Alex Wong: Philly teachers need a lesson on selfishness

Economist Joseph Schempeter once said, "The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie." With the prospect of the city's school system being handed over to a private company, this seems to be the case with Philadelphia's teachers union.

In an attempt to discredit Edison Schools, the private company that would be tapped by the state to run Philadelphia's troubled school system, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers seems to have abandoned its primary duty as a truth-teller and descended into a dishonest smear campaign -- much to the detriment of students.

In this case, the Schempeter quote begs two questions: What are the PFT's lies and what are its ideals? First, the lies:

They begin with the sweeping ideology that forms the basis of their argument against Edison. The union holds that private enterprise and education are entirely antithetical to each other, with union president Ted Kirsch saying that privatization is "tantamount to selling our children for personal, political and corporate gain."

To hear him tell it, you'd think that privatized education is a scary new idea conjured up in some shadowy corporate war room.

The funny thing is that throughout history, private education has been the norm and it is public schooling -- a relatively recent development -- that has been the anomaly. The last time I checked, the private schools across this country were doing pretty darn well.

The lies continue with the union's claims that, because of the profit motive, Edison will choose to cut corners and neglect educating students adequately. There's no better way to disprove this allegation than to look at Edison's results.

From 1995 to 2001, Edison's 136 schools have increased the national percentile ranking of their students on standardized tests an average of five percentile points per year and decreased the failure rate six percentile points per year.

Before Edison took over the worst elementary school in San Francisco in 1999, 2 percent of the children could read at grade level. Today, that number is 35 percent.

In Edison's Albany school -- which was nearly closed by the state before the company was hired -- the passing rate on New York's English Language Arts exam jumped 17 percent in one year.

Success stories like these are repeated throughout the country in some of the most economically depressed neighborhoods whose schools had been failing for decades.

But the PFT won't tell you about these results. And they won't tell you that Edison gets these results with an educational program that would be the envy of many elite private schools.

Not many schools have a 7 1/2-hour school day with one-on-one tutorial time. Not many give every student above the third grade a computer and Internet access in their own homes. Not many begin teaching kids Spanish in kindergarten and use mathematics and reading curricula designed by specialists at Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. Not many provide their high schoolers with Princeton Review SAT preparation.

But Edison schools do -- and do so at or near the same cost of the publicly run system.

Unable to discredit Edison on their curriculum, the PFT is trying to distract the public by claiming that Edison discourages special education students -- who cost more to teach -- from attending their schools. While this is a valid concern, it is based on little if any statistical evidence and, according to Education Week magazine, comes mainly from anecdotal evidence culled from anti-privatization school administrators and teachers.

Now, onto those aforementioned ideals:

While the PFT purports to have the students' best interests in mind, the assistant to the PFT's president revealed a much different motive last week. In moment of lucidity with a Daily Pennsylvanian reporter, Dee Phillips emphasized that the union is against Edison because privatization "means the loss of jobs."

Someone needs to remind teachers that at the end of the day, they are not the ones who are important. The students are. Public schooling wasn't meant to be a job program for underperforming teachers.

What makes the union's fears ironic is that their jobs may not even be in danger. While Edison will have the power to set staffing levels and evaluate teachers, the company has a history of forming strong relationships with teachers unions. Edison CEO Christopher Whittle is very much a pro-union Democrat and was even an advisor to the Clinton administration.

But while he is pro-union, Whittle is also pro-profit. That means that he has to provide the best product possible or -- under the watchful eye of his customers -- his company will lose its contracts. This privatized structure holds Edison accountable for giving kids safe schools, improved test scores and new hope.

Hopefully, the PFT's skewed ideals and resulting lies won't stand in the way. Alex Wong is a senior English major from Wyckoff, N.J.

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