A Strategic Plan for Pittsburgh (Jefferson: health insurance, go bankrupt, public schools)
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The fountain restoration is coming...probably within the next two years. It's part of the next phase of the Commons restoration being spearheaded by: Allegheny Commons
They're apparently more than halfway to the fundraising goal which will extend the improvements made along Cedar over to Federal Street. Part of that project includes the restoration of the fountain in front of AGH.
The third phase will contemplate improvements to the Lake Elizabeth area and a new pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks.
good to hear, my original point was that putting money into these projects increases the desirability of living in the city. If the city simply matches private donations like they did with market square, all thebetter use of scarce dollars. you don't need massive new sums from new taxes to improve QOL...and sometimes good old fashioned park improvements are better than massive redevelopment projects. one place I'd make an exception is addressing the old mall but perhaps there's a way to cut federal street through the building as a pedestrian walkway without demolition.
Duquesne is a shrinking city, it wouldn't be the first school district to merge or provide for their students to attend school in a neighboring district. This has been going on for a hundred years. Indiana Township, where my mother grew up, didn't have a high school so she went to Etna and my uncles went to Connelly in Pittsburgh.
There are solutions, there always have been solutions.
Maybe it's time to rethink education. There's a big push for MOOCs such as Coursera. Off-load some of that to internet instruction. I don't think schools should go away because they do have a societal benefit. After all we are social beings. But a little competition and infusion of efficient teaching would help. Pittsburgh has a good clustering of universities to help work something out. CMU would be great on the technical end.
No doubt that institutions left in the steel industry's wake have been beneficial. Certainly helped keep Pittsburgh afloat after steel's collapse. But growth has been pretty slow. I'd say Atlanta is making greater IT strides. GM will be opening a software development unit in Atlanta and that alone will hire 1,000. I'd prefer Google over GM but GM will providing more well paying jobs.
Fracking however might have a much bigger economic impact and bring in a lot of money with more skyscrapers rather than refurbishing an old factory building. And we're talking about an industry in the trillions of dollars. Pittsburgh will want to get a good chunk of that. And it could be more of an significant renaissance than before.
And if Pittsburgh isn't careful, a lot of it might pass it by.
Yes. It isn't very well run. Many of the cheaper districts aren't well run either, but they get away with it because of fewer legacy costs
Absolutely.
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Originally Posted by Moby Hick
and because it also takes fewer resources to educate somebody with support at home.
Less clear.
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Originally Posted by pman
I guess the point would be a shift to more local control, that could also be accomplished by giving principles more leeway. I'm not expert on schools but there are any number of incremental improvements, there is no magic bullet.
IMHO Pittsburgh going over to the tracking system, where the top third of elementary school students get automatically slotted into magnets at grade 6, would help a great deal in keeping middle-class parents involved in the school system. It would also result in the magnet system being hugely disproportionately white compared to the district as a whole however. NYC has had the same issues, with the top magnet schools becoming essentially exclusively Asian/White, despite a mainly Black/Latino public school population overall.
No doubt that institutions left in the steel industry's wake have been beneficial. Certainly helped keep Pittsburgh afloat after steel's collapse. But growth has been pretty slow. I'd say Atlanta is making greater IT strides. GM will be opening a software development unit in Atlanta and that alone will hire 1,000. I'd prefer Google over GM but GM will providing more well paying jobs.
Fracking however might have a much bigger economic impact and bring in a lot of money with more skyscrapers rather than refurbishing an old factory building. And we're talking about an industry in the trillions of dollars. Pittsburgh will want to get a good chunk of that. And it could be more of an significant renaissance than before.
And if Pittsburgh isn't careful, a lot of it might pass it by. Is Illinois the Next Fracking Center? | Fox Business Video
actually, I'd say it's a major driver in Pittsburgh's relevance rather than a minor one and the difference between growth and decline. not every city has one of the best It programs in the country. I can't say as I'm able to compare IT in the burgh and IT in atlanta.
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In addition to a steady flow of high-tech graduates coming out of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the city's tech sector is bucking national trends for investment deals and dollars. In 2012, the number of venture capital deals completed in the region rose 54 percent and investment dollars rose from $326.9 million in 2011 to $329.1 million last year. In February, the city was touted as one of the top 15 cities for tech startup investment by Mashable.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/...#ixzz2VYevbY8R
as for fracking, PA is natural gas while the others are oil so I don't know that Pittsburgh is going to lose anything to IL in that sense. I think the reason growth is so slow is that it lacks the population growth that altanta has, among other things. there's nothing wrong with refurbishing old factory buildings and nothing inherently better about new skyscrapers. places are where they are, they can't move themselves, they can only make due with the best they have. fwiw, I believe a good chunk of money is set aside in the proposed transportation funding to convert transit agencies to natural gas. Corbett is dumping billions into trying to get a cracker built to keep more of the product in PA rather than down on the gulf coast.
I just don't see how a complete state takeover of the public schools could help anything
Me, neither. Pennsylvania is a large state, geographically as well as population-wise. It would take a huge bureaucracy to run such a system.
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Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam
No one is being denied an education.
