Gleason's call to close 'loser' schools infuriates public ed advocates

Philadelphia School Partnership CEO Mark Gleason set off a deluge of criticism after he called for the School District to close "loser" schools.

"You keep dumping the losers and over time you create a higher bar for what we expect of our schools," Gleason said Friday while speaking on a panel at the American Educational Research Association conference, which has been held in Philadelphia over the last week.

Last year, Philadelphia closed 24 schools in the wake of massive state budget cuts and the rapid expansion of charter schools.

Parents United for Public Education leader Helen Gym said that Gleason held "extremist" views on public education.

"Mark Gleason is not an educator, and I think that's one thing that should be pretty clear. He has been a relentless promoter of questionable reform models that have really wreaked havoc in other places. And he has unprecedented access to the Mayor's Office of Education, to the School District, to push his agenda," she told City Paper.

PSP, which issues large grants to schools that it wants to see expanded and lobbies policymakers, has become a lightning rod for criticism by public-education advocates since its 2010 founding. The group backs the expansion of charter schools and frequently opposes the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. It has quickly become a major force in city education politics, thanks to millions of dollars of funding from The William Penn Foundation. Controversially, PSP's board includes conservative figures Janine Yass, the wife of voucher-advocate and investment-fund manager Jeffrey Yass, and Republican powerbroker Chris Bravacos.

PSP and allied groups have also been criticized for failing to criticize Gov. Tom Corbett's funding cuts to public education, and for prioritizing charter-school expansion and eliminating teacher seniority instead of attacking the lack of funding for poor school districts. Indeed, in Gleason's comments on Friday, he downplayed the impact of the  huge staffing cuts to Philadelphia schools.

David Hardy, the CEO of Boys' Latin charter school, tweeted a defense of Gleason. "'Dumping the losers' means improving the schools, not eliminating students. That's what we do now."

Gleason says that it was a poor choice of words but that he stands by his position.

"I do regret repeating a phrase that one of the other panelists, [Philadelphia Public School Notebook Editor] Paul Socolar, had used just before me, about 'dumping the losers,'" Gleason wrote by e-mail. "But I stand by my support for that crucial element of a portfolio strategy, namely closing or transforming the lowest-performing schools and thereby gradually raising the bar for acceptable school performance."

Socolar, however, was not endorsing the model, but describing its origins.

"The term is borrowed from Wall Street," Socolar said in his panel remarks. "You hang on to the successful companies in your stock portfolio and you dump the losers. Proponents here talk about it in terms of replacing low- performing seats with high-performing seats."

Gleason also called New Orleans, where charters took over most of the school district after Hurricane Katrina, "the great example of [a] portfolio" model with a district central office that manages schools run largely by an array of typically private providers.

Superintendent William Hite, who also was a panel speaker, criticized Gleason in surprisingly strong terms—especially given that reformers consider New Orleans the portfolio par excellence and that the District itself has embraced the model.

Hite told his "buddy Mark" that he "could not disagree more with some of the comments," and that New Orleans has mixed results for students.

But Gym says that it is "the District and City [that] need to explain how their refusal to put appropriate resources toward our schools and their approach toward failing schools—whether it's conversion to charter or closing them down—is not effectively the same thing as what Gleason is saying."

Philadelphia Student Union executive director Hiram Rivera, a co-panelist, also harshly criticized Gleason.

"His comments showed an inexcusable level of insensitivity for the community of New Orleans [which is] still trying to piece itself back together after Hurricane Katrina and a lack of understanding and empathy for poor communities of color in which nearly all of these 'losers' reside," Rivera wrote City Paper by e-mail. "Mark Gleason and his PSP should be shut down and kicked out of Philadelphia."

In his panel remarks, Socolar said that Philadelphia stood out from other cities in the role played by private organizations and public officials in backing a private role in managing public schools. Currently, more than a third of public school students attend charters, which has created a major financial burden for the cash-strapped District.

"I think the portfolio model also stands out in Philly because of the move by Philadelphia School Partnership and some local officials to welcome Catholic and private schools into the portfolio, and to downplay the distinctions between public and private schools," Socolar said. "So, for instance, Mayor Nutter has said that debates about public versus private versus charter are 'esoteric' and don't matter to children."

You can listen to Gleason's comment here and most of the whole panel discussion here.