November Newsflash
Philadelphia's school partnerships: "Get to know us"
Some school districts for years have bragged about the outside partners they have secured to enhance educational resources. But partnering with universities, nonprofits, and for-profit companies to actually manage dozens of a district’s schools is a new distinction for which Philadelphia last month offered up itself as a national model.
In cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education, the School District of Philadelphia hosted a two-day conference at Drexel University called “Innovations in education: building a public/private partnership model for K-12 reform.”
The conference spotlighted both high-profile District partners like Microsoft and the role of education management companies. Workshops addressed university partnerships, corporate partnerships, foundation partnerships, and the role of city government and community stakeholders in partnership development.
A “partnership fair” allowed attendees to collect materials from 26 participating organizations – including school managers like Edison and Community Education Partners, university-based initiatives like a behavioral support program run by Arcadia University, and educational consulting firms like SchoolWorks, which is supporting the development of a school accountability system here. Most of these partners are being paid by the district for their services.
Out-of-town attendees not affiliated with a current partner were hard to find at the conference, making the event, in one skeptic’s view, “a kind of internal pep rally.”
The commendations culminated with a keynote address by President Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige. To a packed crowd that included many District administrators, he said, “The powerful partnership you have in Philadelphia is a model for many other cities . . . .You are a powerful catalyst for education reform.”
“It’s premature to make claims about success” with these initiatives, commented conference observer Sukey Blanc, senior researcher at Research for Action, a local education nonprofit which is evaluating Philadelphia's school reforms. "We don't know yet whether it's going to end up building the capacity of the District, or whether it's going to improve student learning," she explained.
Interviewed after the conference, Martha E. Barratt, chair of the Duval County School Board in Jacksonville, Florida, seemed impressed but unsure of how the information she obtained could apply to her school system. “We were looking for how best to form partnerships for the private/public sector. In reality, [the conference focus] was partnerships as far as [running] schools, which we don’t do here,” she commented about her District.
Duval County is more typical of school systems in what it means by “partnerships.” Arrangements are generally far less sweeping than the outsourcing of school management at place in 45 schools in Philadelphia. Partnerships are also often more supportive than managerial and contractual in nature.
Seemingly closest to Philadelphia’s outsourcing arrangement is Chicago’s proposed “Renaissance 2010” a project that aims for 100 new schools to be launched by Chicago Public Schools in the next six years, with most to be run by outside managers or as charter schools. Recent news reports have begun documenting the project’s rocky start.
No Chicago education officials were observed to be in attendance at the partnership conference.
Several attendees also noted the absence of community participants and labor unions at the partnership conference. School District representatives stressed that the teachers’ union had been invited but pointed to teacher contract negotiations to explain the absence.