A Philadelphia Story: Building Civic Capacity for School Reform in a Privatizing System

Following the 2001 state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia, a new governance structure was established and an ambitious set of reforms went into effect, generating renewed public confidence in the district. Despite this, maintaining reform momentum continues to be difficult in Philadelphia. This can be traced to on-going challenges to civic capacity around education. Defined by Stone et al (2001), civic capacity involves collaboration and mobilization of the city's civic and community sectors to pursue the collective good of educational improvement. Using interviews conducted with over 65 local civic actors and district administrators, and case studies of local organizations involved with education, the authors examine civic capacity in the context of Philadelphia. The authors find that while many individuals and organizations are actively involved with the schools, there are several factors that present unique challenges to the development of civic capacity in Philadelphia. Despite these challenges, the authors conclude that there are many reasons to be optimistic and offer several recommendations for generating civic capacity -- the kind that creates and sustains genuine educational change

NEPC Review: Documenting Inequitable Patterns in Spending by Parent Teacher Associations, Parent Teacher Organizations, and "Friends of" Fundraising Groups at Illinois Public Schools (Urban Institute, February 2022)

An Urban Institute report asserts that private fundraising, which is more likely to exist in advantaged schools, increases educational inequality. The report recommends that state and district policymakers track private fundraising and consider strategies for resource sharing and equalization. While the report&rsquo;s claims are consistent with other research, problems with the analysis and presentation of the data severely undercut its validity, making it hard to know how much these patterns exist in Illinois schools. Nonetheless, the report&rsquo;s approach of calculating per-pupil spending to estimate the magnitude of spending by private fundraising organizations could be useful to scholars and policymakers interested in understanding the potential impact of school-specific fundraising organizations.&nbsp; </div

NEPC Review: Documenting Inequitable Patterns in Spending by Parent Teacher Associations, Parent Teacher Organizations, and "Friends of" Fundraising Groups at Illinois Public Schools (Urban Institute, February 2022)

An Urban Institute report asserts that private fundraising, which is more likely to exist in advantaged schools, increases educational inequality. The report recommends that state and district policymakers track private fundraising and consider strategies for resource sharing and equalization. While the report&rsquo;s claims are consistent with other research, problems with the analysis and presentation of the data severely undercut its validity, making it hard to know how much these patterns exist in Illinois schools. Nonetheless, the report&rsquo;s approach of calculating per-pupil spending to estimate the magnitude of spending by private fundraising organizations could be useful to scholars and policymakers interested in understanding the potential impact of school-specific fundraising organizations. </div

NEPC Review: Hidden Money: The Outsized Role of Parent Contributions in School Finance

While inequalities in school funding resulting from state and local policies have long been a source of concern to education researchers and policymakers, a report from the Center for American Progress examines a source of educational inequality that receives less attention: private fundraising by parents. It focuses on the 50 Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) that raised the most money in 2013-2014, with two main findings. First, the PTAs raising large amounts were located in schools and districts with low rates of student poverty. Second, while a PTA in a high-poverty community may raise only a few hundred dollars, PTAs in this sample raised hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Using case studies, the report considers district regulation of private fundraising. This review concludes that the report&rsquo;s findings about the scope and beneficiaries of private fundraising are credible and important&mdash;showing the impact successful PTAs can have. However, the focus on a small number of schools and districts, a lack of attention to school and community context, and problems with the case study design limit the report&rsquo;s overall relevance. In addition, it is important to note that most funding inequalities arise at the state level; funds raised by parents represent only a minute portion of overall school spending. Nevertheless, the report&rsquo;s recommendations, especially in support of equity grants, will be useful to district-level policymakers.</p

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ∼ 1.7 {{s}} with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of {40}-8+8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 {M}ȯ . An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ∼ 40 {{Mpc}}) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One-Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ∼10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ∼ 9 and ∼ 16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC 4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta.</p

Marketing schools, marketing cities: Urban revitalization, public education, and social inequality

This dissertation uses a Philadelphia campaign to attract and retain professional families to urban public schools as a lens to examine the role of education—and public sector services in general—in the revitalized cities of the 21st century. The Center City Schools Initiative (CCSI) is rooted in a particular vision of urban prosperity that understands a city\u27s fate as heavily dependent on the number of highly educated workers living and working within its limits. This vision is becoming increasingly prominent in the United States and abroad, as cities focus on revitalizing downtown areas and positioning themselves to compete for mobile capital and labor. The dissertation views CCSI as both a strategy for urban economic growth with national implications and as a response to Philadelphia\u27s particular social, political, and economic context. Designed as an embedded case study, the research uses document analysis, dozens of interviews, and over two years of ethnographic research to examine the origins and evolution of CCSI, public discourse around the policy, and its impact on a local school. With its emphasis on the importance of attracting professional families to the schools, CCSI redistributed educational access in the city by making it more difficult for students from some low-income neighborhoods to access high-performing downtown schools and by increasing schools\u27 dependence on local community resources. It forced stakeholders in Philadelphia to struggle with their own views on urban growth, school reform and equity, revealing the extent to which discourses about the middle class obscure more structural understandings of urban problems. CCSI also put in place market mechanisms that constructed upper-middle-class parents as valued customers and disempowered parents who did not fit that mold. At the same time, though, it brought important new resources to the schools, including highly motivated and skilled professional parents, and enabled active parents to make significant improvements to the schools. CCSI illuminates the new identities being created in American cities at the intersection between market and state, namely the construction of city residents as customers rather than citizens, and the implications this shift has for entitlement to government services, inequality, and collective responsibility

Marketing schools, marketing cities: Urban revitalization, public education, and social inequality

This dissertation uses a Philadelphia campaign to attract and retain professional families to urban public schools as a lens to examine the role of education—and public sector services in general—in the revitalized cities of the 21st century. The Center City Schools Initiative (CCSI) is rooted in a particular vision of urban prosperity that understands a city\u27s fate as heavily dependent on the number of highly educated workers living and working within its limits. This vision is becoming increasingly prominent in the United States and abroad, as cities focus on revitalizing downtown areas and positioning themselves to compete for mobile capital and labor. The dissertation views CCSI as both a strategy for urban economic growth with national implications and as a response to Philadelphia\u27s particular social, political, and economic context. Designed as an embedded case study, the research uses document analysis, dozens of interviews, and over two years of ethnographic research to examine the origins and evolution of CCSI, public discourse around the policy, and its impact on a local school. With its emphasis on the importance of attracting professional families to the schools, CCSI redistributed educational access in the city by making it more difficult for students from some low-income neighborhoods to access high-performing downtown schools and by increasing schools\u27 dependence on local community resources. It forced stakeholders in Philadelphia to struggle with their own views on urban growth, school reform and equity, revealing the extent to which discourses about the middle class obscure more structural understandings of urban problems. CCSI also put in place market mechanisms that constructed upper-middle-class parents as valued customers and disempowered parents who did not fit that mold. At the same time, though, it brought important new resources to the schools, including highly motivated and skilled professional parents, and enabled active parents to make significant improvements to the schools. CCSI illuminates the new identities being created in American cities at the intersection between market and state, namely the construction of city residents as customers rather than citizens, and the implications this shift has for entitlement to government services, inequality, and collective responsibility