Education in the News: This Will Sound VERRRRY Familiar

“How will the district’s restructuring plan save money? The district wants to simultaneously balance the budget and wholly restructure — some say blow up — the district to ultimately provide a better education for kids. But it’s worth asking whether the district should consider those two goals separately.

“The massive restructuring includes aims to decentralize a massive bureaucracy, by sending a whopping 40 percent of all students to charter schools by 2017, as well as creating ‘achievement networks,’ which are groups of 20 to 30 schools run by nonprofits….”

Read the rest of the Inquirer Daily News editorial, “City Council grills Philadelphia School District on its budget today.”

“In what should be the biggest story of the week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced Tuesday that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of current enrollment to charter schools, the streets or wherever, and put thousands of experienced, well qualified teachers, often grounded in the communities where they teach, on the street…”