Chalkbeat

Why switching Philadelphia to an elected school board would be very complicated

2026-06-03T20:42:06+00:00

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Furious over the Philadelphia Board of Education’s vote to close several schools, City Council Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas wants to explore changing the board from one appointed by the mayor to one that’s elected.

But doing so would be an immensely complicated and politically daunting process. State lawmakers would need to pass legislation that the governor would need to sign. The mayor would need to give up the power of appointing board members, and voters would have to approve this change.

And switching to an elected board could also strip the City Council of much of its influence over the district. That’s because those and other legal changes could ultimately grant the school board major authority it now lacks: the power to tax.

The proposal from Thomas follows a citywide uproar over the district’s decision to close 17 schools, which he vehemently opposed; he’s promised to sue to halt the closures, although no such suit has materialized so far.

His push to overhaul how school board members are selected highlights longstanding conflicts between different political power centers in the city. It also channels concerns that unlike for every other school district in the state, Philadelphia residents lack direct representation when the board makes significant decisions about spending, charter school expansion, curriculum mandates, desegregation initiatives, and more.

In the current setup, the school board members and the superintendent must go every year to the mayor and council to push for a share of city taxes sufficient to help the district meet the needs of its students, after many years of what a court deemed were inadequate levels of state funding that violated the Pennsylvania Constitution.

That forces board members and district leaders into an annual tussle with the council over the budget. What’s made that even more stressful is the district’s longstanding structural deficit. For 2026-27, the board just adopted a $4.6 billion budget with $225 million in cuts as it attempts to cope with a projected shortfall of $300 million.

All that means if the school board gained its own taxing power and could rely less on city government, it “would be a huge structural shift in how the city and the school district operates,” said Christopher McGinley, a former Philadelphia school board member who also served as superintendent in two suburban districts with elected boards.

It’s unclear what if anything would convince city officials to relinquish their current power over school funding and school board members. Thomas said last month while he is in favor of an elected school board, he does not support giving it taxation power.

Mayor Cherelle Parker picked all nine current board members at the start of her term. Nominees are first vetted by an Education Nominating Panel, which is also appointed by the mayor. They are then subject to the “advice and consent” of the City Council. (Board member Joyce Wilkerson was appointed by Parker but never got the council’s approval, and now serves as a “holdover” member, which has caused additional controversy.)

Parker’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

An elected school board might spawn new political problems in Philadelphia even if it eases current ones. Still, some believe that the existing process is inadequate for dealing with the district’s myriad challenges.

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a longtime critic of the board, pointed out that at neighborhood hearings on the proposed school closures, nearly every speaker opposed them, to no avail. To her, an elected Philadelphia school board is also an issue of fairness.

“Why should every other school district in Pennsylvania have an elected board and Philadelphia does not?” she said

Pennsylvania school boards have taxing power — except Philly’s

The most direct influence an elected and not appointed board could have on schools in the city would be the power to raise money through taxation.

In all the state’s other 500 school districts, the elected boards of education levy school taxes, while municipal and county governments raise taxes for other needs such as infrastructure and social services. The educational and civic governing bodies are separate entities with their own taxing power, geographic boundaries, and sources of revenue. For instance, Montgomery County has 62 municipalities and 22 school districts.

Shifting from an appointed to an elected school board by itself would not automatically include the power to tax. To give an elected school board taxation power would require a vote by the state legislature and amendments to the state school code. It would also require voters to approve changes to the 1965 education section of the city’s Home Rule Charter.

But unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia is its own county as well as its own school district. That means even if an elected school board were granted the power to tax by state government and voters, it would lead to the City Council and Board of Education drawing on the same sources of tax revenue.

Richard Feder, the former chief of legislation in the city law department, said all of those changes would mean “cutting City Council out of the process” of funding schools, which would likely lead to the kind of staunch opposition from the council that Thomas has already expressed.

Besides the considerable political problems, Feder said he doesn’t think giving an elected board taxation power would be a good idea fiscally.

“I spent my career fighting for more school funding,” Feder said, “but we shouldn’t have two competing taxing bodies fighting over the same limited tax base.”

Susan Gobreski, the former head of the advocacy group Education Voters PA, said Philadelphians already elect the officials who provide the funding for schools. The council “is not a single-issue body” like the school board and can put all the city’s needs into perspective, she said.

At the same time, she said, the feeling that the board is accountable to no one is real. Even if an elected board ended up lacking taxation power, Gobreski said allowing the public to pick its members would still be worthwhile so voters could feel they had a say in choosing who to hold accountable for decisions around education policy.

Electing school board members could open Pandora’s box

But there’d be one more complication about a change to an elected board. Feder said to meet state requirements, voters in Philadelphia would have to approve a change to the city charter to allow for a partisan election. Or state voters would have to approve an amendment to the school code allowing Philadelphia to hold a nonpartisan election.

McGinley, who served on the School Reform Commission that previously ran Philly schools and was superintendent in Lower Merion and Cheltenham, worries that electing school board members would open a political Pandora’s box by giving more leverage to interest groups “that would play their cards” on various issues.

But Elaine Simon, a retired urban studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has co-authored an upcoming book on the last wave of school closures in 2013, said an elected board, especially one with regional representatives, would be more sensitive to the needs of different areas in the city.

“Now, the school board members are not representing a neighborhood,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, Board of Education President Reginald Streater is skeptical of what benefits Philadelphia would gain by electing its school board members.

He said more time should elapse before contemplating another major upheaval of district governance. It only recently emerged from an even less democratic period when a state commission ran city schools from 2001 to 2018 before returning control to a local school board.

He pointed out that the state is moving toward school funding adequacy after a historic Commonwealth Court decision, and that in Philadelphia measures including test scores, attendance rates, and dropout rates are improving.

Conditions “are getting better … why change this now?” he said.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia bureau chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this article.

Philadelphia’s small themed high schools under threat as district plans to close, consolidate buildings

2026-03-06T20:55:20+00:00

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Creating small, themed high schools was once a key component of Philadelphia’s education reform strategy.

The intent behind schools like Paul Robeson, Lankenau, Motivation High, Building 21, and the U School was to offer students more intimate settings, the chance to form close relationships with teachers, and the opportunity for a very different kind of learning experience than what large, comprehensive high schools provided.

Now, however, most of these schools face uncertain futures under the district’s facilities plan, which would close 18 schools and is now being considered by the Board of Education.

Superintendent Tony Watlington’s plan would move most of the small schools into nearby neighborhood high schools and either close them entirely while creating a dedicated program in the larger school, or have them maintain a separate identity in the building with their own principal and staff —the so-called co-location strategy.

“We can’t keep all the small boutique high schools and the neighborhood high schools,” Watlington told the City Council at an early February hearing on his plan. “We don’t have the resources to do all of it.”

In comments to the Board of Education last week, he repeated his conviction that small schools can exacerbate inequality of opportunity. “There is too much disparity in this city,” he said. “What we want to do is level the playing field.”

Research attempting to quantify the benefits of small high schools is limited Generally, the smaller schools have higher attendance and graduation rates, with students more likely to pursue — if not finish — a postsecondary degree.

“Kids have a higher sense of agency and graduate with a deeper understanding of who they are, and what they want” in life, said Simon Hauger, founder of The Workshop School.

And parents and students love them, saying in surveys that they feel safer in these schools and “part of a real community,” Hauger said. Under Watlington’s plan, Workshop would eventually move into Overbrook High School.

In the superintendent’s vision, neighborhood high schools would establish or strengthen a multitude of different programs that could satisfy the needs of all students, a model that already exists at schools like Northeast High. While he expressed some praise for small schools to the City Council, he said in most cases they lack opportunities for students to take Advanced Placement courses, access robust art and music programs, and participate in sports.

Nevertheless, most City Council members have criticized the plan. And members of the public complained bitterly at neighborhood meetings.

Students from Motivation High, which Watlington originally wanted to move into Bartram, and Parkway Northwest, which is slated to become an honors program at Martin Luther King, have been particularly vocal in opposition.

Students at Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice walked out of their classrooms last month to protest their school's proposed closure.

“The school may be small, but small means great,” said Samantha Brumfield, the home and school association president at Paul Robeson High School.

That type of criticism may have had some impact. Initially, Watlington proposed closing Robeson and making it an honors program within Sayre High School. After hearing the public’s dismay, he changed the plan and now proposes combining Motivation High and Robeson into one building. And after an outcry from students and parents at Lankenau High, which has an environmental focus, he changed his recommendation to move these students into W.B. Saul High of Agricultural Sciences rather than to Roxborough. That, however, has not mollified the critics.

Supporters of the small high schools say they were established for a reason that’s still relevant.

“What I love about Paul Robeson is that we teach children to build their own brand,” said Elana Evans, Robeson’s special education compliance manager. Due to the close relationships, teachers can help students figure out “who do you want to be,” and “help you get there.”

But Board of Education President Reginald Streater, a graduate of Germantown High School — a historic neighborhood school that closed in 2013 along with 23 others in the district’s last wave of downsizing — clearly agreed with Watlington when he told the City Council that maintaining so many small high schools in the district is “unsustainable.”

Philadelphia’s small high schools took decades to develop

The history of high schools in Philadelphia is complex. It was fueled by educators’ desire to improve student experiences. But race was also a factor as neighborhood demographics rapidly changed and student enrollment in many schools grew more diverse.

These small high schools were established in Philadelphia in several waves, starting in the 1960s and taking off in the early 2000s under former superintendent Paul Vallas.

Until the 1960s, the vast majority of students in the public system went to neighborhood high schools, although three vocational schools opened in the 1920s and 1930s to teach students trades: Bok, Mastbaum and Dobbins. Two prestigious magnets for the top students, Central High for boys and the Philadelphia High School for Girls, both opened in the 19^th century.

Some of the neighborhood schools, like Olney and Bartram, in their heyday had an enrollment of 4,000 or 5,000 students. They were, for the most part, divided into several distinct “ability” tracks that often served to keep classes largely segregated even as the overall school enrollment became multiracial.

Former mayor Wilson Goode, who is Black and went to Bartram, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2004 that despite his desire to be in academic classes, his counselor told him he was better suited to an “industrial arts” program within the school. He had to persist to be put into the academic, college-bound track, he said — and even then, despite making the honor roll, his counselor discouraged him from applying to college.

A key moment was in 1963, when the city was undergoing rapid demographic change. That year, district leaders created so-called Motivation programs to handpick what they termed promising but average students in the neighborhood schools and prepare them for college. A frequent effect of this, unintended or not, was to isolate within the program a school’s dwindling number of white students.

In a facilities plan the district released in January, officials proposed closing Southwest Philadelphia's Motivation High School. But now, the plan calls for keeping Motivation High open and combining it with Paul Robeson High School.

What is now Motivation High School was originally the Motivation program at Bartram High. What became Lankenau High School was once the Motivation program at Germantown High School.

Then in 1967, educators created the Parkway program, which they called a “school without walls.” Through Parkway, students could get academic credit for real-world experiences rather than spending most of their time in traditional classrooms.

They also had more control over their learning, creating their own educational plans, working in real jobs, and taking advantage of museums and other cultural and historical resources.

Eventually, three Parkway programs opened — Parkway Center City, Parkway West, and Parkway Northwest. Over the years their education approach became much more traditional, if theme-focused: Parkway Northwest, in Mount Airy, organized around peace and justice studies, for instance. If Watlington’s plan is approved, only the original Parkway will remain; Parkway West would move into Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, and Parkway Northwest into Martin Luther King.

Parkway Northwest focuses on peace and social justice studies. Students and teachers say they worry it will be hard to keep that focus if they are merged into a larger building.

The district’s next wave of new high school creation, in the 1970s, came in response to a 1968 desegregation lawsuit. Philadelphia opened several themed special admissions schools with strict requirements, including the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as CAPA, and Carver High School of Engineering & Science. Officials anticipated that these schools would attract a racially diverse student body, which for the most part they did.

The small schools that opened later, starting in the 1980s, are known as “citywide admissions” schools. They also required students to apply, although their standards are more relaxed.

Changes were taking place in large neighborhood high schools too. Before the small schools movement took off, the district attempted to provide more personalized learning for students by investing heavily in “small learning communities” that were autonomous, offered their own courses, and had distinct enrollment, among other features.

But these communities were also designed to counteract the strict ability tracking that was still a feature in neighborhood high schools.

Watlington made key change at Philadelphia’s small schools

Especially in the smaller schools that Watlington called “boutique,” principals historically were able to shape their incoming classes as they saw fit and admit students who may have otherwise fallen short based simply on their grades, attendance and test scores.

However, in a sign of things to come, Watlington and the board put an end to that discretion in 2022, setting up a system that largely removed human judgement and was instead based on an algorithm they said was more fair and equitable. That system, however, made it harder for some schools to fill their spots.

“The new enrollment system was the beginning of the end for these citywide schools,” said one school leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Everybody’s enrollment for the most part has declined in these schools … there’s no longer any flexibility.” For instance, Motivation’s enrollment dropped from 331 in 2022-23 to 151 this school year.

Others involved in the founding and development of these schools said that even co-location with a larger school will have an impact. And they say that uncertainty about the schools’ future is likely to affect enrollment even more.

Students at Philadelphia's Lankenau Environmental High School say their school's campus, near a nature center and urban garden, make the school special. The district wants to close Lankenau and merge it into Roxborough High School as an honors program.

Joshua Kleinman has worked at the U School, which uses a project-based learning model, since its inception in 2014. But he prefers to see an upside in Watlington’s plan, saying that many of the new small schools have long struggled with inadequate and even inappropriate facilities.

U School leaders have “fiercely advocated for a facility we deserve since opening our doors,” Kleinman said. If Watlington’s $2.8 billion plan led to modernized and specialized school facilities, “it would be one of the most ambitious in the school district’s history.”

But Thomas Gaffey, who helped establish Building 21 in 2014 to help all students “develop their passion” in a small, supportive setting, is more pessimistic.

“You can’t take a program like Parkway and put it within a big comprehensive high school,” he said, “and expect it to stay the same.”

For Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, a renewed focus on civics instruction

2025-07-23T18:52:50+00:00

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Martin Luther King High School social studies teacher Nadirah O’Connor said her students have a lot of questions.

