ABSTRACT

Over the past few years, the Philadelphia school district has been under siege from the blight of poverty to threats of take-over. Under-resourced and abandoned by state and federal monies, the school district has hobbled along. Then in December 2001, the state of Pennsylvania seized control of the city’s schools and practically put them on the auction block. Yet, the state had no intention of running the schools. They are following the Bush administration’s embrace of proposals to privatize education and open public schools to the market. The state had plans to sell off the management of schools to the highest bidder. In an unambiguous transfer of public monies to private hands, the state replaces the management and organization of public institutions like schools, hospitals, and even prisons with the ever-encompassing neoliberal model of corporate management. The case of the Philadelphia schools is another example of public institutions under attack.