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Councilman Bill Green urges restructuring of school district
The Philly school district is "too big to succeed," the councilman told the School Reform Commission.
Councilman Bill Green urges restructuring of school district
"We can't reform the public school system … the only answer is data-based innovation and improvement," Councilman Bill Green told the School Reform Commission (SRC) this afternoon. He's proposing a complete restructuring of the district's governance, including "abolishing the existing School Reform Commission and splitting the governance of Philadelphia public schools among two entities – a Mayor-appointed Board of Education and a state-wide school reform entity similar to the Louisiana Recovery School District."
"Such a model would allow Philadelphia to regain control over the many schools that already produce impressive academic results while targeting state resources specifically toward turning around individual failing schools through a variety of innovative models. This governance structure would create a framework through which policymakers can maintain “what works” and quickly shut down and restructure troubled schools without the constraints of the existing School District bureaucracy. Restructuring of school governance is needed because:
- Philadelphia is not doing enough, quickly enough, to turn around all of its failing schools. Reform efforts thus far have been limited in scale; shoe-horned into the existing School District bureaucracy, in which they must compete for scarce resources and attention; and, too often, discarded with each turnover in superintendent. We desperately need a new governance entity whose sole long-term objective and focus is to remediate failing schools.
- The current governance structure has to manage too many competing priorities and too much bureaucracy to be an effective administrator of innovative school turnaround efforts. The School District’s mandate is simply too broad for it to effectively manage everything it is tasked with, given its structural and fiscal limitations.
- Investment and participation by state government is needed to turn around failing schools. If the state is responsible for turning around individual failing schools across Pennsylvania, then lawmakers may be more willing to invest money in these efforts and cannot blame poor student achievement on local incompetence or mismanagement.
- Restoring a Mayor-appointed Board of Education to oversee most schools will greatly improve accountability for public schools to local taxpayers.
- Putting state administrators in charge of school turnaround efforts will insulate the process from local political forces that too often exert themselves in the decisions of the School District.
"We've been treating the school district of Philadelphia like a too-big-to-fail financial institution … in fact, it's too big to succeed," Green said. His full policy paper is here.
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