They want to know why their neighborhood is impoverished. Why so many guns are on the street. Why “every five minutes” they are going to a funeral.

And why in nearby wealthier and whiter neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill, there seems to be none of that.

There are no easy answers, but O’Connor tries to unpack these issues in her civics classes, where students learn about the roles of local, state, and federal governments and the responsibility of citizenship.

In time for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence next year, both the Commonwealth and the school district are taking steps to make sure students graduate high school understanding how the government works and the responsibilities of active citizenship.

The state has embarked on a bipartisan effort to provide guidelines and standards for civics instruction, which is now left up to individual districts. At the same time, Philadelphia is completing a major revision of its civics curriculum, which is required for graduation.

“We don’t even have an explicit civics content course until senior year,” said Ismael Jimenez, the district’s director of social studies. “And it has not been updated in two decades.”

Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the district’s chief of curriculum and instruction, said the goal is to help students “think critically and act responsibly” when it comes to public affairs and to inspire them to participate in civic life.

On the state level, two former members of Congress, Democrat Joe Hoeffel of Philadelphia and Republican Jim Gerlach who represented parts of Chester and Berks counties, have formed a coalition of educators and good-government groups to focus on the quality of civics instruction across the Commonwealth.

The coalition is now working with districts and educators to offer guidelines and resources for curriculum development and “elevate the importance of this subject statewide,” according to Justin Villere, director of civic education for the Committee of Seventy, the good government group that serves as the fiscal agent of the coalition.

The state and district initiatives are independent of each other, but both come as the Trump administration is attempting to ban anything that could be construed as DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — and the nation’s political polarization is heightening tensions about politics in the classroom.

Beyond the DEI ban, the Trump administration is also actively seeking to redirect civics instruction away from what it has termed “woke priorities” such as the rights of immigrant and transgender Americans to “the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Not lost on either the city or state officials is that in one of the most important swing states in the nation, students can graduate high school without instruction on how the government works and the importance of voting. In Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, just over half of 18-year-olds were registered to vote, at just under 54% in 2024. By comparison, nearly 74% of the voting-age population as a whole was registered to vote in 2024. Laura Brill, founder of the nonprofit voting advocacy group The Civics Center, cautioned that 18-year-olds are less likely to register in years in which there is not a presidential election.

Pennsylvania civics instruction lacks ‘teeth’

Pennsylvania students have been required to pass a civics test in order to graduate since the General Assembly passed Act 35 in 2018. But, bowing to local control, the state has never specified what the test should include or even whether districts must offer a civics course.

As a result, civics instruction varies widely; Gerlach said a goal of the coalition is to set guidelines, provide more resources for teachers, and develop more programming.

“There’s just not a lot of teeth to [Act 35],” said Villere. Beyond having to send reports to the Pennsylvania Department of Education on what percentage of their students passed the test, the law “doesn’t say what it is assessing, what students need to do to pass, or what are the goals” of civics instruction, he said.

The website, PACivics.org, offers a limited toolkit for teachers, a 2021 report by the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute ranked Pennsylvania near the bottom among states in civics instruction, giving it an F “for the quality, rigor and organization of civics and US history standards.”

Still, little attention was paid until now. “This is a really important conversation,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said when Hoeffel and Gerlach announced formation of the coalition. “The central thing is to focus on teaching our students more about civics and more about how to be discerning about what they read and what they take in on social media.”

That’s part of what Philadelphia’s curriculum update aims to do — although some City Council members, teachers, and civic groups, including Villere’s Committee of Seventy, were disappointed that the Board of Education passed a fiscal 2026 budget that failed to include full funding to pay teachers for continuing to work on the revision or to maintain a “voter champions” program that pays a staffers in high each schools to promote student voter registration.

“District teachers are developing locally relevant, high-quality civics instruction at a fraction of typical costs, yet this funding keeps getting interrupted,” they said in a June letter to Superintendent Tony Watlington and school board members.

“I don’t see this board not supporting civics education,” said board President Reginald Streater in an interview. He noted there was “a lot going on” at the time the budget was voted on, including consideration of charter nonrenewals and dealing with a federal investigation of the district’s handling of asbestos removal in schools. The funds for the civics rewrite and the student registration effort was a tiny piece of the $4.6 billion budget.

Streater cited a 2019 board resolution supporting robust civics instruction and declaring a “student voter registration day” every September. He said, if necessary, it might be possible to find another revenue source to make sure the civics work is completed.

“This board supports the holistic education of students and cares deeply about student civic engagement,” he said.

‘We don’t have to cower from teaching the truth’

Historically — and not just in Philadelphia — complaints that teachers used civics classes to promote a political agenda has tamped down educators’ focus on the subject, a fear that has come to fruition under Trump.

“I think that teachers do have to be careful not to play into that idea that we’re indoctrinating students, because we’re not,” said Central High School social studies teacher Tom Quinn, who also has been involved in the curriculum rewrite. “We’re teaching students how to understand the whole field of government and politics.

“But,” he acknowledges, “there’s lots of controversy in that.”

Central High School social studies teacher Tom Quinn said some students come into ninth grade unaware that there are three branches of government.

When Quinn founded the voter registration effort PA Youth Vote in 2018, the state Republican chair accused him of student indoctrination.

“We can’t let fear dictate what we do and don’t teach,” Quinn said. “Of course we have to be nonpartisan, but we don’t have to cower from teaching the truth if it’s what’s happening in the world.”

Plus, he said, students need guidance on how to “navigate going into adulthood as a person of color, a LGBTQ person, as a white person,” adding: “Understanding privilege and oppression doesn’t mean you have to be saddled with guilt.”

Even at Central, one of the most selective schools in the city, some students come into ninth grade not knowledgeable about the three branches of government, Quinn said. But beyond making sure they understand the balance of powers, civics education is about helping students learn how to use government — state, local, and federal — to benefit their lives, he said.

“We’re working on getting away from textbook-type instruction and more towards using authentic materials,” Quinn said. “We want to teach them how to do government.”

Many textbooks say virtually nothing about the state and local level, Quinn said, though they have a bigger impact on students’ day-to-day lives through such policies as education funding and age minimums for driving, for instance.

“Especially for students who come from disempowered, under-resourced communities, it is our responsibility to give them tools to advocate for themselves and give them political efficacy,” Quinn said. “It’s a huge responsibility, and teaching civics out of a textbook is not doing it justice.”

Kamera Osborne, a Central senior, said Quinn’s civics course opened her eyes.

“As a Black American, I want to be educated on what my people are going through,” she said.

Kamera Osborne, a student at Central High School in Philadelphia.

While Philadelphia’s required African American history course is valuable, “it was my civics class that gave me the understanding of why things are the way they are,” Osborne said.

For instance, explaining the difference between de jure — by law — and de facto — by circumstance — helped her understand how personal decisions of where to live have resulted in school segregation in states like Pennsylvania today that rivals conditions in the South prior to 1954. That’s when the U.S Supreme Court outlawed de jure segregation in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

For his students, the big issues are “gun violence, mental health, school funding, drugs and addiction,” Quinn said. Students use a “research or inquiry process” to explore those topics and policies to address them.

In a recent class, he said, some students researched approaches to reducing gun violence, such as registries, red flag laws, and legislation aimed at straw purchasing. They studied the role of federal agencies including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and which Congressional committees deal with gun issues.

Often they send letters to officials and news organizations on such topics as the murder in 2022 of a Saul High School student, the effect of housing vouchers on families’ ability to maintain their homes, and legislation that would curtail the rights of transgender people.

O’Connor, the social studies teacher at King, said that when students get to her class, “they might know the U.S. is a democracy, but they are missing things. Like, where did those ideas come from? They know they are supposed to vote, but they don’t all believe that voting is important.”

While Quinn and O’Connor are concerned that attention to civics education could run afoul of the Trump administration, they say the administration’s anti-DEI agenda makes it even more important for them to make sure that students understand how government works and are well-versed in their legal rights and responsibilities.

What she wants students to understand, O’Connor said, is: “If I don’t activate my voice, nothing gets done.”

This story has been updated with a comment from Laura Brill of The Civics Center.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated which county Republican Jim Gerlach represents.

Dale Mezzacappa is a former senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia and also reported on K-12 schools and early childhood education for The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.

Philly Head Start teacher reflects on her first year leading a classroom: ‘I made a great decision.’

2025-06-09T19:29:17+00:00

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Throughout the 2024-25 school year, Chalkbeat Philadelphia is following a new teacher, Kahn-Tineta Smith, as she adapts to the joys and challenges of working in the city school district. This is the third and final check-in we hope will shine a light on the state of the Philadelphia teaching workforce. Read the first entry here, and the second entry here.

The soft voice piped up from the edge of the gaggle of preschoolers on the rug.

“Green and white,” said Jazzlyn. A simple observation, but also a milestone.

The 4-year-old in Kahn-Tineta Smith’s Head Start classroom was nonverbal when school started in September. As the school year neared its end, Jazzlyn is saying words and she knows her colors, accurately describing a picture of several plants and herbs that Smith had projected onto the whiteboard.

“And she’s more social,” Smith said. “This helps her pick up more skills from her peers.”

Smith, 53, is wrapping up her first year as a Head Start teacher at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in North Philadelphia. She reached that point after raising her three children and working for two decades as a classroom aide. She accomplished this through the Para Pathway program, a collaboration between the district and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers that helps paraprofessionals become certified teachers by paying for associate and bachelor’s degrees.

Chalkbeat has been following Smith during her first year as a Philly teacher. It was a learning experience for her as well as for the children. Having Jazzlyn speak and participate in class has been among her proudest moments, but as with any new teacher, there have been difficult moments in her journey too. She has had to adjust to dealing with as many as 20 children at a time – all with their own needs, their own skills, their own styles of interacting with others.

But over the course of the year, she also “became more confident to trust my instincts.”

She remembers a day that she became frustrated when she was teaching the children their letters, and one of her students just wasn’t catching on. But then she realized that the child was struggling with literacy. She pulled her aside for individual reading sessions, talked to her parents, and started the process of evaluation for special education services and applying for a one-on-one aide.

“I learned to be calm, be more patient, be more understanding, and to implement my lesson so that children could understand me. I learned how to talk to them at their level,” she said.

Her biggest challenge, she said, was establishing a classroom routine and balancing the dictates of the curriculum with her own judgment on what would work best for the children, and what they needed at that moment.

Her experience as a mother helped. But parenting is different from being responsible for a room full of other people’s children and launching them on their journey to being students. And her training, including her six weeks as a student teacher in a second grade classroom, didn’t fully prepare her for her day-to-day responsibilities.

Luckily, she said, “organization is my best skill, and that’s what helped me through the year.”

And overall, she’s very pleased with how her inaugural year in the classroom turned out.

“I think I made a great decision,” she said. “I’m glad I went back to school and fulfilled my dream to become a teacher.

Paraprofessional program aims to help ease Philly teacher shortage

Since 2022, 118 paraprofessionals have completed Para Pathway, and 87 are currently teaching in city schools, according to the district. Another 64 people are enrolled.

To underwrite the cost, the district used $2.5 million in federal COVID aid supplemented by $1.7 million in other funds.

The program is meant to help address Philadelphia’s persistent teacher shortage – but that problem can’t be solved by Para Pathway alone. District schools started in September with more than 450 vacancies for teacher positions and have struggled all year to fill them. And while there are more than 2,500 paraprofessionals in the district, a relatively small subset are interested in or suited to becoming teachers.

PFT spokesperson Jane Roh said that the union considers Para Pathway to be part of “a long-term solution for growing the teacher pipeline.” She added that union leaders hope the program continues to get support regardless of what happens with federal funding.

Smith used the funding from Para Pathway to get her certification from Cheyney University. It changed her life. She is thrilled with what she’s accomplished with her first group of 18 students (down from 20 when the school year started) in her colorfully decorated basement classroom.

Among her students, she said, there were no serious behavior problems. Because her classroom has both 3- and 4-year-olds, six or seven of her younger students will be returning next year, and she is looking forward to observing their growth.

Her accomplishments during her first year aren’t limited to her basement space. Smith is proud of how she can help address student needs outside the classroom by recommending them and their families for special services.

“I can communicate with parents more, which I couldn’t do when I was a classroom assistant,” she said.

As happy as Smith is with what she has been able to accomplish, she’s also conscious of what’s going on in national politics, especially plans and actions from Congress and the Trump administration.

Smith is especially concerned about potential reductions to Medicaid and nutrition assistance to low-income families that could impact her children, many of whose families rely on those benefits. As part of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Adrienne Chapman, a health educator from Jefferson Einstein Hospital, visited Smith’s classroom on a recent Monday to talk with her students about proper nutrition.

“We’re afraid people will lose access to healthy foods,” Chapman said.

Smith is also concerned that the federal government could slash aid for students with disabilities and for early childhood programs. Although President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would keep Head Start funding flat in the next fiscal year, the program has been affected by funding delays and the Trump administration’s attempts to cut costs across the federal government.

Another visitor to Smith’s class on that Monday was an occupational therapist from Elwyn Early Learning Services, who came to work with a student with special needs. The little girl doesn’t talk; during story time she goes off by herself instead of gathering on the rug with her classmates.

As the rest of the class participated in story time, the Elwyn therapist helped the girl with her favorite activity, organizing dolls and other manipulatives.

“It’s terrible,” Smith said of possible cuts that would affect her students. “I don’t know why they want to cut things that are important and needed by children and families. These things were in place when I was in high school, when my kids were in high school. Children need early education, and they need special services if they have some type of disability.”

‘My students are learning what I’m teaching’

Regardless, Smith sees to it that her classroom is both under control and full of activity.

She loves even the mundane and messy parts of the job, like her first task on most mornings: distributing the Cheerios and milk from the children’s federally subsidized breakfast and sweeping up the cereal bits that, inevitably, find their way to the floor.

“We don’t use our hands, we use our spoons,” she reminded the children as they eat.

When one child complains “I don’t have no milk,” both Smith and her experienced teacher’s assistant, Anita Parker, are quick to correct her. “I don’t have any milk,” they say.

After the orderly bathroom breaks, Smith gets down to business – having the children sing each of their names, one at a time, to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The exercise helps students demonstrate “phonological awareness, phonics skills and word recognition,” according to the curriculum guidelines.

