David P. Hardy: Philadelphia teachers — like their students — want educational choice
Philadelphia schools recently adopted a new multimillion-dollar curriculum — and district teachers sound mad as hell about it.
The School District of Philadelphia recently rolled out its $25 million English Language Arts (ELA) program for the 2024–25 school year. According to a recent article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, teachers have mixed reviews.
Some teachers call it “a wonderful program” and “rigorous and evidence-based.” One teacher claims his students have advanced faster than years before.
However, several others — many remaining anonymous for fear of reprisal — express either skepticism or opposition. One calls the new curriculum “a burden.” Another veteran teacher navigates around its inaccuracies.
“I have to tell the kids, ‘Cross that out, the definition is wrong,’” cites the Inquirer.
Just to be clear, these educators admit this program works for some but not others.
If teachers feel this way, how do you think the students feel?
And this problem goes beyond curricula. Education is multifaceted, developing students’ values, character, and creativity and cultivating their intellectual curiosity, emotional stability, social awareness, and problem-solving abilities.
Mandating a one-size-fits-all system is a fool’s errand.
Moreover, limiting educational choice also limits academic achievement. The numbers say it all. Barely one-third of Philadelphia students can read at grade level. Meanwhile, the Trial Urban District Assessment ranks Philadelphia schools in the bottom third of 26 big-city school districts nationwide.
Some leaders are quick to blame the pandemic. Yet, Philadelphia schools weren’t doing much better before Covid-19.
If we keep doing what we’re doing, we can expect more of the same results, meaning bridging these achievement gaps won’t likely happen in the foreseeable future. In the words of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington, “We’ve got a long way to go.”
What should Philadelphia students and teachers do in the meantime?
Cristina Gutierrez, a dual-language kindergarten teacher in Philadelphia, says she might vote with her feet.
“If I could find something else doing whatever that pays me the same, I would leave.”
Gutierrez claims she isn’t alone, suggesting the new ELA curriculum will lead to “an amazing exodus of teachers.”
Even the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) worries that this program will push teachers out of the district.
“A number of veteran teachers say it’s difficult—folks have worked there for years, and they’re saying they’re frustrated and talking about leaving,” according to Arthur Steinberg, PFT’s president.
But leaving is easier said than done if you’re a student. Unlike teachers who can quit and find work elsewhere, students and families have nowhere to go. Simply put, they are stuck.
And while educational leaders develop decades-long strategies, these kids don’t have years to catch up, especially considering how far behind they are now.
This is precisely why we need educational choice. When families seek out the best education for their kids, they need a multitude of schools and settings to choose from.
Pennsylvania students and families are eager for new educational opportunities not offered in their neighborhoods. If money wasn’t a concern, only one in five Pennsylvania parents would send their children to their local district school.
But increased choice also necessitates increased resources. The biggest hurdle to a better education typically boils down to cost. Low-income families can afford neither the cost of living in the communities that house the blue-ribbon public schools nor the tuition at nearby private schools.
To level that playing field, students and families, especially those in low-income households, need scholarships, educational savings accounts, and tax credits to escape their underperforming neighborhood schools.
We can achieve educational choice by expanding current programs, like the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs. Recent research demonstrates these programs support more than 77,000 students, many living in low- and middle-income families, in all 67 Pennsylvania counties. Furthermore, EITC- and OSTC-awarded students academically outperform their public school counterparts.
But these programs alone aren’t enough. More than 200,000 students attend Pennsylvania’s lowest-performing schools—the bottom fifteen percent based on statewide testing.
Legislating new programs, such as Lifeline Scholarships, and enacting open enrollment so students can attend schools outside their zip code would fill those gaps.
If educators demand increased choice, it only makes sense that we provide the same to the students, too.
David P. Hardy is president of Girard College and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation.
Thank you for your article.
Have you read “A Response to My Liberal Neighbor” by Tom Klingenstein
from November 4, 2024? He has an interesting take on Brian Lozenski and Governor Tim Walz’s Education Department for Minnesota. Is this going on in PA, too? Below is an excerpt from it:
“Determining whether we are in a war, or how perilous is the current situation, is not easy. But it has been made immeasurably easier with the revelation of a recently unearthed video by a man named Brian Lozenski.
Lozenski, an associate professor of urban and multicultural education at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was selected by Governor Tim Walz’s Education Department to help write the statewide “implementation framework” for Minnesota’s new “ethnic studies” standards, which will provide the foundation for ethnic studies curricula for all public schools in Minnesota. Lozenski is the foremost authority on ethnic studies in Minnesota, and the de facto leader of Walz’s ethnic studies initiative.
In the video, Lozenski explains that:
The first tenet of critical race theory is that the United States as constructed is irreversibly racist. So if the nation-state as constructed is irreversibly racist, then it must be done with. It must be overthrown. And so we [proponents of critical race theory] can’t be like, “Oh no, critical race theory is just about telling our stories, and diversity.” It’s not about that. It’s about overthrow. It’s insurgent. And we need to be, I think, more honest with that. … You can’t be a critical race theorist and be pro-U.S.
My neighbor and siblings may well approve of CRT. More likely, they would claim that it is not being taught. Regardless, they do not believe that CRT is about destroying America. But that is what the destructive [far] Left believes.
Since Lozenski is Walz’s top education advisor and is shepherding his most important education program, ethnic studies, through the approval process, there can be no doubt that Walz himself is a revolutionary.
Under Walz, ethnic studies (which is to say CRT) will be embedded in every subject, including the sciences and physical education, in every grade, in every public school in Minnesota.
Katherine Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the Center for the American Experiment gives us a flavor of the new standards:
• “First-graders must ‘ identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power’ and ‘ use those examples to construct meanings for those terms.’ ” Yes, first graders. I can’t imagine how these standards will be translated into a first-grade curriculum, but it’s frightening to even think about it.
• “Fourth-graders must ‘ identify the processes and impacts of colonization and examine how discrimination and the oppression of various racial and ethnic groups have produced resistance movements.’”
• “High-school students are told to ‘ develop an analysis of racial capitalism’ and ‘ anti-Blackness’ and are taught to view themselves as members of ‘ racialized hierarchies’ based on ‘ dominant European beauty standards.’”
These standards are obscurant — intentionally so — but for those of us who study such things, they all are unmistakably intended to lead students to disdain America and join in the overthrow of their country.“