Duquesne is a shrinking city, it wouldn't be the first school district to merge or provide for their students to attend school in a neighboring district. This has been going on for a hundred years. Indiana Township, where my mother grew up, didn't have a high school so she went to Etna and my uncles went to Connelly in Pittsburgh.
There are solutions, there always have been solutions.
When I was a kid in the old Highland Suburban district in Beaver County, now part of Blackhawk, Highland did not have a high school. They paid our tuition to go to the high school of our choice. Most kids "chose" Beaver Falls HS, in part for convenience (it was the closest and the only one the district provided transportation to if you lived far enough away) and in part b/c a lot of our parents had gone there. (There were teachers there who were teaching when my father, as well as other kids' parents went there.) This was not advantageous to Beaver Falls, because they said they never knew how many students from HSSD were going to arrive every year which I find doubtful as this had been going on for forever and they would certainly have statistics. What I do find to be a valid complaint is that BFHS was overcrowded and the taxpayers of that district had to pay to build additions, etc, when they never knew how long this would go on before Highland built their own HS. Blackhawk HS opened in the early 70s, sadly, the collapse of the steel industry has made both schools much smaller than they were at that time.
Regardless, states which have normalized funding between districts to some degree have variable outcomes. In California, it resulted in all public schools decreasing in quality, as many voters decided it was better to just have poorly-funded public education statewide, and then send their own kids to private school. Hawaii actually has all its schools run by a statewide department of education, and similarly everyone with money just seems to abandon the public school system.
That's not to say I don't think there might be other pluses to merging districts. Certainly it should cut down on overhead costs, for example. But there's no strong relation between the amount of money a district spends and the educational outcomes. There's high-scoring school districts which are expensive, and ones which are cheap. Similarly, there's low-scoring ones which are expensive and cheap.
This might be a better idea, but I don't see what it would achieve. I suppose it would stop people from minority-heavy schools bidding into open slots at Colfax, which would result in test scores there improving, and more people liking the local school options. But it wouldn't do anything, for example, to get white students back into the schools in the Upper East End or the Northside.
Colorado has state equalization; the public schools are not being abandoned and most districts are considered "good" to very good, at least here in the metro area. There are even some "good" schools in the DPS. I should point out that "equalization" here does not mean every district gets the same per-pupil amount. There's a complicated formula that gives more money to districts with more poor students, very small districts, rural districts with big transportation budgets, etc. We still have individual districts, but districts here are much larger than in PA; either the result of years of consolidation, or in the case of some county districts, dating back to when these counties (Douglas and Jefferson in the metro) were primarily rural. While I agree you can't "throw money at the schools", I think there is plenty of evidence that more resources, appropriately used, are helpful.
Maybe it's time to rethink education. There's a big push for MOOCs such as Coursera. Off-load some of that to internet instruction. I don't think schools should go away because they do have a societal benefit. After all we are social beings. But a little competition and infusion of efficient teaching would help. Pittsburgh has a good clustering of universities to help work something out. CMU would be great on the technical end.
I have been studying education for the League of Women Voters for the past 25 years. I have to say upfront here I'm speaking for myself, not the League (League requirement before spouting off!), but to show I do have some idea of what I'm talking about. A couple of points in response to this post:
1. Computerizaton/high tech has not lived up to its expectations in education. Perhaps the expectations were/are at fault. "Efficient" teaching is probably an oxymoron. It's not a process lending itself to efficiency, like making widgets.
2. My experience living in a district that has a large, research university is that the university people are not terribly interested in K-12 education, nor particularly knowledgeable about it, save for the education departments.
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Originally Posted by eschaton
Absolutely.
Less clear.
IMHO Pittsburgh going over to the tracking system, where the top third of elementary school students get automatically slotted into magnets at grade 6, would help a great deal in keeping middle-class parents involved in the school system. It would also result in the magnet system being hugely disproportionately white compared to the district as a whole however. NYC has had the same issues, with the top magnet schools becoming essentially exclusively Asian/White, despite a mainly Black/Latino public school population overall.
I am totally opposed to tracking kids at such a young age. 6th grade is 11-12 years old. Some kids are "late bloomers". Give these kids a chance!
I am totally opposed to tracking kids at such a young age. 6th grade is 11-12 years old. Some kids are "late bloomers". Give these kids a chance!
I didn't say I supported it. I know people in Boston (which utilizes school choice) who have been stung because they have a "B student" who has just not been quite good enough to get out of the neighborhood schools.
However, if you could guarantee concerned, middle-class parents a slot in a school full of other high-performers, I do think you'd keep a lot more of this group within the city, for better or worse.
to your point katiana, there's really no substitute for good teachers, good management (principals, administrators, etc). schools are political and politicians always look for magic bullets (but most often buy snake oil). get rid of seniority, get rid of pensions, make it easier to fire teachers, and pay them and principals more upfront. in america even good suburban districts the kids don't learn at a competitive level with the rest of the developed world. stop worrying about soclializing kids and teach them to read, write, math and science.
get rid of seniority, get rid of pensions, make it easier to fire teachers, and pay them and principals more upfront.
Get rid of pensions? You just need to fund them adequately instead of punting the costs down the road or stupidly increasing the benefits just because the stock market booms for a few years. Getting rid of them is going to make things much worse.
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