“‘Kerry, how many syllables in ‘Kerry?’” she asks after they sing and clap.

“Two,” they shout. Same with “Dessiah.” This time the answer is “three.” They clap once for each syllable.

When they have gone through all the names, which have the children swaying and bouncing in their circle on the rug, Smith asks students to describe what they see in the pictures of herbs and plants projected on the whiteboard. She writes down their answers: a tree, flowers, grass, vegetables.

And then came the answer from the usually quiet Jazzlyn: “green and white.”

Moments like these are validating. My greatest satisfaction is knowing that my students are learning what I’m teaching.” I can tell when they are grasping the information and retaining it.”

With her early childhood education degree Smith could teach up to grade 4, and her dream is one day to run a pre-K program or even a K-8 school of her own.

“I’m a natural,” she says with a smile, not bragging but stating the obvious. “I’m stern, and I love them. They see the love and feel the sternness. They know I am only here for them.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a former senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia and reported for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covered K-12 schools and early childhood education.

Graduate of one of America’s largest all-girls public high schools works to revive it

2025-03-27T18:17:24+00:00

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KaTiedra Argro has been on a mission: restore her school’s reputation as a premier Philadelphia educational institution where young women hone their skills, excel as leaders, and find their voices.

The principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls spent last fall visiting 48 elementary and middle schools to recruit students. She went all over the city, from Northeast to Southwest, to sell kids on an historic all-girls school that was founded 13 years before the Civil War.

KaTiedra Argro, principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, has been on a whirlwind recruiting tour to make the case for her school to young women across Philly.

A member of Girls High’s Class of 1999, Argro came to a difficult conclusion. “My takeaway was that nobody knows what the Philadelphia High School for Girls was anymore,” she said.

Girls High is one of the oldest all-girls public high schools in the country and still one of the largest, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of federal data. But the pillar of Philadelphia education is suffering from a “diminishing” brand, Argro said. In the 1980s, the school’s enrollment reportedly reached 2,000 students. Its famous graduates include feminist attorney Gloria Allred, R&B star Jill Scott, and Barbara Harris, the first woman ordained a bishop of the Episcopal Church.

But in just the last two years, the number of students has plunged from 900 to 600; roughly two-thirds of those enrolled are juniors and seniors. And on the most recent state math tests, fewer than 1 in 5 students achieved proficiency.

Social media also delivered a blow to the school’s reputation. In 2023, Girls High’s previous principal denied several students their diplomas during the graduation ceremony for apparently breaking decorum by dancing and celebrating onstage, prompting cheers and laughter from the audience.

The incident spurred indignation and controversial stories nationwide that touched on race and cultural norms. The district subsequently removed that principal from her post.

With these challenges top of mind, Argro — who took over as principal last year — has been hard at work through a process she compared to speed dating.

During her whirlwind tour of three schools a day, she gave out T-shirts and magnets, and left students a pamphlet and a video “showing all the great things happening” at Girls High, like the clubs, the sports, the support groups, and the awards students win. She personally helped students fill out applications — even to schools besides Girls High, in the spirit of the school’s honor code emphasizing “service to others.”

It seems her efforts have paid off. Based on responses to admissions offers in the high school selection process, 275 students said they would attend Girls High next year, which would increase its enrollment to 670, or a roughly 12% increase from this year.

Argro invited families to an “acceptance day” event on March 22, and most came. “I don’t want them to change their minds over the summer,” she said.

At the same time, Argro acknowledged that she eased the standards for Girls High’s entrance criteria to broaden the admissions pool.

Manjay Konneh, a 12th grader at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, said she was looking for a school that would make her feel valued.

Marcia L. Hinton, a 1974 graduate and the executive director of the school’s alumnae association, said schools that serve only female students aren’t as valued as they once were, but that they are still valuable.

“All-girls’ schools give girls a safe space to explore, learn, and find out who they are without having to get that other sex involved,” Hinton said.

Girls High student Manjay Konneh, who emigrated from Guinea during the COVID pandemic, exemplifies Hinton’s sentiment. She needed a place where she felt appreciated and could get extra attention.

Now a 16-year-old senior who’s been accepted so far to Drexel University, Swarthmore College, and Villanova University, Konneh recalled that when she visited the school, “I felt they really wanted me here.”

Philly’s specialized high schools, charters affect Girls High

Recent data indicates the number of single-gender public schools has grown in the last several years, although they remain a tiny fraction of the nearly 100,000 U.S. public schools.

In 2014-15, there were some 283 single-gender public schools in the country. By 2022-23, that number had risen to 366, according to the Education Week Research Center.

In 2002, the same year President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law — a move that led to additional federal funding for single-gender schools — there were likely fewer than two dozen of them, according to one estimate.

But some all-girls’ schools that started more recently haven’t lasted very long. For instance, Girls Athletic Leadership School in Denver opened in 2010 as a middle school and added high school grades in 2014. But it announced last month that it will close the high school at the end of this school year, due to low enrollment.

Established in 1848 — nearly 75 years before American women were guaranteed the right to vote — Girls High was founded 12 years after Central High School opened for boys.

Some of Philadelphia’s original neighborhood schools, many built in the first two decades of the 20th century, were also for decades segregated by gender. But for more than a century, Girls High was the destination for the city’s smart, motivated female students. Constance Clayton, the first woman and first Black person to be the school district’s superintendent, graduated from the school.

“We could go and be in charge of everything,” said Susan Thomas, who graduated in 1970 and recalled her classmates being from every neighborhood and socio-economic background. “The school had a long tradition of encouraging girls and telling them they could be whatever they want, you don’t have to be a nurse or a teacher. I went to business school.”

Students gather their belongings and prepare to leave class at the Philadelphia High School for Girls.

The changes for Girls High started in the 1970s. In response to pressure from the state Human Relations Commission to racially desegregate the district as a whole, officials created several specialized high schools. These included George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science and the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, known as CAPA.

It was also in that era that Masterman, then the destination for the city’s highest-achieving middle schoolers, began phasing in high school grades.

The school district originally established Girls High as a counterpart to the elite Central High School, which only educated young men. Then in the 1980s, Central started admitting girls after several female students in the district sued. They argued that Central offered boys superior educational opportunities than what was available to them at Girls High at the time.

Technically, like Central, Girls High admits both male and female students. Throughout most of the school’s history, if a male student did apply, he was discouraged from attending, according to several people interviewed. “We have no record of a male student ever attending the school,” said district spokesperson Christina Clark.

The charter school movement took off in the 1990s. And in the early 2000s, the district created more small, themed high schools. These included Science Leadership Academy, Workshop School, and U School.

This proliferation of new schools, and the changes to admissions at established high schools, meant that what Girls High offered no longer stood out like it once did.

Thomas wonders whether there’s still a place for Girls High in today’s environment. “Single-sex education had its value, but does it anymore?” she asked.

City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, for one, sees the value clearly. She graduated from Girls High in 2001 and has remained the school’s most vocal advocate in City Hall.

“I deeply enjoyed my academic experience there,” said Gilmore Richardson, who sponsored a resolution honoring her alma mater when it celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2023. “It was the catalyst for everything good I have done in my life.”

Big Sister mentoring program helps many students succeed

Though she toured the city extolling the virtues of the school, Argro herself was initially reluctant to go to Girls High.

She grew up at 10th Street and Cumberland Street, in public housing, in the heart of North Philadelphia. By her own account, her home life was marked by poverty and other difficulties.

When she was young, KaTiedra Argro was initially reluctant to attend Girls High. But now as the school's principal, she wants to be a role model for other young women at the school.

But she was always a top student, and her parents invested in her education. It was at her mother’s insistence that she enrolled at Girls High. In fact, Argro didn’t really get a say in the matter.

“My mom told me, ‘I made the decision for you,‘” Argro recalled. “She said to me that she felt like if she could omit boys for the school day, she was winning.”

At first, Argro plotted how she would transfer out. But she was soon drawn in by the supportive atmosphere, the high quality of instruction, the many clubs and sports opportunities, and the feeling of sisterhood.

“It was the best decision my mom could have made for me,” she said. “Here, everybody was focused on school and getting into college.”

At one point, she was exhausted from simultaneously holding down a job and going to school. She contemplated dropping out. But her counselor at Girls High talked her out of that. Argro’s not sure she would’ve gotten the same guidance at a coed school.

In fact, without the supportive “village” at Girls High, Argro said, she wouldn’t have ultimately reached Temple University and Gwynedd Mercy University, where she earned two master’s degrees.

Argro became a teacher and then principal in the Philadelphia school district, working at John Barry Elementary and then Martin Luther King High, where she was an assistant principal.

She applied to be Girls High principal twice, once five years ago and again last year. When she was hired, she said, it was a fulfillment of her dream. She hopes she’s a role model for other girls there.

“I felt like I wanted to convey that same joy or sisterhood that I felt at Girls High to other students that may be in doubt because it is an all-girls school,” she said.

From left, Mya Torres, an 11th grader; Manjay Konneh, a 12th grader; and Brianni Carter, a 10th grader, walk in front of Girls High.

To Argro, the school isn’t defined by the low scores on the state math test or controversy over the 2023 graduation ceremony; Argro recalled that when there were similar celebrations at her own ceremony 26 years ago, the principal at the time simply asked for quiet, then went on with the event. And her family members were among those who cheered.

Argro can point to good news. The school’s four-year graduation rate of 96% in 2022-23 — the most recent year data is available — was up three percentage points from the prior year. And 77% of 11th graders scored proficient or better on the state literature exam in 2024, seven percentage points better than the year before.

But just like the number of Girls High students, district enrollment has fallen in recent years. The year after Argro graduated high school, district-run schools enrolled 205,000 students; that figure has now fallen to around 120,000, due to both charter proliferation and a city population dip.

That decline has led Philadelphia school officials to begin contemplating permanently closing schools for the first time since shuttering or merging 24 schools in 2013.

While Girls High has prominent alumnae and a storied history, it’s unclear whether those will influence decisions the district ultimately makes about which schools to close.

Students say they get value from Girls High that isn’t just about academics.

Brianni Carter, president of the school’s sophomore class, said she appreciates the feeling of "togetherness" and community at Girls High.

Several students are particularly fond of the Big Sister program. It’s a longstanding Girls High tradition in which older students take their younger peers under their wing. Big Sister helps provide both mentor and mentee with a crucial step in their development.

Mya Torres, an 11th grader, is following in her mother's footsteps by attending Girls High.

Brianni Carter, president of the school’s sophomore class, said both Central and Girls High accepted her. She liked the academics at both schools but ultimately chose Girls for another reason: “At the Girls’ orientation, there was such a feeling of togetherness and community. Like Central, it’s rigorous, but you also get the support you need.”

Girls High student Mya Torres, 17, said her mother attended Girls High for ninth and 10th grade but had to leave due to family issues.

When she brought Mya to orientation, one of her mother’s former teachers recognized her. “That’s the kind of place this is,” Torres said.

Her mother really wants Torres to have the full, four-year Girls High experience.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board rejects 2 charter applications

2025-02-28T03:08:21+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted to deny applications to create two charter schools Thursday — despite board members’ positive comments about one of them.

The board adjourned to go into executive session and deliberate in private before voting no on the applications to establish Early College High School and Pan American Academy High School.

The votes dashed charter supporters’ hopes, at least for now, that the board appointed by Mayor Cherelle Parker would finally be ready to expand the charter sector. The school board hasn’t approved a new charter since it regained control of the district from the state in 2018.

The proposed Early College Charter School went down by a vote of 6-3. The vote against the proposed Pan American Academy — Pathways High School, was 8-0, with one abstention.

Board members said the primary reason they voted to deny Early College’s application was financial uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s threats to withhold federal funding, although they did not spell out those concerns.

“This was a very strong application. I am very close to wanting to approve it, but I don’t feel comfortable based on the funding piece,” said Board Vice President Sarah-Ashley Andrews. “I can’t gamble with our babies on that.”

On Pan American, the members said they objected to the applicant’s decision to apply for a new school rather than for an expansion of their existing K-8 school. They were also concerned about its funding and its high suspension rates of students, especially Black students.

The denials came as the district is engaged in a facilities planning process that is likely to result in several school closures. And in 2023 one charter school closed unexpectedly, and another one, West Philadelphia Achievement Charter Elementary, is now in a protracted fight with the district over $30 million the state says it owes the district for overenrolling students.

The application for Pan American Pathways High School was affiliated with K-8 Pan American Academy. The applicants sought to offer a bilingual International Baccalaureate program for grades 9-12 and focus on four pathways: health sciences, technology, business and human services.

The other denial was for Early College High School. Keshema Davidson, one of several founding Early College board members who are associated with Cristo Rey, a Catholic high school in the city, told board members in advance of the vote that a school was needed that would give students “the opportunity to succeed no matter their pathway” for either college prep or career and technical education.

After the vote, the Early College founders issued a statement saying they were “disappointed in the outcome of tonight’s vote” but said there is a “long road ahead.”

The city’s deputy chief education officer Sharon Ward was present for the votes. She told Chalkbeat after the meeting that Parker is “concerned about all students” regardless of where they go to school. During her 2023 campaign for mayor, while not explicitly calling for the charter sector to expand, Parker repeatedly said she wanted to see an end to the “competition” between the school district and charters.

Ward emphasized that the board, though appointed by Parker, is an independent body that “has to be guided by state law,” on this front.

Charter schools office flags enrollment, suspension stats

Peng Chao, the director of the district’s charter schools office, offered evaluations of the applications but no recommendations, as is the district’s policy.

He said Pan American’s K-8 school has a high student suspension rate, especially for Black students. Chao said that 17% of all students — and 34% of Black students — were suspended at least once, compared to 5% in other schools.

Chao shared data showing that third through eighth graders at Pan American scored far behind students in comparable schools and the district as a whole in standardized tests.

Meanwhile, Chao raised concerns about Early College’s planned reliance on foundation support, and noted that it had not yet identified its future principal and other leaders. He also raised concerns about whether it could meet its projected enrollment targets.

The last new charter, Hebrew Public in East Falls, was established in 2018 under the School Reform Commission, which governed the district when it was under state oversight for 17 years starting in 2001.

Over the past seven years the board has approved multiple charter renewals, adding some 2,600 seats to existing charter schools.

