Anthony West wrote:
Everyone understands clearly that you are calling the Penn Alexander
School's catchment area "mud" Penn has thrown at "public education".
Public education, in general, was worse in Philadelphia before Penn
developed PAS. Now it is better in three schools, without being worse in
any other schools as a result. This is what you call "mud". I don't
agree with you. Making things better in some places is not a bad thing,
just because you can't make things better in all places at once.
All public schools in Philadelphia were not equal before Penn entered
the picture. At the ES/MS level, inequalities were caused by class
differences across a vast city's diverse real-estate market. Penn didn't
create that. Since a university is as natural and organic a part of city
life as any other institution, the wonder is that a university
neighborhood did not already have neighborhood schools that reflected
the university's presence. It was the old, pre-Penn-partnership model
that was abnormal and unhealthy.
And in fact, the School District's name was already mud. It had been
judged a failure. By the government. That's why the State took it over.
That's why the School Reform Commission was authorized to experiment in
a host of ways, to learn anything it could about making urban schools
work better. Thus PAS.
You are clearly confused about the current nature of public-school
competition.
no one's confused here. the penn-assisted school had to be
subsidized by a university; it also required a special
catchment area drawn around it. and because of that mud, you
now can't point to it as a model for public education.
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
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