Philly Blames Its Politicians, Not Teachers, For Its School Crisis

Well sometimes the truth will out, right? The Pew Charitable Trusts surveyed Philly residents and found that the majority of them blame Tom Corbitt, Mayor Nutter and Philly City Council for their current funding crisis. Only 11% blame unions. They also think of Philly as a great place to get a college education and to live if you don’t have kids. If you have kids, the survey says that a slight majority (48%)doesn’t think that Philly is a good place to raise them. They also think that public schools are getting worse.

If politicians think they have the answers for schools, they *should* take the blame for their spectacular failures. Philadelphia certainly would not let its sports teams have to rely on a United Way campaign to get school supplies. They wouldn’t ask their police department to fund raise for new cars. For Philadelphia, they’ve had abit of a city resurgence, mostly powered by younger people coming to live in the city. They cannot afford to have them move out because the educational options aren’t appealing. Which continues to be a problem for Delaware (or at least northern DE) — better schools can be found just across the border. It is time for the local politicians to take their share of the blame for the state of some of Delaware’s schools — especially RTTT efforts which don’t seem to translate into better classroom effectiveness, just more widgets. It is time for local politicians to live with the kind of accountability they want from teachers — since the politicians pushed test-driven education, they should be held responsible for this scheme not working.