During that time the board has also denied several charter applications. Last year, it voted four times to deny the application of Global Leadership Academy, a K-8 school in West Philadelphia, to add a high school.

More than a dozen speakers, including several students, spoke in favor of the new charters. “It’s hard to watch friends from higher grades leave,” said Pan American student Yediel Huertas, supporting the addition of a high school.

Board member Wanda Novales was the founding principal of Pan American’s K-8 school and led the school from 2008 to 2018. Before that, she was a teacher and principal in the district. She abstained from the vote.

Brick-and-mortar charters in Philadelphia now educate about 64,000 students, compared to 118,000 in district-run schools.

Around 25 charters are now operating with expired agreements. Yet under state law, they can stay open even without a new signed charter. Pan American, citing concerns about accountability, failed to sign their charter renewals in 2018 and 2023.

The board is revising its process for authorizing charter schools, through an initiative called Project RiSE, in an effort to “reimagine charter school excellence by refining the performance framework.” But it has done so largely out of the public eye.

Earlier Thursday afternoon, several hundred people from Philly for Great Public Schools and the African American Charter Schools Coalition rallied in front of school board headquarters to support the charter applications.

Participants said that they want more choice for parents, especially of schools focused on the Black experience, but they also think that city schools should get more funding from the city and state.

“We need both public and charter schools,” said Stephanie Roberts, an artist who works with students.

Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Trump attacks on DEI could impact Philly African-American history class, admissions, charters

2025-02-25T18:59:30+00:00

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In 2005, Philadelphia became the first major city in America to mandate that all students take an African American history course in order to graduate. That landmark class could now be on shakier ground due to national politics.

Philadelphia district leaders haven’t said much about the impact of President Donald Trump’s actions on city schools. But the African American history course mandate is one of several city policies — covering issues like selective admissions and charter schools focused on Black students — that are potentially threatened by the Trump administration.

Early in his second term, Trump has pushed to reshape K-12 schools through a flurry of actions. One of his executive orders seeks to ban policies that could be construed as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, which the president called “radical indoctrination.”

A subsequent “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s top acting civil rights official warned education leaders that school diversity efforts could violate federal civil rights laws, even if such efforts don’t rely directly on race. Both the letter and Trump’s executive order threaten schools with the loss of federal funding if they don’t comply.

And in her mid-February confirmation hearing, Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for U.S. education secretary, would not tell senators whether schools or districts might put their federal funding at risk by teaching an African American history class or other ethnic studies course — a response that U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, called “chilling.”

Amid the rapid-fire Trump education news, the biggest concern among educators is that the administration will try to withhold federal aid from districts that don’t follow its directives. Such aid is primarily intended to help students from low-income backgrounds and those with disabilities, and to bolster career and technical education programs, among other priorities.

Opponents of Trump’s policies scored an early win late last week when U.S. District Court Judge Adam Abelson issued a preliminary order blocking parts of the DEI ban, calling it vague, unconstitutional, and “pernicious.”

“If an elementary school receives Department of Education funding for technology access, and a teacher uses a computer to teach the history of Jim Crow laws, does that risk the grant being deemed ‘equity-related’ and the school being stripped of funding?” he wrote.

Even with that initial court victory, the potential for the Trump administration to wreak havoc on school budgets and policies is still worrying officials.

If federal funding were revoked, “it would be nothing short of catastrophic,” acting Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Carrie Rowe told state lawmakers Monday during her department’s House budget hearing. The loss of millions in funds for students with disabilities “would cause irreparable harm,” she said.

But federal funding isn’t the only concern.

Another Philadelphia policy that could come in for scrutiny is the admissions process to the district’s four most selective high schools — Central, Masterman, Palumbo, and Carver High School for Engineering and Science. The lottery system adopted three years ago gives automatic admission to all qualified students from certain ZIP codes that rarely send students to those schools. Most of the residents in these ZIP codes are from low-income backgrounds and are Black or Latino.

In addition, several of the city’s charter schools, including Sankofa and Imhotep, were founded specifically to prioritize Black history and culture in their curriculum and to focus on combating racism. Charter leaders are planning to discuss this topic at their next meeting, said a spokesperson for Philadelphia Charters for Excellence.

Then there are the worries of teachers and principals about students in their schools who may be undocumented immigrants or have undocumented family members, and are on the alert for possible ICE arrests.

Other districts have already entered the harsh new political spotlight on schools. In Chicago last week, an outside group immediately challenged the district’s new Black Student Success Plan, a long-awaited blueprint meant to address persistent disparities in test scores, graduation rates, and other student outcomes.

“My concern is about what it means to teach African American history,” said Ismael Jimenez, Philadelphia’s social studies curriculum director. “Are we not able to talk about systemic racism? We can’t tell students that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves when we talk about the country’s 250th anniversary next year?”

Jimenez said he can’t imagine that the federal government would prohibit educators from teaching about Black people in America and leaders like W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington.

“Structural or institutional racism still exists,” Jimenez said. “They are viewed as divisive concepts. I guess that’s the argument why [Trump officials] don’t want those things taught.”

Educators fear ‘chaos’ driven by Trump directives

Tim Boyle, the principal of Science Leadership Academy Middle School, recalled that mandating African American history was a “big deal” two decades ago. Now he worries about the scrutiny such a class could draw from unsympathetic federal officials and others, especially as Philadelphia becomes the center of attention during America’s 250th anniversary celebration in 2026.

“The fact that we are celebrating America’s [250th] birthday next year … folks who would not normally be paying attention to Philadelphia are paying attention to Philadelphia. And that presents opportunities and challenges,” Boyle said.

In interviews, other educators said that they feared that any initiative focused on equity, such as transgender rights and even what books are stocked in libraries, could be subject to a federal civil rights challenge like the one against the Chicago plan for Black students.

“How safe is it for us to continue doing what we’re doing?” said Boyle. He wondered whether he’d have to worry about the district’s general counsel “giving me a call because some person is complaining about something I do here? It’s fuzzy now, and it was not fuzzy a year ago.”

Some are focused on ways to resist Trump’s actions. Kristina Moon of the Education Law Center said the Trump orders violate a congressional statute prohibiting the federal government from dictating local school curriculum, as well as safeguards against the withholding of federal funds for political reasons.

“Chaos, confusion and fear, that is really the purpose here,” Moon said of the executive order and the “Dear Colleague” letter from Acting Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “It’s important to note that there is a long process for rescinding federal funding as a punishment, and it has rarely been invoked.”

There is a legal difference, she said, between discriminating against an individual due to race and acknowledging that systemic racism exists.

In a press conference Monday, Gov. Josh Shapiro made it clear that he would aggressively fight against any attempt to withhold federal aid due the state, although he did not specifically discuss education funding.

He said that as a result of his mid-February lawsuit and his personal engagement with Trump’s team, the administration has unfrozen $1.2 billion in aid that it sought to withhold, mostly for environmental projects.

Federal education aid accounts for about 10% of the Philadelphia district’s budget of more than $4.5 billion. The biggest program is Title I, which prioritizes school districts with high levels of poverty; Philadelphia received over $193 million in Title I aid in its most recent budget.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon declared that “it is not the president’s goal to defund the programs,” but that he wanted more efficiency.

Even if the attempt to tie federal education aid to curriculum mandates fail in court, education funding is still under threat, To help pay for tax cuts Trump has promised, a budget framework introduced by House Republicans would reduce federal education aid by $330 billion over 10 years, although much of it would focus on higher education, Inside Higher Ed reported.

The GOP budget blueprint would also cut money for Medicaid, which the families of many students rely on for health care.

Policies on admissions, equity could be scrutinized

A variety of other Philadelphia district policies could also come under scrutiny.

The district implemented the revamped admissions lottery at four of its most desirable schools in 2022, declaring it to be more fair and equitable than the prior system that relied heavily on principals’ judgement.

Some parents have filed a legal challenge against the lottery, arguing that the ZIP code preference is racially discriminatory. When the lottery was adopted, some parents noted with dismay that white, privileged residents in gentrifying pockets within these ZIP codes would also benefit from the new policy. But the ZIP code strategy was adopted by the Board of Education precisely to avoid accusations of racial discrimination.

In a decision last October, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania sided with the district, stating that the process was “race-blind.”

However, the “Dear Colleague” letter interprets current law to mean that schools cannot use non-racial criteria to meet diversity goals, a legal position many say is misguided. In theory, that could put the 2022 admissions changes in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia school district has not scrubbed its website of references to DEI, and it still employs a chief equity officer.

Its website maintains information about its diversity, equity and inclusion work and says its purpose is to “cultivate prosperity and liberation for students and staff, starting with historically marginalized populations.”

But since Trump’s election, some educators feel that a lot of work they’ve done in that vein over the past few years might be at risk.

“We’re in an era where a family can call downtown and say, there’s a Pride flag that’s not allowed,” said Boyle, the principal of SLAMS. “Or, my kid is reading this book, and I wasn’t given an opt-out form.

“There’s not a lot of terra firma now,” he added.

Philadelphia Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania Auditor General proposes major cyber charter school funding reform

2025-02-20T22:26:18+00:00

Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy L. DeFoor released an audit Thursday calling for a major overhaul of cyber charter schools funding, finding that between 2020 and 2023 they increased their revenues by $425 million and reserves by 141%.

He said the funding formula for cyber schools should be revised to reflect their actual costs, rather than be based on the per-pupil expenditures of the districts that send them students.

But the performance audit of five of the state’s 13 cyber schools did not find any illegalities.

“I am now the third auditor general to look at this issue and the third to come to the same conclusion: the cyber charter funding formula needs to change to reflect what is actually being spent to educate students and set reasonable limits to the amount of money these schools can keep in reserve,” DeFoor said in a statement. He called for the formation of a task force to study the issue.

In 2023-24, Pennsylvania cyber charters educated nearly 60,000 students, more than any other state.

The recommendation follows what was suggested by Gov. Josh Shapiro. In his budget address earlier this month. Shapiro asked the legislature to change the law so that all school districts pay a flat $8,000 tuition rate for each student. School districts currently pay cyber charters their own per-pupil costs, which vary widely.

Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, according to DeFoor, the five audited schools increased their revenue from $473 million to $898 million, some of which was used to pay for “staff bonuses, gift cards, vehicle payments and fuel stipends,” noting that these are all permitted under the law. Cyber school enrollment surged during and after the covid pandemic.

Still, he added, “Commonwealth Charter Academy spent $196 million to purchase and/or renovate 21 buildings, which to us seems a bit out of the ordinary for a public school that is based in online instruction.”

Susan Spicka, the executive director of Education Voters of PA and a leading cyber charter critic, called DeFoor’s audit “a clarion call for reform.” But she disagreed about forming a task force, which she said “would simply kick the can down the road” on needed reform.

Insight PA Cyber Charter School, one of those audited, issued a statement signaling that they would be open to changes to the charter law and willing to participate in a task force. But they would oppose a flat tuition rate, as proposed by Shapiro.

Rachel Langan of the Commonwealth Foundation, a proponent of cyber charters, said the audit proved that the schools made efficient use of their money.

“Cyber charters have unique financial needs, given their inability to collect taxes and reliance on public school districts to transfer tuition dollars, which often proves unstable,” Langan said in a statement. “These schools need their reserves to ensure they can continue to serve their students despite funding fluctuations.”

Prior efforts at cyber funding reform have deadlocked in the politically divided General Assembly.

The five audited cyber schools are Commonwealth Academy Charter School, Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School, Insight PA Cyber Charter School, Pennsylvania Cyber CharterSchool, and Reach Cyber Charter School.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania governor proposes over $200 million more for Philly schools

2025-02-04T21:39:17+00:00

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget would provide over $200 million more to Philadelphia schools.

In his spending blueprint for 2025-26, Shapiro is also requesting millions more for school repairs, free school breakfast, special education, student-teacher stipends, and student mental health.

The bulk of the increase for Philadelphia comes from Shapiro’s proposal to send an additional $494 million to the state’s highest needs school districts — based on their tax base and per-student costs — in the wake of a 2023 ruling that declared the previous state school funding formula unconstitutional. Of that amount, Philadelphia would receive $137 million.

Shapiro is also proposing changes to how cyber charter schools are funded by re-introducing an $8,000 standard tuition rate for all cyber students, which would save the district another $50 million if enacted. Shapiro proposed the same flat rate in his budget plan last year, but the final budget did not include it.

In addition, Shapiro is proposing a $75 million increase to be distributed to all school districts through the Basic Education Funding formula, the biggest single source of state school aid. City schools would get a $12.5 million increase through that funding stream, bringing their total to $1.6 billion out of $8.2 billion for schools statewide.

The final portion of the roughly $200 million increase for Philly schools would come from an additional $5.6 million for special education.

Even with those increases, Philadelphia would still need an additional $975 million to meet all the educational needs of its nearly 200,000 students in district and charter schools, according to a state analysis.

Shapiro included no money for private school vouchers in his budget. The governor backed the creation of vouchers in 2023, but ultimately signed a budget last year that didn’t include them.

“What we’re doing for education is working now – let’s continue to build on this foundation we’ve laid,” Shapiro said in a Tuesday speech in Harrisburg about his spending plan.

Shapiro’s remarks came shortly after several executive orders from President Donald Trump that expressed very different priorities for funding and other education issues. In his second term, Trump has issued directives to withhold funding for schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology” and affirm the rights of transgender students. He also issued orders to send more federal funding to private school voucher programs and cleared the way for immigration arrests at schools, among other things.

“This nation saw significant political change in the last election,” said Shapiro, who was once rumored to be a frontrunner for vice president on the 2024 Democratic ticket. “Despite all that change in D.C., the voters here in Pennsylvania returned a Republican-controlled state Senate and a Democratic-controlled state House — with the exact same margins — to continue working with me to get stuff done.”

In his budget, districts would get $40 million more for special education and $5.5 million more for career and technical education. The state’s strained student-teacher stipend program would see a boost of $20 million, while the Pre-K Counts program would get a $17 million increase.

There would also be $23.5 million more for student transportation, $14.5 million additional for early intervention programs, and $10.8 million more for school food services, among other additions for education.

Shapiro’s budget proposal will now go through the legislative process over the next few months.

Shapiro doesn’t push for vouchers

Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington told Chalkbeat last week he is focused on proving to conservative lawmakers that the district is a good steward of state funding.

