The first essay I wrote in the Public Policy section here looked at the disparity in spending between Philadelphia and the neighboring suburban districts, in order to illustrate the idea that it’s not reasonable to expect a district to be competitive with a fraction of the resource base. Almost six years later, Chris Lehmann at Practical Theory brings up a similar point. Like me, Chris looks at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Report Card on the Schools series. Unlike me, Chris has the experience of working to launch a new charter school in Philadelphia to provide more specific, vivid examples. So go check out his post. It’s great that Lehmann and his team are committed to doing the fundraising work necessary to make their vision for the Science Leadership Academy thrive. But how much greater would it be if they could put all that energy into actually educating kids?
Archive for July 17th, 2006
Funding Still Matters
Posted July 17, 2006 By Dave Thomer
Filed in Special Order Speeches
Public Policy Archive Updated
Posted July 17, 2006 By Dave ThomerThe Public Policy articles from the HTML and phpBB versions of the site have now been brought into the current WordPress edition. For the most part I have not gone through and rechecked all of the links in those pieces, so there are probably some dead links and stuff that’s behind subscription walls right now. But if you want to see what we were talking about from 2000-2004, you can go take a look from the Public Policy link on the sidebar. And if you’re like me, you’ll marvel at how much it seems like the country’s talking about the same things in 2006.
Filed in Site Comments