 school year, Bartram employed about 166 staffers. The school has been forced to cut staff every year since then. This year that number is down to 97, a more than 40% drop since 2009-10. That’s despite having more than 100 more students than last year. But the problem isn’t just the cuts, but who got cut.
Many of the cuts have hit the already stretched support and discipline staffers. PCCY’s analysis found that Bartram lost two of its three assistant principals, three of its five counselors, all four of its supportive services assistants, all three of its community relations and social services liaisons, its sole librarian, nearly all its bilingual counseling assistants, its at risk student support, one of its two school nurses, one of its six school police officers and its entire cafeteria staff. But the move that puts students and staff most at risk might be the drop in noon time aides—the people who keep order in the school, in the cafeteria and in the halls between classes—from 64 man-hours a day down to 20. That’s five people, working just four hours each, responsible for more than 1,000 students.
Obviously, the School District of Philadelphia didn’t want to make these cuts, at Bartram and elsewhere, but felt that it had to in order to save money. But did it? The District is in the process of converting two schools, Steel Elementary and Muñoz-Marin Elementary, into “renaissance” charter schools. But it’s not as simple as handing over the keys. Newsworks reports that it costs the District $4,000 per student to convert a school into a renaissance charter. “To be clear, this isn’t money that will pour additional resources into Steel or Marin, but instead, fund the overhead costs associated with the decline in district enrollment.” That’s $5.1 million to convert the two elementary schools. If improving the conditions at Steel and Marin is worth eating more than $5 million to the District, why can’t they find the money to keep Bartram safely staffed? More importantly, why is the state putting the District in a position in which some schools must suffer?
The District has many schools with conditions it needs to improve. But year after year of underfunding from the state has left the District between Scylla and Charybdis; if it moves to avoid one problem it gets stuck with another. We cannot pit one school against another. Everyday, students and teachers file into understaffed schools. If we are serious about creating a safe environment and vibrant curriculum for our students and teachers, then school funding should be the number one priority for the state. Funding must be made available, balancing the budget by laying off support and discipline staff only leads to more problems. Hopefully the state realizes this before the next incident.
Many of the cuts have hit the already stretched support and discipline staffers. PCCY’s analysis found that Bartram lost two of its three assistant principals, three of its five counselors, all four of its supportive services assistants, all three of its community relations and social services liaisons, its sole librarian, nearly all its bilingual counseling assistants, its at risk student support, one of its two school nurses, one of its six school police officers and its entire cafeteria staff. But the move that puts students and staff most at risk might be the drop in noon time aides—the people who keep order in the school, in the cafeteria and in the halls between classes—from 64 man-hours a day down to 20. That’s five people, working just four hours each, responsible for more than 1,000 students.
The District has many schools with conditions it needs to improve. But year after year of underfunding from the state has left the District between Scylla and Charybdis; if it moves to avoid one problem it gets stuck with another. We cannot pit one school against another. Everyday, students and teachers file into understaffed schools. If we are serious about creating a safe environment and vibrant curriculum for our students and teachers, then school funding should be the number one priority for the state. Funding must be made available, balancing the budget by laying off support and discipline staff only leads to more problems. Hopefully the state realizes this before the next incident.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Not Adding Up: Disparities in Access to Full Course Loads and Suspensions in Philly Schools
We have long known that disparities in access to early childhood education lead to an achievement gap later in school and in life. Now we know that access is not the only disparity that needs to be addressed. According to a new study by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Black students are overwhelmingly more likely to be suspended or expelled from pre-school programs. This unfortunate trend follows them throughout their education. Suspended students are more likely to be suspended again, more likely to repeat grades and more likely to fail to graduate. This isn’t just a nationwide trend; it’s a major problem here in Philadelphia.
The report found that while Black children make up less than 20% of the nationwide public and charter pre-school population, they account for 42% of the students suspended once and 48% percent of the students under five with multiple suspensions. PCCY’s analysis has found no reports of pre-school suspensions in Philadelphia in 2011, but that does not mean we are free from a discipline disparity. Newsworks reports that in Pennsylvania, 22% of Black male students and 13% of Black female students have been suspended, while only 5% and 2% of white boys and girls, respectively, have been suspended. Both of these figures are worse than the national averages. Despite accounting for 56% of the School District of Philadelphia’s student body, Black students receive 74% of in-school suspensions and 72% of out-of-school suspensions. While the roughly 15% disparity in out-of-school suspensions has stayed constant for the last two years, the 18% gap in in-school suspensions has skyrocketed from just 2% in 2009.
While we cannot yet pinpoint the cause of this discipline disparity, we do not need to look far to see the effects of racial isolation and racial inequity in high quality academic programs. PCCY also found by examining the data that 57% of all Black students in the country do not have access to a full high school course load of Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Calculus, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Though more than half of the School District of Philadelphia’s students are Black, according to PCCY’s review of the new data, only 38% of students enrolled in Calculus are Black. Hispanic students, who make up 18% of the District, take just 6% of Calculus seats.
The report found that while Black children make up less than 20% of the nationwide public and charter pre-school population, they account for 42% of the students suspended once and 48% percent of the students under five with multiple suspensions. PCCY’s analysis has found no reports of pre-school suspensions in Philadelphia in 2011, but that does not mean we are free from a discipline disparity. Newsworks reports that in Pennsylvania, 22% of Black male students and 13% of Black female students have been suspended, while only 5% and 2% of white boys and girls, respectively, have been suspended. Both of these figures are worse than the national averages. Despite accounting for 56% of the School District of Philadelphia’s student body, Black students receive 74% of in-school suspensions and 72% of out-of-school suspensions. While the roughly 15% disparity in out-of-school suspensions has stayed constant for the last two years, the 18% gap in in-school suspensions has skyrocketed from just 2% in 2009.
While we cannot yet pinpoint the cause of this discipline disparity, we do not need to look far to see the effects of racial isolation and racial inequity in high quality academic programs. PCCY also found by examining the data that 57% of all Black students in the country do not have access to a full high school course load of Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Calculus, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Though more than half of the School District of Philadelphia’s students are Black, according to PCCY’s review of the new data, only 38% of students enrolled in Calculus are Black. Hispanic students, who make up 18% of the District, take just 6% of Calculus seats.
While the reasons may vary, the results are unacceptable. Thankfully, there are no records of pre-school suspensions occurring in Philadelphia. But the racial breakdown of suspensions later is real cause for alarm. If we look at a group of children as offenders and not students, what chance do they have? Perhaps the increasing level of violence noted recently in the Philadelphia Inquirer at Bartram High School is the end result of this, and may be due, in some part, to the failure of the District to ensure all students have access to the courses they need to succeed in post-secondary education. These statistics are eye opening. Now that our eyes are opened, Philadelphia schools need to take a good look at their policies to figure out why these discipline and achievement gaps exist and what can be done about them.
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