We are heartened to see that the editorial page editor of a local newspaper has called for the state to take over Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS). That, after a majority of the PPS board of directors last Tuesday caved to a vocal minority of “stakeholders” to quash a long-debated plan to right-size and reorganize the long-struggling district’s bloated bricks-and-mortar footprint.
A point of order is due here: the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy called for a state takeover nearly a decade ago.
In the simplest vernacular, PPS is, and long has been, an academic, administrative and operational embarrassment.
And it was in January 2017, based on a scathing report on PPS by the Council of the Great City Schools, that then-think tank chief Jake Haulk, now president-emeritus, made his takeover call.
Calling the report details “brutally scathing,” Haulk cited the district’s “low marks in nearly every aspect of school operations, particularly in the academic performance of students where there has been no progress since the council’s previous report in 2006.”
“Indeed, the report is such a severe indictment that the Department of Education in Harrisburg should consider taking control of the district,” Haulk said at the time.
Virtually nothing has changed for the better in any substantive way since. And in a number of metrics, it is worse.
Though late to the issue, the local editorial page editor properly superglued PPS to the white board of shame in a Nov. 26 column. To wit:
“The Pittsburgh Public School District is, by far, the biggest parachute dragging behind the City of Pittsburgh. It is impossible to imagine the city thriving again as a complete community — that is, not just as a retirement community slash playground for college students and recent grads — until the public schools have been radically transformed.
“Yet [last week’s] confused and confounding vote by the PPS board to shelve its school reorganization and closure plan, capping a two-year-long debacle, has confirmed that the district is simply unreformable under current governance.
“There is, therefore, only one choice: Mayor-elect Corey O’Connor must appeal to Gov. Josh Shapiro to support legislation placing the district’s finances under state supervision and disbanding the elected board in favor of appointed experts.”
The editor goes on to note that there is “no reasonable hope that Pittsburgh will have decent public schools under the current governance culture and structure. … This situation is not the fault of any one person. It represents a total system failure.”
No kidding.
And as we concluded, nine years ago:
“That so many people and organizations, along with the government, have helped to perpetuate this failure is a resounding indictment of the educratic establishment. It is an abject tragedy for Pittsburgh Public Schools students and taxpayers who are being forced to keep paying for it.”
And paying an outrageous premium at that.
The time for dithering and dickering and pausing and posturing is long past. The state must act post-haste to halt what surely will be, in the shortest of order, the complete scuttling of Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Sadly, however, the next question is if “The State” has what it takes to salvage what is, by any accounting, the sunken wreckage of PPS. For as Haulk reminded in 2017:
“The state Education Department has never seen fit to demand accountability for the disaster that is Pittsburgh’s overall academic performance.”
And, he reminded then, PPS and the commonwealth are not alone in their complicity:
“Sadly, the corporate and foundation communities have been part of the problem by sponsoring or supporting programs that sound good but have done nothing positive or even made matters worse.”
Talk about a cluster-cluck. Such a cluster must be called into account as well. And the clucking of inaction must end.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
