If Helen Gym Flaherty, the former Philadelphia City Councilwoman and now failed mayoral candidate reads The Philadelphia Inquirer, she must be foaming-at-the-mouth angry at a story in Monday’s newspaper. Mrs Flaherty based her campaign on her support for public schools, and had a campaign appearance in front of the Edward T Steel Elementary School, which she claimed to have saved from “going charter.”
We noted, at the time, that Steel Elementary, was ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Another respondent had the charts.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Mrs Flaherty, and the city’s political left are aghast that state money could be used to private schools, but there’s an obvious point to be made: if the public schools were doing a good job, there’d be no real pressure for private schools! Continue reading