We have frequently mentioned the Edward T Steel Elementary School in Philadelphia, since then-mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty used the school as a backdrop for telling voters how she ‘saved’ the school from ‘going charter,’ and kept it a public school.  In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205^th 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. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well?

Why do we mention this, since the mayoral primary is long over, and Mrs Flaherty remains a private individual? The Philadelphia Inquirer, in its series of paeans to outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney, had this gem on Wednesday morning:

On Jim Kenney’s watch, the Philly school district returned to local control and got more money

$1.5 billion in city money for schools, and an end to nearly two decades of state control of the Philadelphia School District: Jim Kenney’s education legacy.

by Kristen A. Graham and Anna Orso | Wednesday, December 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

On playgrounds and in classrooms, at news conferences and community events, Mayor Jim Kenney said it every chance he got over the last eight years: Improving Philadelphia’s educational system is the way to make the city better.

“Public education is a central pillar of our fight against generational poverty,” the mayor said last week at the final biannual Philadelphia School District hearing before City Council. “It’s the only way we can achieve lasting prosperity and equity in our city.”

You’ll just have to take my word for it that I have accurately quoted the article, since it’s limited to subscribers; I subscribe to the newspaper so that you don’t have to! 🙂

One of his most significant plans of action: He announced in late 2017 that the city would seize back control of its own school system, ending 18 years of state oversight and pivoting to local control with a school board comprising nine members chosen by him. Along with establishing free prekindergarten for the city’s youngest learners, returning the Philadelphia School District to local control tops the list of Kenney’s educational accomplishments.

“Again and again, we’ve told the people of Philadelphia that the state of their schools are someone else’s responsibility,” Kenney told a cheering audience who packed City Council chambers in November 2017. “That ends today. When the SRC dissolves itself, and we return to a school board appointed by the mayor, you can hold me and future mayors accountable for the success or failure of our schools.”

At that point, reporters Kristen Graham and Anna Orso document the efforts to return control of the School District to the city, from the Commonwealth which had taken control in 2001. They noted the city’s complaint that the Commonwealth had “underfunded” the schools, and that with the city taking over, there had been a significant increase in money for the School District:

In a school system that has been underfunded for generations and lacks the ability to raise its own revenue, lack of finances historically has been a perpetual issue.

Kenney said in an interview last month that one of the accomplishments he’s most proud of is the city’s “unprecedented” investment in the school district on his watch.

”I had the SRC and Harrisburg reducing the amount of money coming here, and we increased it by $1.5 billion in new money,” the mayor said.

Kenney again stressed his administration saw the infusion of cash to the district as a matter of public safety and poverty reduction.

”The only true way out of poverty is education,” he said. “The kids who are running the street with guns in their waistbands and in jail did not either have or take advantage of the education system to get them out.”

The article continued to note that some improvements had been made in facilities and in providing “mental health workers paid by the city but working inside district schools” and getting Comcast to provide free internet “so children from low-income families could participate in online classes” during the panicdemic.^[1]“Panicdemic” is not a typographical error, but a deliberate spelling I have chosen, to express that I believe almost all of the reaction to COVID-19 was a panic.

“What happens when the city and the school district partner? We can do anything,” school board president Reginald Streater said.

Really? Well, there’s one thing that the School District was apparently unable to do! I read through the article thrice, just to make sure I hadn’t somehow missed it, but the one thing that the Inquirer did not mention, or even allude to, and that is the obvious question: did the educational results of the Philadelphia Public Schools improve? Were tests scores higher? As we noted above, at Edward T Steel Elementary, a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the grade-level proficient level in math. I guess that’s higher than 0%, but it’s hardly a sterling endorsement, either. The city threw $1.5 billion more at the schools, and unless the newspaper’s reporters just flat forgot about it — and Miss Graham’s Inquirer bio tells us that she “cover(s) Philly schools, taking readers inside one of the largest districts in the country,” that she specializes in the news about education, so it would seem improbable that she would have forgotten — there was either no improvement at all in the educational results, or so little measurable improvement that it would be an embarrassment to publish it.

That’s the kind of information a real journalist ought to report: what are the results, what are the measurables? In a report on the city’s public schools, that ought to be item number one in importance.