Despite challenges for the district related to aging infrastructure, budgets, and long-term academic goals, he’s also touting more positive signs: Student attendance is up, as is the four-year graduation rate, Watlington said. The dropout rate is down by more than a thousand students and fourth grade math scores are improving. More funding will allow that progress to continue, he said.

“This proposed investment from the state would allow the District to continue accelerating academic achievement as the District works to become the fastest improving, large urban school district in the nation,” Watlington said in a statement Tuesday in response to Shapiro’s budget.

The negotiations over education spending must abide by a ruling from Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer, who found in February 2023 that the way the state funded schools was unconstitutional because aid was both inadequate and inequitably distributed. The system shortchanged students with greater needs, Jubelirer said.

“Last year, we made a commitment to not only invest a record amount of money in public education but create a brand-new formula that drives that money out to the schools that need it most,” Shapiro said. “You voted for that, I signed it into law, and we agreed to keep doing it until we meet our obligation.”

But public education advocates and policy analysts say even with Shapiro’s increases, the state should be doing more to fund struggling districts.

Donna Cooper, executive director of advocacy group Children First, praised Shapiro’s budget — but said the increases need to ramp up faster. Cooper said the $494 million dedicated to sending more money to the poorest districts is “history-making ... important and a needed departure from past policy.”

At the same time, she said, it is not enough if the remaining $3.5 billion state funding “adequacy gap” must be closed in three years, per a legislative Basic Education Funding Commission commitment after the judge’s 2023 decision. This amount won’t do it, she said. What Shapiro is proposing “will close the gap in seven years. We really believe that needs to be faster,” Cooper said.

Advocates at the Education Law Center PA and Public Interest Law Center, who represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the 2023 ruling from Jubelirer, said in a statement that “the current timeline for reaching adequacy remains too slow and means that today’s kindergartners will be nearing high school before schools have the funds the state admits they need to succeed.”

In addition to leaving out his proposal from last year to establish vouchers, which he called Pennsylvania Award for Student Success Scholarship and are also sometimes known as Lifeline Scholarships, Shapiro’s budget book does not show any increase for the state’s tax-credit scholarship programs that support private school tuition. Those programs would be flat-funded at the same rate as last year, according to Shapiro’s plan.

All of that displeased school choice advocates, like the conservative Commonwealth Foundation, which has pressured Shapiro to adopt a state-funded private school voucher program.

The budget proposal “notably lacked funding for [Shapiro’s] distant bipartisan campaign promises like educational choice—neither through Lifeline Scholarships nor tax credits,” said Andrew Lewis, president and CEO of the foundation, in a statement.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect figure for the remaining adequacy gap for Philadelphia schools.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia NAEP scores rise in fourth grade math but stay flat in other subjects

2025-01-29T05:07:00+00:00

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Philadelphia students’ fourth grade math scores are on the rise, according to newly released test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP.

However, city students’ scores in math and reading are still well below their peers’ scores in Pennsylvania, below the average for all large cities, and below national averages.

In the other subjects that NAEP tests — fourth grade reading and eighth grade math and reading — Philly students scored about the same as they did in 2022. Black and Hispanic students in Philly continue to score far below their white and Asian American peers, highlighting the persistent equity gaps that exist for these students.

According to a Chalkbeat analysis, Philly students’ NAEP scores — and scores nationwide — were rising in both math and reading from 2009 to 2013. But since then, students’ scores have dropped precipitously, especially in eighth grade math.

Superintendent Tony Watlington told Chalkbeat the new scores “absolutely validate” that “there is some real progress occurring in this school district.” He added he was not surprised to see fourth grade math performance improve because he’s seeing similar trends in the district’s internal and state test data for third and fourth grade. Watlington said it’s all “part of the strategy to concentrate resources in those early grades.”

Watlington says he is particularly proud of Philly students’ post-pandemic performance. He frequently cites a Stanford University “recovery scorecard” that showed Philly students demonstrated the fastest 2022-23 post-pandemic recovery in math for grades 3-8, and the second-fastest recovery for reading in grades 3-8, among large urban school districts. (The study is based on a weighted comparison of student performance on state tests.) The district has also invested millions in updated curriculum and resources which Watlington says will only compound Philly’s gains in the years to come.

“We’re seeing some immediate improvement” due to the new math curriculum, Watlington said, which he thinks will also be the case for English Language Arts as classrooms continue to adopt new resources for that subject. “I fully expect, in two years, when we give the NAEP assessment again, to begin to see some movement in fourth grade reading,” he said.

NAEP is administered to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, unlike the state PSSA test, which is given to all students. City students also show low proficiency rates on the PSSA compared to the rest of Pennsylvania. Because only some students take the exams, NAEP results come with some uncertainty in the form of a margin of error.

“One of the reasons why our city has underperformed the Commonwealth average is because our kids have significantly lower attendance in school,” Watlington said. At the same time he pointed to district data showing student attendance has been increasing in Philly recently and the number of students dropping out has been decreasing.

NAEP scores show Philly students gained in math

In fourth grade math, Philadelphia saw a seven-point increase in the average scores from 209 in 2022 to 216 in 2024, which is a higher rate of improvement than Pennsylvania overall. Average scores statewide held steady at 238 — the same as in 2022. NAEP results are reported as average scores on a 0-500 scale.

The percentage of Philadelphia students at or above NAEP proficiency also increased to 19% from 13% in 2022. Philly still falls well below the state however: In Pennsylvania, 41% of students scored at or above proficiency, about the same as in 2022.

In eighth grade math, Philly performed about on par with 2022, with 15% of Philly students at or above NAEP proficiency, compared to 13% in 2022. The average score in eighth grade math was 252 — the same as in 2022. Philly is still below Pennsylvania’s overall average score of 276, which rose from 274 in 2022.

In fourth-grade reading, Philadelphia students scored 195 on average — the same as in 2022. Pennsylvania students overall scored 216, a slight decrease from an average score of 219 in 2022 but not a change NAEP officials deemed statistically significant. In relation to their peers from all large cities, Philly students came up short. In 2024, 17% of students in Philly scored proficient or better, while 26% of their peers in large cities as a whole scored proficient or above. Nationwide, 30% of students scored proficient or better — down from 32% in 2022.

In eighth grade reading, Philly and Pennsylvania students maintained their scores from 2022. Philly students scored on average 242, the same as in 2022. Statewide, students scored on average 259, the same as two years ago. Philly students remain well below their statewide and national peers in the percent of students who scored proficient or better: In Philly, 18% of students scored proficient or better, compared with 31% of students in Pennsylvania, 26% in large cities, and 29% nationally.

Philadelphia, which has the highest poverty rate among all big cities, outperformed just a handful of urban districts. For instance, in fourth grade math, Philadelphia scored lower than 21 districts and higher than four districts — Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit and Baltimore City — among the 26 that are included in the Trial Urban District Assessment. In eighth grade math, it did a little better, performing lower than 17 districts, on a par with six, and higher than two, Cleveland and Detroit.

The last time the federal government released NAEP scores over two years ago, they were used as a barometer for how well students had recovered from the pandemic, a period marked by school closures. Philadelphia’s schools closed for in-person learning in March 2020 and did not reopen until the beginning of the 2021-22 school year.

Philadelphia’s 2022 NAEP scores were well below the national and Pennsylvania averages, but scores for city students did not decline as much as they did for students in some other big cities. Fourth grade math scores dropped, but the other scores — in fourth grade reading and eighth grade reading and math — were statistically unchanged.

Even so, Watlington saw hope in the 2022 results. “Given the many challenges that all school districts have experienced these past three years is encouraging news that we intend to build on going forward,” he said at the time.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s process for disciplining teachers to be scrutinized by City Council

2025-01-23T22:28:04+00:00

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The chair of the City Council’s Education Committee wants to put the district’s process for disciplining teachers under the microscope, citing cases that drag on for months or years without being resolved.

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas introduced a resolution Thursday to hold hearings on the Philadelphia school district’s use of the “rubber room,” officially called the reassignment room, which is for teachers who have been accused of misconduct and are removed from their classrooms.

Thomas told his colleagues that teachers in the rubber room receive full salary and benefits, while the district must also pay substitutes who may or may not be properly credentialed.

“We want to examine how much money we’re wasting,” he said. Thomas’ resolution was adopted by voice vote.

He said the system lacks transparency, and that some teachers stay in the rubber room even after they’re cleared by the city’s Department of Human Services, which investigates cases involving alleged mistreatment of children, while the district’s own procedure drags on.

Thomas said he decided to take action after receiving complaints from people caught up in the system, including one person who has been in the rubber room for two-and-a-half years.

Teachers can be sent to the rubber room — sometimes also known as “teacher jail” — for allegations involving everything from sexual harassment of colleagues and inappropriate relationships with students, to having a public meltdown in school and saying something in class that a student, or their parent, found inappropriate. With some cases coming down to a teacher’s word against a student’s, investigations can often be difficult and take time.

Thomas said in an interview that he is not trying to pass judgement on the validity of individual cases.

“I don’t think our issue is examining why people are in there,” he said. “The ‘why’ is not within our jurisdiction. We’re concerned about the system that is in place, how long people are there, the lack of efficiency as it relates to money wasted. The most important thing is the academic achievement gaps that it creates for our students.”

District spokesperson Monique Braxton said that there are currently 66 people in the rubber room — actually a series of rooms — at the district’s headquarters. There’s one for teachers, one for principals, and one for paraprofessionals including climate staff.

Braxton said she could not offer any statistics on the average length of stay, or on how many district employees are ultimately cleared. Thomas’s resolution says “it appears that several hundred” district employees spend some time in the rubber room each year. Braxton said “that number is incorrect” based on the information she has, but did not provide an alternative figure.

“We welcome the collaboration with members of Philadelphia City Council in educating our students and doing what is best for our invaluable employees,” she said in a statement reacting to the hearings. “Our doors are always open.”

The district’s contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers says that any disciplinary actions against the union’s members has to follow provisions of the state school code, and that disciplined teachers may choose to file a grievance against the district.

Although some other teachers’ contracts require a time limit on disciplinary actions, Philadelphia’s does not. The district and the union are negotiating a new contract this year; the current pact expires on Aug. 31.

It’s unclear exactly how much it costs the district to provide salaries and benefits to educators who are in the rubber room and therefore not working their regular jobs in schools and classrooms. The average yearly cost of a Philadelphia teacher, including benefits, is about $120,000. But in a district that’s been historically underfunded and struggles with everything from large class sizes to older buildings, such costs can come under increased scrutiny.

Under the district’s disciplinary process, a complaint that could lead to an educator being placed in the rubber room must first be investigated at the school level, and then, if officials determine to be valid, passed on to the district’s Labor Relations office. That office must also determine whether the alleged conduct could constitute a violation of federal Title IX law.

In response to Thomas’s resolution, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg issued a statement saying that the union “is strongly in favor of attacking bureaucratic inefficiencies … in order to free precious resources that could be redirected into classrooms.”

He added that union officials “look forward” to testifying on the matter.

At the hearing, which has yet to be scheduled, Thomas said he wants to hear from teachers sent to the reassignment room, Department of Human Services officials who investigate complaints, district staff who manage the process, Superintendent Tony Watlington, and union officials.

He said he wants to use the hearing “to determine the best way to manage cases and incidents in a way that ensures safety, manages taxpayer dollars effectively and is transparent to staff sent to the reassignment rooms.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school leaders say they have protocols for immigration enforcement in Trump era

2025-01-22T22:12:44+00:00

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Philadelphia school officials reiterated their support for immigrant students after the Trump administration rescinded protections that kept federal immigration enforcement agents from targeting schools and other “sensitive” locations.

According to Nathalie Nérée, the district’s chief of special education and diverse learners who spoke at a City Council “Trump preparedness” hearing Wednesday, officials are leaning on the school district’s 2021 sanctuary schools resolution that’s designed to protect students and families from immigration arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on or near school property.

Nérée said protocol for school staff is to immediately contact the district’s general counsel, “obtain documentation” from ICE agents if they have the necessary subpoena or warrant, and “await further direction.”

The district has also “developed a comprehensive immigrant and refugee toolkit to guide staff on handling immigration related concerns,” she said. It is also providing ongoing professional development for teachers, administrators, and other school personnel about how to respond to ICE agents, Nérée said, who added that the district is still analyzing the orders from President Donald Trump.

Shortly after taking office Monday, Trump issued an executive order declaring that sensitive spaces like schools, churches and hospitals were no longer protected from immigration enforcement actions except in cases of imminent public danger. As a result, advocates are urging school officials nationwide to clarify what they plan to do if ICE agents try to operate in or near school buildings.

Further details about the district’s plans had not been shared by spokespeople as of Wednesday. But questions about the city’s preparedness for stepped-up immigration enforcement only intensified after Mayor Cherelle Parker announced Wednesday that Amy Eusebio had resigned from her job as the head of Philadelphia’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

On Wednesday, City Council members pressed the district, noting immigration raids could begin imminently.

“How will the school district of Philadelphia respond to people knocking on school doors and trying to take children?” Councilmember Anthony Phillips asked district representatives. “How soon do you think the school district will have an adequate response to something of that nature?”

Concerns about Philadelphia schools’ response to immigration enforcement have persisted for some time. In 2021, the immigrant rights group Juntos released a survey showing that 75% of Philly educators “had no training” in how to respond if ICE came to schools.

The 2021 Philadelphia Board of Education’s sanctuary schools resolution also directed the superintendent to develop a plan within 100 days to inform and train teachers, administrators and staff how to respond to ICE, should they ask about students or enter school property.

“We have created a detailed emergency response plan to safeguard the emotional, physical and well-being of our students who may be affected by federal immigration enforcement actions,” Nérée told the City Council.

Strawberry Mansion High School Principal Jeannine Payne said that the issue of ICE agents came up last week at the district principals’ regular January meeting, where Nérée “made it clear you are not to let them in the school” without specific warrants.

But Payne said she would feel more assured if she had more information on “what is my script, what recourse do I have” to effectively deal with someone who presents themselves as a government official. “I hope there’s a plan to better equip us,” Payne said.

Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of Juntos, told the City Council on Wednesday that the district has failed to follow its own policies and protect its immigrant families as called for under its 2021 sanctuary resolution.

