Civil Society/Education/Overview
– Benjamin Franklin
The city and county of Philadelphia is home to an astonishing 115 colleges and universities, 300 public schools, and nearly 100 charter schools. This isn't counting the 60 catholic schools among the 235 private schools within the city limits. Taken altogether, Philadelphia's education infrastructure is some of the most impressive in the nation. It gets high ranks for its college programs and poor ones for its public schools. Its charter schools march in lock step with the strides of most of the city schools, only they do it without providing services to disabled students or those who speak English as a second language. For a city founded in part on the value of a good education, the test scores and outcomes across the whole of Philadelphia's public schools make it clear that is a value that only the affluent are permitted to cherish.
The universities in the region produce breakthrough technologies in medicine and chemical science, provide leading archaeologists to digs across the world, send attorneys to New York law firms and artists and performers to LA Soundstages. Drexel churns out the business leaders of the future, while Temple fills the regions hospitals with residents and nurses.
By gaining access and control in education, you open doors in the halls of government, win the focus of a hungry lens from the media, and tap the libraries and archives filled with stored knowledge and the laboratory resources of hundred million dollar science programs. The competition for grant money is fierce, tenure is hard to come by, and column inches in the journals of academia are bought with the future careers of the people you are beating to publication.