Corporate Support for Philadelphia Public Schools

Abstract

Yogi Berra fans will instantly recall one of his most famous malapropisms: “When you get to the fork in the road, take it.”

For corporate support of Philadelphia public schools, the fork in the road came at the end of David Hornbeck’s tenure as superintendent of schools in 2000.  A combination of factors led to a parting of the ways between the schools and the organized corporate elite and, while it hasn’t stopped corporate support on an ad hoc basis, they have been at arm’s length for more than a decade.

Individual programs and partnerships have produced strong results since the Hornbeck era. Programs run by the Philadelphia High Schools Academies and the Philadelphia Education Fund, often with hundreds of thousands of dollars of corporate support and good intentions, have endured. The list of corporate donors to public education in Philadelphia includes the likes of Sun, IBM, GSK, Lincoln Financial, PNC, Wachovia–Wells Fargo and Bank of America. At the moment, my own Citi Foundation and the Ace Foundation are partners in the ambitious Philadelphia Post Secondary Success Program—a five-year effort to create a college-going culture in four public high schools, with hopes of replicating their successes district-wide.