“I’m here to address the district’s failure to fully implement sanctuary schools and the serious consequences this has for our community,” she told City Council members. “To this day, none of these proposed measures [from 2021] have been fully implemented, leaving our community even more vulnerable than we were five years ago.”

Since 2016, Philadelphia has designated itself as a sanctuary city. That means the Philadelphia Police Department does not collaborate with ICE agents in sharing information, arresting, or detaining undocumented immigrants.

At the same time, Philadelphia schools have not been totally immune from federal immigration enforcement.

In 2020, ICE agents arrested a mother outside of her child’s South Philly school. And in 2023 a school principal threatened to have a student and his family deported. The school district ultimately entered into a settlement regarding the principal’s actions and promised to provide more staff training.

Philly families have not necessarily been assuaged by the district’s protocols.

“There are immigrant families that have called and made [us] aware they are scared to take their children to school,” said Rosanna Matos, early learning program engagement specialist for the early childhood education advocacy group First Up.

Matos urged council members to consider protections for prekindergarten providers and child care centers which are also losing their sensitive status due to Trump’s executive order.

Sim Loh, public policy specialist with the early education group First Up, also raised concerns about how the Trump administration’s policies could exacerbate early childhood staffing challenges.

“We have educators from mixed-status families who say they might want to leave the field,” Loh told council members.

Kristina Moon, a senior attorney with the Education Law Center PA, told council members that all traditional public and charter schools “must commit to comprehensive training” about immigration policies.

“We are hearing from immigrant and LGBTQ+ students that they fear for their safety and worry their schools will not protect them,” Moon said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia superintendent urges families to send kids to kindergarten as enrollment window opens

2025-01-21T21:55:31+00:00

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Mary Collins has been teaching kindergarten for 15 years, and she still gets a thrill from it.

“Kindergarten is so awesome,” she said, as her 25 charges sat patiently waiting for her to tell them what to do next. “They come here so eager to learn.”

Superintendent Tony Watlington visited Collins, other educators, and students at Rhawnhurst Elementary School in Northeast Philadelphia Tuesday to urge families to enroll their children in kindergarten. Registration started Tuesday and ends May 31.

Kindergarten is not mandated in Pennsylvania, as it is in several other states. Watlington said that sends the wrong message and requires schools to recruit students for kindergarten more actively. He said that “lots of research” has shown kindergarten’s value. In addition, some states are pushing universal prekindergarten, he said, but Pennsylvania is not among them.

“I wish we would,” he said.

Enrollment in Philadelphia district kindergarten classes this year is about 8,300 students, which is still below what it was before the pandemic, when it reached a peak of more than 12,000. Another 10,500 students are enrolled in district-run pre-K programs.

Collins, who has also taught first and second grades in her 30-year career, described her students’ journey from not knowing letters to being able to read and even write sentences.

“They start with the alphabet,” she said, and learn that the letters have sounds. “And from sounds we get words, then sentences, and then I see my babies read,” she said.

From there comes writing, she said, adding that in math, “they’re also learning to count to 100, to celebrate 100 days of school.”

In September, “they came in dependent, and now they’re independent,” she said, surveying the room. “They’ll always remember what they learned in kindergarten.”

The district’s deputy chief for early childhood education, Diane Castelbuono, said that families can register their child online or in person. To be eligible, children must turn 5 years old by Sept. 1.

While the official enrollment window ends on May 31 for planning purposes, families can register later if their circumstances change.

But some things don’t change. Rhawnhurst Principal Joy Kingwood-Ellis took Watlington and Board of Education Vice President Sarah-Ashey Andrews to Collins’ room, where the superintendent asked the students “who likes the snow?”

All the little hands shot up in the air.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Math achievement in Philadelphia is improving but remains very low, data shows

2025-01-17T14:47:56+00:00

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Philadelphia students’ proficiency rates in math are rising modestly but still remain low, according to an update the Philadelphia Board of Education received Thursday.

Deputy Superintendent Jermaine Dawson told board members that on the district’s most recent internal assessments — called “Star Assessments,” which are different from the state’s annual standardized tests — 22.8% of students in grades 3-8 scored at or above proficiency in math, an improvement from 18% at the beginning of this school year.

Dawson’s presentation was part of an update on the district’s Goals and Guardrails initiative, a strategic plan adopted by the school board just over four years ago that set targets for academic achievement. Board members expressed hope about the numbers but also said more must be done to help schools get on track to meet the initiative’s aims.

Students in all racial and ethnic groups improved, although persistent disparities on the Star Assessment for math state tests remained. For instance, 13% of Black students were proficient in math, compared with 14% of Hispanic, 43% of white, 50% of Asian American, and 30% of multi-racial students, according to the Star Assessments.

Board members also got an update on trends for state tests. The percentage of third through eighth graders who scored proficient or advanced in math on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, rose from 16.5% in 2021-22 to 22% last school year, said Joy Lesnick, the district’s deputy chief of research, evaluation, and academic partnership.

The Goals and Guardrails plan calls for 52% of students in grades 3-8 to be proficient on the PSSA by 2030. The state released last year’s PSSA scores in November.

This school year is the second that the district is using a math curriculum called Illustrative Math. It’s part of a $100 million curriculum overhaul the district adopted in 2022 shortly after the arrival of Superintendent Tony Watlington.

“There were some growing pains” in implementing both a new English Language Arts and math curriculum, Watlington said Thursday. But he added the district has been working closely with principals and teachers, and with their union leadership, to enhance the quality of classroom instruction.

Students in kindergarten through second grade are also improving on mastery of the appropriate curriculum benchmarks between the fall and winter of this school year, Dawson said. Such benchmarks include recognizing numbers, understanding the concept of quantity, and being able to add and subtract numbers up to 20 by the time students are in second grade.

“If we continue on this trend, that will be a contributing factor in [improving] performance of our students in third grade” and beyond, said Dawson, a former math teacher.

Board President Reginald Streater said that “while we’re still not where we want to be,” the progress is encouraging. “No one in this room is satisfied, but we are extremely pleased,” he said, especially with the collaboration among teachers, principals, administrators and employee unions.

“We are making more progress in lifting the floor, trying to raise the ceiling as well,” Watlington said. He noted that big goals — he used the example of losing weight and building muscle — aren’t reached all at once but are reached as a result of “incremental growth.”

Board member ChauWing Lam praised Dawson “for the sustained, steady progress of the past few years.” But she noted that reaching the 2030 goal for math proficiency will require a faster rate of improvement than has been occurring so far.

“I do believe strongly that we will get there,” Dawson responded, citing the district’s investment in extensive professional development for teachers and principals. He added that the district is working to provide “intensive supports” to schools that need them.

The district is also expanding high-impact tutoring from 16 tutors working in two schools to 53 working in eight schools, where they will help 447 students.

It also plans to restart Parent University, which offers classes to parents and caregivers in academics and other topics so they can help children with their school work.

“We don’t have a deficit view of our parents,” said Watlington. While it is parents’ responsibility to send their students to school on time and prepared, he said, “It is absolutely educators’ responsibility to teach kids to read, do math … we are excited to be working in partnership with our parents.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Citing Pennsylvania students’ low reading scores, advocates form coalition to improve literacy

2025-01-09T23:48:45+00:00

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A new statewide coalition aims to respond to alarming data showing that just 1 in 3 Pennsylvania students — and even fewer in Philadelphia — can read proficiently by fourth grade.

Eighty people from 20 organizations under the umbrella of the Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition met via Zoom Wednesday to push for state policies that will improve student outcomes in reading. These include $100 million to make sure that all districts have access to training in “evidence-based strategies,” including the science of reading, which represents the consensus on the best methods for literacy instruction like a focus on phonics and vocabulary-building.

The coalition is also calling for dedicated resources to support the early screening of struggling students.

The trend in reading outcomes also concerns advocates. Laura Boyce of Teach Plus, a group that’s in the new coalition, cited 2022 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing a post-pandemic decline in Pennsylvania students’ reading proficiency, a downturn that occurred nationwide. New NAEP results are expected later this month.

“Given what we know about how early reading proficiency affects future life outcomes, that is something we are focusing on as we talk about the importance of improving literacy outcomes and how that connects to overall economic well being,” said Boyce, the executive director of Teach Plus’ Pennsylvania chapter.

Fourth grade is the target because research shows that is the crucial point when students should be moving from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” she said.

The Pennsylvania Literacy Coalition plans to screen the film “The Right to Read” in Harrisburg on Jan. 28, followed by a discussion of the issue with lawmakers. It also plans to hold a day-long summit on March 26 to highlight the issue.

In Philadelphia, advocates, school officials, caregivers, and neighbors are taking a communal approach to improving reading scores. The school district has started a new English Language Arts curriculum focused on the science of reading. Advocates are hosting small neighborhood events featuring the “Alphabet Song” for younger children that’s linked with the Freedom Schools model. And Philly’s Reading Captains are taking the effort door-to-door to deliver books and resources to families on their block.

This is the time of year when budget jockeying begins in the state capital. Gov. Josh Shapiro is scheduled to give his annual budget address on Feb. 4.

“We’re waiting for the governor’s budget address, we’re all looking to hear what he will prioritize,” said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat and longtime advocate for additional education spending. “Hopefully this will be part of it. We’ll talk to his folks beforehand, this is fundamental to student success.”

Both Hughes and Boyce said that it is important to raise awareness of how Pennsylvania students lag behind other states in proficiency rates.

Democrat Rep. Peter Schweyer, the chair of the House Education Committee, said that he is prioritizing achieving the continuing effort to ensure fair and equitable school funding for all districts, rather than telling them what programs to adopt.

Two years ago, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ruled Pennsylvania’s school funding formula unconstitutional, citing wide spending gaps between wealthier and low-income districts. As a result, the state increased overall education spending by $1.1 billion and adopted a new funding formula.

“There’s no way to anticipate now what’s going to make it into the budget,” Shweyer said, noting that it won’t be finalized until June. “What I can say on the topic of literacy is that it is in the forefront of everybody’s mind.”

Rep. Bryan Cutler, the committee’s top Republican, said in a statement that, “It is clear to me that Pennsylvania is behind the times in teaching our kids how to read….I will support ideas that make sure we fund literacy efforts, but also make the necessary changes in how we support our students who are learning to read.”

Ralph Smith, the managing director of the national Campaign for Grade Level Reading, pointed out that recent research from North Carolina shows that there is a wide gap in reading readiness that persists through kindergarten between students from more affluent and low-income backgrounds.

“However you calculate it, low income kids start kindergarten behind better resourced kids, and during the kindergarten year they fall farther behind both developmentally and academically,” he said.

He said it is important to dedicate some resources to informing and training parents, in addition to investing more in schools and early childhood centers, to close the readiness gap before kindergarten starts.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

After feds find poor response to antisemitic incidents, Philadelphia district agrees to changes

2024-12-19T23:42:47+00:00

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A federal investigation has determined that the Philadelphia school district has not adequately addressed incidents of antisemitism and other examples of “harassment based on shared ancestry” that occurred in and around schools recently.

In a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights stemming from a complaint filed by some parents and Jewish organizations in May, the district agreed to publicly declare its intolerance of harassment and discrimination on its website, post a statement in every school, and review and revise its anti-harassment policies by Jan. 9.

The district must also send the revised policies to all school administrators, who must “distribute, convene, and discuss the revised policies and procedures with site-based staff.” It must also train staff annually, and provide age-appropriate training and information on racial and ethnic discrimination to all students in grades 6-12.

The agreement underlines growing tension and hostility inside and outside of Philadelphia classrooms surrounding the Israel-Hamas war that began in October of last year. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian educators and families have repeatedly demanded the district and board of education do more to protect students and teachers experiencing harassment for any protected views.

In the agreement, the federal government noted that Philadelphia school leaders can and should take more direct action than they have so far. Officials with the Office for Civil Rights said the district “refused or failed to produce” some vital information regarding its handling of the complaints.

“In all incidents, the District did not provide any documentation showing that anyone at the school or at the District assessed whether the incident created or contributed to a hostile environment on the basis of shared ancestry,” the resolution agreement letter reads.

The district also appears not to adequately collect records of such incidents, as required under federal law.

In response, officials issued a statement saying the district “strives to create welcoming and inclusive environments that allow our students to feel safe and heard. The District takes all complaints of bullying, harassment, and discrimination seriously, including allegations of Antisemitism and Islamophobia.”

The statement continues, “OCR has recognized areas where the District has shown its commitment to this important work and also identified areas needing additional attention and improvement. The voluntary resolution agreement outlines ways in which the District will continue to improve upon its processes.”

Though officials redacted the names of specific individuals and schools in the agreement, details appear to refer to several far-reaching complaints made against various educators, district officials, and students across the district and on social media. These include actions taken by three pro-Palestinian teachers at Baldi Middle School, swatstikas drawn on Masterman school property, and a school project about Palestinan solidarity and resistance art in Northeast High School teacher Keziah Ridgeway’s class.

The incidents cited range from allegations of students shouting “heil Hitler” at Jewish students and teachers in various schools, to a student calling a Jewish student antisemitic slurs and putting that student in a headlock and throwing them into a trash can.

There are also complaints about a Jewish student allegedly being falsely accused of “trashing” the school prayer room and “verbally assaulting Muslim girls who were inside,” and a concern from one teacher about a school district official wearing a Palestinian flag pin, among other instances.

In announcing the agreement, OCR issued a statement saying that the district did not demonstrate that it fulfilled its obligation under Title VI — the federal statute that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin — to “evaluate whether a hostile environment existed” or that it “took steps reasonably designed to eliminate any such hostile environment and prevent its recurrence.”

Notably, the agreement does not address a separate OCR complaint brought by three teachers at Baldi Middle School. That complaint alleges that leaders at their school have discriminated against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, infringed on the free speech rights of those supporting Palestinian people, and improperly disciplined educators who have publicly offered support for Palestinian rights.

Pro-Palestinan speakers, including many Jewish students and parents, have congregated at every school board meeting since the summer to demand that the board and district take complaints about anti-Palestinian incidents as seriously as they take complaints about antisemitism.

Andrew Goretsky, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia branch — which brought the original complaint — said in a statement Thursday the agreement is “a vital acknowledgment of the challenges faced by students and their families.”

