Philadelphia: The SRC just got an SRC

The governance of Philadelphia schools is a tricky thing. A few years back, the state took over the city's schools and put them under the guidance of the five-member School Reform Commission. The governor appoints three SRC members; Philadelphia's mayor appoints the other two.

Got that?

Given recent controversies about the district, there's been a new reform movement afoot. Mayor Nutter and Ed Secretary Ron Tomalis responded Tuesday with their own plan:

Speaking at a news conference at district headquarters, Nutter and Tomalis announced the appointment of two "executive advisers" to work directly with district leadership and the School Reform Commission until a permanent superintendent is chosen to replace Arlene C. Ackerman.

They also said a working group of business experts is being formed to advise the SRC on changes in matters of operations and administration.

Nutter chose Lori Shorr, his top education official, for one of the adviser jobs; Tomalis picked Edward Williams, a retired district chief academic officer. The two will have offices inside district headquarters and officially began work Tuesday.

So...

The city and the state will each appoint an "adviser" to monitor a body of officials already appointed by the city and the state. The School Reform Commission, in essence, just got its own School Reform Commission.

Maybe this is a "this time we really mean it" move. But if the joint state-city oversight of the schools isn't working out satisfactorily, why would adding another layer of joint state-city oversight improve things? And if it fails—who, really, wants to bet on success when it comes to the Philadelphia school district—will Nutter and Tomalis appoint an SRC to monitor the SRC that monitors the SRC? At some point you've got to stop fiddling with the administrative structure and just get down to the hard task of educating children.

Kevin Drum on skyrocketing pay for CEOs

Adjusted for inflation, cash compensation for line workers has actually decreased over the past few decades, and even when you include healthcare compensation it's grown only about 30% or so. In contrast, executive compensation over the same period has more than quadrupled.

Do they deserve this? Almost certainly not. There's simply no good reason that a CEO of 2011 is worth 4x more than a CEO of 1970. The reason their pay has gone up is simple: for all practical purposes, CEOs set each others' pay. And they keep raising each others' pay because they can. It's a pretty nice racket.

via motherjones.com

Michael Potemra on 'Niggerhead'

If Perry left an old sign unchanged because it was an old sign, that’s one thing. If he left it unchanged because he approves of the social attitudes that existed in the days of institutionalized and socially empowered white racism, that’s quite another. In either case, it’s not the word on the rock that is really what we should be talking about. What does Rick Perry believe about black people? That’s the important question, and I have yet to see any evidence that his opinions on this question are racist or otherwise discreditable.

via nationalreview.com

I think Michael Potemra is generally thoughtful, but I don't entirely agree. If Perry could walk or drive past an "old sign" for several decades, it is—at the very least—a sign that he's content to let the inertia of evil win out over the need to do something affirmatively good. Then again: Most of us are guilty of that most days.

What 'Niggerhead' means for the rest of us

Though the narrative is rarely made this explicit, I believe there's a line of thinking that goes something like this: Racism, as a force in American life, for all intents and purposes ended sometime in 1968. The civil rights bills had been passed, Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, and the work of consolidating the gains of integration was finally consolidated with President Obama's election in 2008. People who want to make a big deal of white-on-black racism are generally "race hustlers" who want to prey on our divisions for their own gain.

So while it's easy to write off Rick Perry's "Niggerhead" moment as a faint echo of a long-ago era—and echo that probably would only be heard in the South, really—I suspect there's a lesson in there for the rest of us. And it comes from this New York Times' article:

One woman said local residents had called the area by that name since long before Mr. Perry and his father had leased the property. 

“It’s a bunch of crock,” said a woman who, like other residents in Throckmorton (population 828), would identify herself by only her first name, Mary. “I’m sorry, we had nothing to do with it. Perry had nothing to do with it. It’s been there all this time. He don’t mean nothing by it, that’s just the name of it. 

She said she believed that the name could be traced back to the “slavery days,” adding, “It’s just something that’s been, long before Perry was even thought of being born.”

 As part of the "racism ended in 1968" meme, I believe, there has been a significant temptation to believe that problems that often plague black communities in America—unemployment, violence, poverty—have nothing to do with the 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow that came before the modern era. "It is what it is," to borrow a phrase, and if that leaves a lot of people who were born with advantages remaining in a position of advantage, well, that's just a coincidence, right? Anybody who really wants to work their way to prosperity—or, at least, a middle class life—can do so if they choose.

But the term "Niggerhead" apparently stuck at this Texas camp for decades past racism's apparent sell-by date in America—and nobody really seemed to give it a second thought until recent years. "It's just something that's been," we're told, without any reflection on why it's been or if it's the way it has to be. When it gets pointed out, the locals get angry and defensive. And why not? It's doubtful any of them were trying to be racist, and now it's a national issue. It's not a dynamic designed to produce thoughtful consideration.

Which is too bad. Racism clearly isn't the same force it was 60 or 70 years ago, but it's foolish to act as though it's legacy doesn't live with us still—sometimes in unexpected ways and places. When "Niggerhead" is a place where white politicians still do business, it suggests there is still work to be done.

The blessing and curse of computers in the kids' library

I was in the basement of the Philadelphia City Institute Monday afternoon—the kids' section of our neighborhood library—when I heard a mother persistently but quietly talking to her young son.

"No, you can't play on the computers," she told him, as he craned his neck toward a workstation where several other children were playing educational games. "You have a computer at home. You have computers at school. You have computers everywhere."

Shhhhhh!

I winced a bit, because I'd just had the same chat with my own 3-year-old son. I'd brought him to the library to find some fresh material for our pre-bed storytime, but he only had eyes for the computers. The same thing happened a week earlier during a visit to the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia—in that case his mother physically picked up him, carried him away from the computers and back to the books. And in both instances, I got grumpy: Why can't libraries have a computer-free zone for kids?

There's an element of hypocrisy in this, of course: I do almost all of my newspaper and magazine reading on my iPad these days, as well as a majority of my book reading. To the extent that I'm modeling reading for my son—and I think I do quite a bit—I'm largely modeling electronic reading. Is it any wonder that he is less inclined to explore a room full of paper books?

And there's also an element of "white people problems": We have iPhones, iPads, and computers at home—we're almost never in a place where we can't hop online. But it's a different situation for lots of Philadelphia kids—in some parts of town, it is estimated that only 25 percent of them have access to a computer and the Internet at home. The library thus provides a valuable resource to families, offering access to a tool that everybody else in American life takes for granted. It's easy for me to complain about the ubiquity of computers because in my life—and my son's life—they really are ubiquitous.

Yet...

I would love it if our local libraries could find a way to try to do something different. To provide access to computers to those who need it, while still doing what libraries have always done—provide a zone of quiet where one can escape into a story or study or one's own thoughts. Computers and the Internet are valuable, even necessary, things these days. But so is the quiet. It's tough enough for most of us to find that balance in our lives: The library could do us a valuable service by showing the way.

Four ingredients. Five kinds of yum.

Four ingredients. Five kinds of yum.