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Weekend must-read: How private wealthy funders are keeping a School District restructuring plan alive and away from public scrutiny
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Weekend must-read: How private wealthy funders are keeping a School District restructuring plan alive and away from public scrutiny
For anyone following (and who isn't by now) the ongoing woes of the Philadelphia School District and the controversial – to put it mildly – plan being floated by the Boston Consulting Group to close more than 40 schools and reopen them under third-party management (a plan many, including my colleague Daniel Denvir, have pointed out sure looks like the mass-privitization of schools) – Parents United founder (and public school parent) Helen Gym has a column in the Public School Notebook yesterday is a must-read.
(Also, check out Dan talking about schools on *camera* on Democracy Now)
Citing a Notebook report that private funders have paid an additional $1.2 million for BCG, which has a track record of recommending almost identical “solutions” in other cities (whether these fixes have in fact solved anything is highly-debatable), Gym points out that this private money allows BCG to evade the public scrutiny that it would be subject to as a contractor for the School Reform Commission.
Here's a snippet. Agree with her or no, Gym has brought a lot of ideas to the conversation and argues them forcefully here. Read the comments section (the Notebook has the best comments in town) for more.
... as Dale Mezzacappa reported this week, BCG is continuing its role in Philadelphia for $1.2 million more, money raised specifically from private donors and funneled through the United Way outside public scrutiny.
Boston Consulting Group's contract should have been put before the School Reform Commission as a public resolution. But because it’s being funded through an outside entity, there’s no public review of a firm with an unprecedented role in shaping the SRC’s reform plans.
Even if you are for this plan, you cannot be for this process.
Had BCG gone through public channels, the SRC would be required to make BCG’s contract public. BCG’s specific findings and recommendations, which have never been released, would have been subject to public review. Questions could have been asked about the bidding process, criteria, and scope of work. Questions could have been asked about BCG’s past work in cities like Memphis and Cleveland, whose plans aren’t terribly dissimilar from ours.
Questions could have been asked about why BCG’s plan contrasted so sharply with Chief Academic Officer Penny Nixon’s plan for school autonomy, which was based on many weeks of work with District staff, principals, and other stakeholders.
Maybe we would have learned that the rollout for the BCG plan came with its own communications team – also paid for by outside foundation support.
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