“We are hopeful that the district’s commitment to implementing much-needed measures will create a more inclusive environment where Jewish students, and indeed all students, can feel safe and supported in Philadelphia schools,” Goretsky said. “We look forward to seeing these commitments realized.”

This story has been updated to include a comment from the Anti-Defamation League.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Former paraprofessional adapts to her role as a Philly pre-K teacher

2024-12-19T17:38:33+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2024 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. Throughout the 2024-25 school year, Chalkbeat Philadelphia is following a new teacher, Kahn-Tineta Smith, as she adapts to the joys and challenges of working in the city school district. This is the second of several periodic check-ins we hope will shine a light on the state of the Philadelphia teaching workforce. Read the first entry here.

It was barely 9 a.m., and Kahn-Tineta Smith already had a lot to deal with. One little girl was spinning around like a whirling dervish. Another had wet herself. A few others couldn’t resist the temptation to toss some of their Cheerios — breakfast is served every day in class first thing — onto the floor.

“Your [uneaten] cereal goes into the bucket,” she admonished, gently.

Through all the controlled chaos, Smith, a former paraprofessional who this year fulfilled her dream of becoming a fully credentialed preschool teacher, was unfazed. There are 19 kids ages 3 to 5 in her class at the Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in North Philadelphia. This is what they do.

Those are some of the everyday obstacles Smith faces. But overall, Smith had made a smooth adjustment to leading a classroom. For most of her career in the Philadelphia district, she worked as a paraprofessional at Bartram High School. This year, after raising three children, she finally fulfilled her lifelong dream to teach and got her certification from Cheyney University through a program that supports district paraprofessionals who want to become teachers and aims to help address the city’s teacher shortage.

One big difference between being an aide and a teacher is that she feels she has more authority. As a teacher, she can suggest names of families who could use food baskets during the holidays, or children who might need a winter coat, and people listen.

“I love that, to be able to advocate for families and children,” she said. “I remember when I was coming up, my teachers and counselors were advocates for me.”

Kahn-Tineta Smith, a pre-K teacher at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in Philadelphia, leads her students on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024.

She attended city schools, first in her West Philadelphia neighborhood and then in the Far Northeast, where she was bused as part of the district’s voluntary desegregation program. She graduated from George Washington High in 1991.

When she was working with high school students as a paraprofessional, Smith said, “I thought that was my calling. But now that I am working in pre-K, I feel the little ones are my calling.”

Teacher adjusts to small-group instruction, stays calm

In her classroom, Smith keeps a calm demeanor. “I go day by day,” she said. But she still faces serious challenges. She’s negotiated a steep learning curve meeting children’s very different needs. Student turnover is also an issue.

On a recent Monday morning, 14 children were in her classroom. Big, brightly colored letters adorned the walls and half a dozen play stations — from computers to an old-fashioned sandbox, from Play-Doh to building blocks — beckon. After finishing their breakfasts, many of the children ran forward for their hugs from Smith and her classroom assistant, Anita Parker. (A few even threw their arms around the new person in the room: a reporter.)

Then they took their spots on the rug to watch a phonics video in which actors sing letter sounds. They joined in enthusiastically as each letter flashed on the smartboard.

By turns exuberant, timidly curious, seriously listening, and bawling their eyes out, the children clamored for attention from Smith and Parker, who has been working in early childhood classrooms since 2002.

The kids’ behavior and attentiveness vary widely. Some of the older students are in their second year of preschool, some are brand new. Two of her students are virtually nonverbal, others are chatterboxes.

Smith has become adept at prodding students who aren’t making much sense to think harder, while offering lavish praise to those who offer a sage observation. “I love that!” is one of her favorite expressions.

In her first days leading the classroom, Smith worried about mastering the curriculum: its focus areas, question of the day, and detailed instructions on how to conduct small and large group activities.

No worries there. Now she has it down, although she’s modest about it. Asked about any continuing challenges, she said she is “still getting used to small group instruction.” Because the children are at such different developmental levels, she tries to group them sensibly, but she also wants to give them choices.

“While we’re focusing on one group, we have to keep an eye on what the other kids are doing,” she said.

Which kids are around to keep an eye on has fluctuated. Since the beginning of the school year, some students left while others enrolled. One joined just last week. A few might need special education services, but so far, only one has been evaluated for a possible one-to-one aide. She is hoping that person will start by January.

“It takes a long time for them to get support,” she said.

“How I deal with it, I go day-by-day.”

By 9:15, Smith was sitting at a tiny desk with a long sheet of paper as students paraded by her one by one to answer the question of the day: “What do you know about the story ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears?’”

Many students hadn’t yet heard the full story, at least not in class. But they had been able to leaf through the book and look at the pictures, and the point of the exercise was for them to use their imaginations.

She wrote their answers down on a big piece of yellow paper, and would go over them later as she read the story aloud to the sea of upturned faces.

Some responses: “There’s a mommy bear and daddy bear and baby bear.”

“The baby is laughing and they want to eat.”

“Goldilocks eats the porridge and the bear says ‘roarrr.’”

Smith praises them all.

Then Smith poses a new question of the day: “What do you know about clothes.” (Questions for each day are dictated by the district’s preschool curriculum, called Teaching Strategies.) It seems to be a big leap from Goldilocks.

But in fact, they are related. One thing you learn about clothes is what size they are. Several children say that you can read tags. And often that means seeing the letters S, M, and L for small, medium, and large.

That’s just like the story of the three bears.

“I love how y’all are putting on your thinking caps this morning,” Smith tells them.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Some families of modest means are being priced out of Pennsylvania’s child care subsidy

2024-12-19T17:38:03+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2024 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. To keep up with early childhood education and Philadelphia’s public schools, sign up for our free newsletter here.

Lauren Burnley loves her job at Children’s Village in Chinatown tending to some of the 400 children, including many preschoolers, who are enrolled in the bustling day-care center. The job doesn’t come with a huge salary, but it pays the bills.

And one of those bills is what she gives right back to the center for the care of her own child, 8-year-old Julian.

Burnley used to get some assistance through the state’s subsidy program intended to help low- and moderate income families like hers with child care and after-school expenses. But when her salary increased three years ago to $50,000 a year, Burnley ran into a problem: Families with one child that earned more than $40,440 annually no longer qualified for that subsidy. So she lost it.

Now, she pays 18% of her salary for child care, a figure that will rise to 20% in January — nearly three times the maximum the Biden administration says that people should pay for child care.

At one time, Burnley was receiving $177 a month from the subsidy. To add insult to injury, she lost it in the middle of a pay period and had to pay the money back, she said.

Her parents are able to help her make ends meet, but the change still cost her: “I had to end up paying out of pocket. It’s a lot of money being a single parent.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro and the state legislature have touted their addition of $62 million more funds this fiscal year into the subsidy program known as Child Care Works.

With a new state budget process beginning in January, advocates and child care providers are calling on the legislature to do even more to help families afford child care. Some providers want Pennsylvania to adjust the eligibility guidelines for subsidies, allow child care workers to access them regardless of income. The advocacy campaign Start Strong PA, wants to inject $284 million more into the program to address an acute teacher shortage.

Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocacy group Children First, cited data showing that while in July 2019 there were 108,000 children in the state receiving subsidized care, just 90,500 receive it now.

“We can’t say for certain that rising incomes are associated with fewer families receiving the subsidy because there is no way to prove that,” Cooper said, “But it is a reasonable explanation because given the extraordinarily low unemployment rates, we should have more than 90,500.”

The state’s Child Care Works program, funded by the state and federal government, reduces child care costs for families based on income and the number of children who need care.

A spokesperson for the Department of Human Services, which administers Child Care Works, said that Shapiro worked with the General Assembly starting in the 2023-24 fiscal year to extend state support. Most significantly, they increased the eligibility limit for people currently in the child care system from 200% to 300% of poverty.

According to federal guidelines for this year, 200% of poverty translates to $40,440 for a parent with one child and goes up to $105,440 for a family of eight. For a family of two, 300% of poverty amounts to just more than $61,000.

That change “is designed to ease a potential cliff effect of losing assistance as a household’s income increases. … Governor Shapiro understands how critical child care is for our families and Pennsylvania’s economy as a whole,” the DHS statement said.

But advocates and providers say that step doesn’t go far enough because it applies only to those already receiving subsidies. For new applicants, the income cap is still 200% of the poverty level.

Burnley, for instance, lost her subsidy several years ago as her income creeped up beyond the 200% figure, before the limit was raised. Now, she makes too much to reapply, even though her income is well below the 300% of poverty threshold for a family of two.

“It’s very inequitable,” said Mary Graham, the director of Children’s Village, where Burnley has worked for 16 years and where her son has been cared for since he was an infant. As things stand now in Pennsylvania, two families could have the same income and one could be eligible for a subsidy and one not, depending on when they accessed the system.

Under Pennsylvania’s program, parents apply to the subsidy manager, the Early Learning Resource Center and are notified if they are eligible, and for what amount. They then can go to any center that accepts the subsidies, and the money is sent directly to the center. The copay that the parent must give the center is based on their income and generally will range from $5 to $75 a week. There are also work and residency requirements to qualify for the subsidy.

Other states are doing more than Pennsylvania to expand eligibility for child care subsidies.

“In the grand scheme of things, the entry point would be 300% of poverty and people could stay on until they reached 400%,” Cooper said. “That would be ideal. Other states have done that.”

Pennsylvania differs from others on child care subsidies

Currently, Philadelphia providers say, parents have had to weigh whether getting a new job or accepting a raise is actually worth it, because a small change in income could price them out of subsidy eligibility.

Damaris Alvarado-Rodriguez runs Children’s Playhouse, which operates several centers in the city. She said that some of her workers have even told her, “be careful with the raises — I will lose my subsidy. I do have families, even teachers, that we have given them a $1 [an hour] raise, or even 50 cents, and their copays go up.”

Some states waive income guidelines altogether if the person works in child care, said Graham, the Children’s Village director, but Pennsylvania has not yet taken that step.

“People are paying more out of pocket because the public systems aren’t supported well enough for those who can’t afford it,” Cooper said. “If fewer families are eligible for the child care subsidy, the system then is eroding in terms of financial stability. This is dramatically affecting pre-K programs.”

Graham said another complication is that most new state and city revenue is targeted to preschool, not child care. Harrisburg has increased funding for children in Pre-K Counts and put more money into Head Start, which is primarily federally funded. And Philadelphia has made higher investments in PHLPre-K.

But the state has not regularly boosted funding for child care, which covers the 3, 4, and 5-year olds needing care for more than five hours a day, as well as costs for infants, toddlers, and after-school care.

“Reimbursement rates for child care, and funding for child care, has not increased as significantly,” Graham said, which results in higher costs for both the centers and for working parents like Burnley.

“Parents shouldn’t have to pay more than 7% of their wages” for child care, she said, citing the federal recommendation

While the costs of running child care programs are high, workers are simultaneously often paid such low salaries that many can make more money working in fast food or retail companies.

Alvarado-Rodgriguez said the current system is taking its toll on both the families and the providers.

“At the end of the day, our families are struggling,” she said. “They’re struggling in accessing subsidies.”

She and others hope these issues will be addressed in next year’s state budget, for which negotiations will start shortly after the new year.

Mai Micsik, the director of early childhood policy for Children First, said some policymakers have “a mindset that other people’s children are not their problem. That is what’s holding us back from innovative solutions to solve the child care crisis.”

The more children who get quality early care, she said, means “we all benefit.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

A new pre-K application, subsidies, staffing shortages: A guide to Philly early childhood education

2024-12-19T17:37:34+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2024 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. To keep up with early childhood education and Philadelphia’s public schools, sign up for our free newsletter here.

Still recovering from the pandemic, Philadelphia’s early childhood education sector is nonetheless adapting to the city’s demographic shifts and changing needs.

Take Hadria León and her four-year-old son Otto Martinez, who arrived in Philly from Venezuela last year. Otto has had a tough time adjusting to his new life in the public schools’ pre-kindergarten program, where he’s experienced sensory overload and struggled with the social aspects of a typical pre-K classroom.

The first school they tried could not provide Otto with the support he needed, León said, but now, he’s enrolled in Alexander Adaire Elementary School’s pre-K program and has had a much better experience.

“They embraced my kid,” León said. “We feel we are treated equally here and we really love Philadelphia.”

Otto is part of a growing number of English-language learners integrating into the school district this year.

In the last decade, the number of district K-12 students who are English learners has more than doubled from 12,492 to 25,350, according to district data. And as of the 2024-25 school year, Spanish is the most common non-English home language among enrolled pre-K students by far, according to district spokesperson Christina Clark.

But as these new families look to enter the system, early childhood programs are strained and having trouble hiring and retaining teachers. The rising costs of childcare are also putting added pressure on families, providers, and pre-K educators.

“There are still a lot of closed classrooms,” said Donna Cooper of Children First, an advocacy group. There is also a mismatch between the need and available space.

“Some centers are busting at the seams,” said Diane Castelbuono, the district’s deputy chief of early childhood education. “Where there is plenty of space, not enough families live in those neighborhoods.”

Though Philly does provide thousands of free, high-quality preschool seats, navigating the system can be overwhelming for parents and families. There are multiple different programs run by the city, state, district, and private providers with different eligibility requirements and funding sources.

Otto Martinez, 4, plays with sand in his classroom at Alexander Adaire Elementary on Wed., Dec. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This year, the city’s trying to simplify the process with a universal application, and step-by-step instructions.

Chalkbeat has created a guide featuring stories that highlight the nuances of our city’s changing early childhood space, and a helpful breakdown of how to use the city’s new universal pre-K application.

We also checked in with first-year preschool teacher Kahn-Tineta Smith to experience what it’s like to enter the workforce this year. And we talked to experts about what our state lawmakers could do to improve access to affordable childcare for families.

Here are some major takeaways from our discussions with childcare experts this year:

Making sure childcare and preschool are ‘high-quality’

Recent data shows while the total child care capacity has declined “substantially” (about 7%) between 2022 and 2024, according to a report and new data from the Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution. But “the proportion of care and number of seats in certified and high-quality programs has continued to grow,” the report said.

“High quality” programs are those that are rated by the state and staffed with certified teachers, they are clean, safe, regularly inspected and the ratio of educators to students is at least one teacher for every ten students.

