BROTHERLY LOVE IN PHILADELPHIA

Mayor John Street got himself in trouble the other day by saying the following at an NAACP convention:

Let me tell you: The brothers and sisters are running the city. Oh, yes. The brothers and sisters are running this city. Running it! Don't you let nobody fool you, we are in charge of the City of Brotherly Love. We are in charge! We are in charge!

Let's forget about the substance behind that quote (the questionable idea that African-Americans should be happy just because other African-Americans are in charge - let's just say things went much better for Black Philadelphians when Fast Eddy was mayor as opposed to Mayor not-so-Goode), and look to the issue of political common sense. Pennsylvania has been well described as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and in the middle - Alabama. Pennsylbama despises giving state funds to Philly, because you know..."those people" live there. The worst thing that Philly's hard pressed state delegation needs is to for the African-American mayor to playing the race card.

I'm gonna chalk up Street's faux pas to anxiety. After, all the Mayor just lost control of 42 of his city's schools, in the largest privitization program in the country. While I'm not sure whether the plan will actually benefit Philadelphis schoolchildren (although its hard to imagine many of the schools in the city doing worse), it will most definitely benefit academics. They will get to compare the progress of 5 for-profit companies, Penn and Temple as take over various elementary and middle schools. Of course, that might be too empricial for the world of education, which in the past has chosen to rely on dogmatic theories. The hope is that this experiment (which unsurprisingly is opposed by certain parents that don't like the idea of their children being guinea pigs) will at least shed light on a number of questions, most importantly - how much can failing urban schools be improved without signficant infusions of cash? The likely answer to that will be somewhat, but not enough. In the meantime, we need to keep a wary eye to make sure that for-profit educational ventures are getting their contracts based on their efforts in the class room, not the state house.