Mass Privatization of Philadelphia Schools Worries APAs
Loss of ESL services may be a problem
By Viet Le
Special to AsianWeek
It’s been a summer of change for the financially- and academically-struggling Philadelphia School District. Last December, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took over the school system, the eighth largest in the country. More than half of the district’s 70 low-performing elementary and middle schools will be run this fall by private managers, making this the nation’s largest experiment in school privatization.
But every experiment has its risks, and Asian Pacific American activists and educators in Philadelphia say they fear the fate of what has often been considered “marginal” programs such as bilingual education and immigrant services. Moreover, they say the non-English-speaking population has been shut out of the rapid and turbulent school reform process — swept away in a rising tide.
Lack of Information
“The biggest thing that we found is that there’s this tremendous lack of information, even to English-speaking parents,” said Helen Gym, co-president of Asian Americans United (AAU), a Philadelphia-based community group. “Then to kind of funnel that information to non-English-speaking communities has been extremely difficult.”
Gym said that at early reform meetings, the school district did not provide a method for non-English-speaking parents to understand or communicate with other participants. She added the district has also made little effort to outreach to the immigrant community through existing means such as bilingual media or school bilingual assistance services. Gym said that sets a bad precedent for the future.
“They should be able to provide the resources,” Gym said. “They should know when they walk into a school where more than 15 percent of the families don’t speak English that they need to start thinking about if they don’t provide translators or if they didn’t provide notices in non-English languages that maybe they excluded a large percentage of people that would be impacted by reform.”
Maureen Garrity, a spokesperson for the School Reform Commission (a politically appointed panel that replaced the Philadelphia school board), acknowledged the School District was not able to regularly translate their public notices into languages other than English because of expense and lack of opportunity.
“The School Reform Commission was under a very tight timeline trying to determine what shape the reforms would take and then trying to communicate that with their stakeholders in general,” Garrity said. “Certainly, we are interested in being able to communicate with the Asian community, the Latino community and anybody else who’s not English speaking.”
Taking it into Their Own Hands
With limited information available to the APA community, AAU decided to educate its own, according to Gym. Weeks leading up to the state takeover, AAU held a meeting with Philadelphia Chinatown parents to inform them about the school reform process, the prominent role of Edison Schools in particular. Edison, the country’s largest for-profit school-management company, is set to run 20 Philadelphia schools. The company has also become a focal point of community protest and criticism.
“Edison’s primary allegiance is to their stockholders, not to their children,” said Debbie Wei, an AAU board member. “So when it comes time to figure out do we spend money on education or do we save money to make our profit margin bigger, the first line is going to be to their profit.”
But profit is something Edison has never made in its more than five years of managing schools. Earlier this summer, the company averted a financial crisis by securing the $40 million it needed to cover its startup costs in Philadelphia. Also, recent announcements that the U.S. Department of Education and the Pennsylvania Auditor General will investigate Edison’s Philadelphia contracts have contributed to the company’s plummeting stock price — a trend that concerns Wei.
“When they get into trouble, what do they drop?” Wei said. “What happens when they walk away from kids in the middle of the year and say, ‘We’re not even going to handle this anymore’?”
APA activists also question Edison’s commitment to bilingual students and cite its track record in the nearby Chester Upland School District as proof. Edison manages nine schools there, one of the worst performing school districts in Pennsylvania. A May performance report showed higher numbers of suspensions and truancies, and the absence of some required English as a Second Language services.
Edison spokesperson Adam Tucker defended the company’s dedication to bilingual students. He said Edison has a range of strategies for educating this special-needs population, tailoring its approach to every community.
According to Tucker, Edison students, depending on their level of English proficiency, are taught separately in their native tongue or receive extra support and tutoring outside their regular classes.
“We have an extremely serious commitment to making sure all of our students, many of whom need bilingual support or instruction, get a full and complete education,” Tucker said. “We completely recognize that the United States is an incredibly diverse place. Language and culture are certainly big parts to that.”
Tucker also dismissed the critics of private-sector involvement in public education. He said hundreds of for-profit organizations play a vital part in the daily life of public schools, from food vendors to book publishers. Tucker said Edison’s bottom line is not its stockholders, but its students.
“If our students are not successful, guess what?” said Tucker. “Edison is not a successful company. Our shareholders and the folks who work at Edison first and foremost are about the achievement of kids and their ability to get a better education.”
Setting Their Own Agenda
The Philadelphia community has been waiting for some time for effective change in their schools, according to Debbie Wei, who also works as an Asian American Studies curriculum specialist for the School District. She suggested that regardless of whether school reform succeeds or fails, the APA community should set its own agenda.
Wei said AAU’s Freedom School summer program is just one example. Modeled after the Freedom School of the civil rights era, children are taught by college and high-school students. The summer program promotes social justice, critical thinking and community service, and focuses on Asian culture. Wei said that while organizing around quality public schooling is important, it should not be the sole focus of APA activism.
“I think we can’t only be spending our energy there,” Wei said. “We in fact need to figure out how we educate our kids almost in spite of the schools, not through them.”
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