by Deborah Grill, Lisa Haver and Diane Payne
This district opened its first charter school in 1998. Every year, those lobbying for and profiting from the privatization of public schools have promised to improve education for the city’s children. They said that the district had an obligation to create charters for the good of the children and the community. Twenty-five years later, we can see that the charter experiment foisted upon the city and its families has failed. Because of the backing of well-funded PACs and special interest groups, with their increasing political influence, charters have avoided accountability to the same communities they made 6their promises to.
The district has had many years to learn that the aspirational language of charter apps is rarely achieved. Charter renewal evaluations don’t measure whether the schools have fulfilled their promises of innovation; they cite standardized test scores and other data.
Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools 