[MaggieL]

Apparently the software here can't cope with nested quoting....let me see if I can deal:

You can call it rabblerousing...I call it a fair and legitimate concern. From a parent and student perspective, their city is selling their educational rights to Edison, a "for-profit" company

Um....it might be "selling their children" if the city was taking money (and delivering children). As it is, the city is *paying* money to subcontract a job they've demonstrated they can't handle, and the kids go home at the end of the day. The "educational rights" that the kids have is a right to attend a public school at public expense...and that will not change. It does look like the "right" of some folks to belly up to the School District trough may get trampled on a bit...and I suspect *they* are the ones printing the "don't let them sell our kids" signs for the next protest.

"The city is selling our children" is a bald-facedly emotional appeal designed by those with an interest in the status quo to generate hostility and anger, which bearing little relationship to what's actually happened. The city has run the school system into the ground, and then constantly run to the state for more money to throw at the problems--if indeed that's where the money was actually thrown; I rather suspect it wasn't. Again, read TUG.

If the city paid to bring in private trash haulers, would you accuse the city of "selling your trash"?

At the same time, "the proper way" to discipline children has dramatically changed. You give your child an ass-whipping now, and you're likely to receive a visit from your local child protection agency.

You're saying there's a discipline problem because the kids haven't been beaten? My parents never whipped my ass, and I never whipped my children's asses. We all seem to have turned out OK. It is indeed *difficult* to raise responsible, well-behaved kids; it requires patience and persistance to inspire respect in a child...the ability to indulge in "ass-whipping" without interference from a social agency isn't required. Furthermore, I suspect the most disruptive kids in the school system *have* been beaten, to no good end. "The proper way to discipline children" hasn't changed; it never involved physical abuse.

"Dramatic social change" over the time period in question? I'll tell you what the most dramatic change was: the change to the home rule charter where the City took over appointing the school board and the operation of the school district in 1965. The school boards elsewhere in the state are elected officials, not political appointees.

This image of children and parents held hostage doesn't fly for me either--no one has had a gun held to their head and been forced to become parents, or been forbidden to leave the city. This change may actually *improve* education in Philadelphia; for the first time there will be an entity that could actually be held accountable for results.

I'll be interested to see what Edison is allowed to do with the most disruptive students, though...they're bad for the bottom line.