Jacob Rosch, a senior policy analyst at Reinvestment Fund, found that Philadelphia’s high-quality pre-K programs recovered more quickly in the months and years after the start of the pandemic than their counterparts.

According to Parker’s office, 98% of Philly’s city-affiliated pre-K programs are considered high quality. Though a Children First report determined across all childcare providers in the city, only 36% are considered high-quality.

LaToshia DeVose, program director of early childhood education at Reinvestment Fund, told Chalkbeat her organization is hyper focused this year on supporting those small, neighborhood child care businesses and helping them earn a high-quality designation.

These early childhood providers often operate in areas and communities where there are a lot of low-income families, DeVose said. But economic barriers can stymie these small providers’ efforts to expand their businesses to meet the need in their neighborhoods. This year, she said, her organization is aiming to improve the quality of some 900 seats in the city alone.

“These programs do have potential,” DeVose said and they deserve support “because they are serving children who are some of our most vulnerable.”

DeVose said despite the strength of Philadelphia’s highly-rated preschool programs, the city will only have enough high-quality seats for 50% of eligible children this year. Rosch and his research colleagues have attributed some of the persistent gaps in access to high real estate costs, barriers to community engagement, and persistent staffing shortages among other issues.

Tackling the early childhood teacher shortage

Among the greatest challenges facing the sector is the ongoing K-12 teacher shortage, Cooper said, which is exacerbating the problem in early childhood because those with proper certification can earn more teaching early grades in a school district.

Parker has sought to address that problem by allocating $3 million for signing and retention bonuses for some early childhood teachers who stay in their jobs. Lead teachers are eligible to get up to $2,000 and assistant teachers up to $1,500.

But advocates say more could be done to raise wages and make the job more attractive.

In all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, child care workers “don’t earn a living wage,” said Shaun Elliott, president and CEO of the local YMCA, one of the biggest providers of child care services in the area.

Facing the rising costs of childcare

This year, the state’s 2024-25 budget includes a new tax credit for employers that contribute to their employees’ child care costs, as well as a $17.7 million increase in funding for early childhood education.

But for many families, it’s not enough. In Pennsylvania, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that the annual cost for infant care for a family is nearly $12,000 — more than in-state college tuition in 41 states.

And though the state has tried to chip away at those costs via a childcare subsidy and the incoming Trump administration has floated the possibility expanding the child tax credit at the federal level, advocates say Pennsylvania should look to other states to see what works.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Protesters disrupt Board of Education hearing over teacher discipline, 76ers arena vote

2024-12-13T00:25:55+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education briefly recessed a public hearing Thursday when protesters objected to heightened security, including extra school safety officers, city police, and big written warnings ordering people not to stand in the aisles.

When former teacher Lisa Haver and others defiantly stood in the center aisle holding signs, city police surrounded Haver and other members of the public, insisting they vacate the aisle. Board President Reginald Streater then called a recess and the seven attending board members left the room at 4:31 p.m., about a half hour after the meeting started.

Many of the 42 speakers registered Thursday evening railed against the board members for blocking free speech at a meeting dedicated to public testimony.

This is the second board meeting in two months that board members have left the room to deal with protesters. In October, supporters of suspended Northeast High School teacher Keziah Ridgeway forced the members to leave the room during its regular monthly meeting, at which they take official actions, and continue their meeting elsewhere in the building. Their votes were livestreamed, but people were not allowed in the room where they took the votes.

Thursday’s interruption happened after two students from Palumbo High School tearfully excoriated the board for a vote in November that paved the way for the controversial Philadelphia 76ers arena in Center City, and for “censoring” and disciplining teachers, including Ridgeway, who had expressed pro-Palestinian views.

“I’m ashamed of this board,” Aster Chau, a student at Academy at Palumbo, said at Thursday’s meeting. “Why are you stripping your students of their teachers?”

“Obviously you don’t care what we think,” said student Joey Zhou, also from Palumbo.

The hostile atmosphere continued when another speaker, Kristin Luebbert, pointed out that if the board was concerned about fire safety — the reason Streater had given to keep the aisles clear — it had blocked access to one of the two entrances to the room to the public. She also blasted the board, among other things, for enabling systemic racism.

Haver, a co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools advocacy group who speaks at every board meeting, continued the verbal onslaught. “The Gestapo tactics of this board are a disgrace and they have to end,” she said.

At that point, as a clamor broke out, Streater called the recess and the members left the room. They came back about 20 minutes later, and Streater gave a short statement saying he had determined that “the aisle is not a safe space for people to congregate during an action meeting.”

But Haver and Luebbert didn’t move. Streater repeated: “There are designated places for people who carry signs.”

He repeated his admonition several times. But Haver stood pat, holding her handwritten poster saying “We will always cause good trouble for our students,” a reference to the famous saying of the late John Lewis.

Two city police officers then joined the school safety officers already in the room and several stayed in or near the meeting room as the meeting progressed.

Opponents of the 76ers arena plan felt that the board could have stopped or at least delayed the plan if they wanted to.

Speakers also reiterated pleas to return librarians to schools, getting advocates from the Main Line area and New Jersey to join that campaign.

“You used to be on the board of ACLU, and here you are intentionally trying to quell protest,” teacher Charlie McGeehan told Streater. “This board is one of the most exasperating I’ve ever experienced.”

Haver remained standing in the aisle for the rest of the meeting, which is one of two public hearings a year the board is required to hold.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools receive $16.7 million for bathroom, roof, other repairs at 7 buildings

2024-12-10T22:27:37+00:00

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Philadelphia schools are getting nearly $17 million from the state to repair and upgrade seven aging buildings, officials announced Tuesday.

The money will pay for everything from fixing bathrooms that don’t work to patching up roofs and auditoriums. It’s part of a statewide $175 million grant program in the 2024-25 state budget for school building upkeep, said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, one of the legislators who fought for the funding.

“Tangible action and financial investments like this signal to young people that they are important,” said Mayor Cherelle Parker at an event held at West Philadelphia’s Martha Washington Elementary School, which was built in 1929. “We can’t have students, teachers and administrators going into buildings with leaking roofs and unreliable bathrooms.”

The investment comes at a time when the district has embarked on a facilities planning process that officials warn could result in the closing of some school buildings, including those that are costly to maintain and under-enrolled — a description that fits Martha Washington, located on 44th street near Lancaster Avenue.

Current enrollment at Martha Washington is just over 200 students, in a building that takes up most of a city block.

Philadelphia’s share of the grant, $16.7 million, will fund eight renovation projects in seven schools, including Martha Washington. Several of the school’s 17 bathrooms are nonfunctioning, said Principal Lakeisha Patrick.

“This is an old building, but a gem in West Philadelphia,” she said, adding that staff and students “deserve a nice environment.”

But the $16.7 million represents a small fraction of the need in Philly: some estimates have put the total cost to repair and upgrade schools anywhere from $5 billion to nearly $10 billion.

State and local governments jointly fund schools’ operating costs along with the federal government. But state aid for capital expenditures like school construction and repair is a separate matter.

The state has a program called PlanCon designed to help school districts fix and modernize school buildings, Hughes said. But funding halted for that program in 2015, even though schools all over the state need help to meet 21st century needs, Hughes said. He described a visit he took with a colleague to a rural school in western Pennsylvania a few years ago that was built during Reconstruction, but is still in use.

“We went into the sub basement, and the backup generator was literally a car engine,” he said.

Students’ lack of access to working, clean, well-stocked bathrooms was also a key issue in Monday’s City Council hearing. Oz Hill, the district’s interim deputy superintendent of operations, told council members the district has eight plumbers servicing over 2,000 school bathrooms.

Other grants will go to bathroom renovations at George W. Childs, window replacements at James G. Blaine, and roof replacements at Cayuga and Francis Hopkinson elementary schools. Edison High School will get nearly $900,000 to upgrade the ventilation system in the culinary section of its career and technical education program.

Nearly half the amount, $8.3 million, will be used to repair the auditorium and the roof at Overbrook High.

In an interview after the event, Hughes acknowledged that the district is in the process of reevaluating its building needs on a path to rightsizing and efficiency. The state facilities grants program “in some respects is a bridge” to the more permanent plan, he said.

School officials on Monday held a virtual public meeting to emphasize the work it is doing to maximize the environmental safety of each school building.

Victoria Flemming, executive director of the district’s office of environmental management and services, and other officials explained how each school building is inspected twice a year, with every room and surface examined for hazards such as friable or loose asbestos, mold, and lead in paint and drinking water.

These inspections comply with the mandates of the federal Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, known as AHERA, Fleming said. They came up when Philadelphia had to close three schools in early 2023 due to damaged asbestos.

Room-by-room inspection reports for 297 school buildings, some of which run to hundreds of pages, are available for the public to access both online and in paper copies at school offices.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania changes culturally responsive teaching guidelines, raising concerns

2024-11-27T21:30:17+00:00

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The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s recent decision to rescind guidelines about culturally relevant teaching practices has some Black educators in Philadelphia worried about the impact on teacher recruitment in a district where the student body is already far more diverse than its mostly white teaching force.

Earlier this month, the state settled a lawsuit with a conservative advocacy group by agreeing that prospective and practicing teachers will no longer be required to adhere to guidelines that included developing awareness of how their own “unconscious biases” could affect their approach to teaching and their expectations of students.

The settlement didn’t ban cultural competence training, and the department promptly issued new – albeit optional – guidelines that preserve much of what existed before. The new guidelines also expand the recommended training for teachers to include trauma awareness and technological competencies.

But Black educators in Philadelphia say the settlement agreement has them concerned their state is moving backwards even as members of the incoming Trump administration have threatened to withhold federal aid from districts that engage in any initiatives that could be construed as promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as DEI, which is a frequent target of the right.

Crystal Edwards, principal of the W.D. Kelley Elementary School in North Philadelphia, sees the state’s move as yet another attack on learning about and appreciating the history of African Americans – a situation that is only likely to get worse during a Trump administration, she said.

“Teachers don’t have to learn to respect Black children, and America voted for that,” she said.

Aliya Catanch-Bradley, principal of Bethune Elementary School, said that educators must “make sure the history and cultures of students we serve are in the literature and books they read and in the media that surrounds them so they can see themselves in the educational context.”

Leaving culturally-responsive teaching practices up to individual districts “is unfortunate in a state that has so many small districts and a high incidence of book banning of international and multicultural texts,” Catanch-Bradley said.

Sharif El-Mekki, head of the Center for Black Educator Development, said the Pennsylvania settlement could be an unfortunate harbinger of what to expect during a second Trump administration.

“It’s the same playbook they use all around the country,” he said, “they try to erase progress.”

However, districts such as Philadelphia say they will continue to build culturally relevant practices into their professional development programs. Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the district. said in a statement the old guidelines were “never officially released to school districts to implement.”

Despite the settlement, Braxton said “our curriculum and professional learning will continue to be focused on the implementation of high quality instructional resources to accelerate student achievement … and being inclusive of the students that we serve in Philadelphia.”

Conservative group calls settlement a ‘triumph’

The settlement reached last week was a result of an April 2023 lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of three school districts and several parents and students. The suit challenged the state’s “Culturally-Relevant and Sustaining Education Program Framework Guidelines,” known as CS-RE, which were adopted in November 2022 after a long campaign by the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium.

CS-RE was meant to require school districts to actively consider “what does it mean for underrepresented groups in the state to feel more included in educator systems,” El-Mekki said.

But the lawsuit alleged that the mandated guidelines were part of a “woke” curriculum and violated teacher First Amendment rights. In its complaint, the plaintiffs said that making teachers aware of their “unconscious biases” was a “highly ideological belief” and represented “compelled speech.”

The Thomas More Society described the settlement as a ‘triumph.”

Conservative groups have often gone to court to force changes in education policy, including a campaign to ban any explicit DEI initiatives in school districts and to limit affirmative action in college admission.

The settlement agreement also comes as Philadelphia — and the rest of the country — struggles with a teacher shortage crisis. Philly schools have hundreds of positions still unfilled on a permanent basis months into the school year and another 1,100 teachers with emergency certifications, meaning they are not fully qualified in the subjects or grade levels they are teaching.

One of the drivers of this crisis has been a steady decline in the number and proportion of teachers in Philadelphia who are Black. More than 50% of city students are Black, but less than a quarter of teachers are, and just 4% are Black men – although that number is twice the national figure of 2%.

El-Mekki said that among Black males who go to college, education is among the most popular majors. The problem is that inequities in K-12 education have impacted Black males to a greater degree than other segments of the population. A recent study by the Schott foundation found that while more Black students are graduating from high school, fewer are attending college, especially males.

That, he said, is due in part to how they feel they are treated during their own education.

“There is a reason” that more African Americans don’t go into teaching, El-Mekki said. What they experience during their own schooling makes them less likely to enter the teaching profession themselves. And the attrition rate among Black teachers is higher than for other groups, he said.

“That speaks to how educators of color experience their colleagues and supervisors,” he said. “We all have to take collective responsibility, and not just assume people of color aren’t interested. There are reasons, and we have to be mindful of how we listen and how we act.”

The Center for Black Educator Development has been working for more than a decade to increase the number of Black teachers in the country. The group has run its annual conference in Philadelphia since 2015.

Culturally-responsive teaching is valuable for everyone, Black educators say

Training about cultural differences is valuable for all teachers, not just those who are white. Makiah Burroughs, who is Black, grew up in Philadelphia and attended mostly charters; El-Mekki was her principal at Mastery-Shoemaker. Burroughs said she’s seen the need for culturally responsive teaching firsthand.

During her own schooling in Philadelphia, she said, most of her teachers were white. “A lot of the teachers quit,” she said. “They were overwhelmed. They couldn’t understand the kids.”

Fortunately, she said, her own teacher education at the University of Virginia included training on being culturally aware, which she said was invaluable “in helping me be the best teacher I could be.” Most of the children she worked with during her student teaching were white and from rural areas.

“It was a big process for me, putting all that effort to align with those students in Virginia and being able to understand them culturally, socially, and emotionally,” she said.

Now, Burroughs is a freshly-minted educator, teaching literacy skills to second graders at Mastery Mann Elementary School in West Philadelphia. “To come back to Philadelphia and for culturally relevant training to not be a requirement my state of Pennsylvania seems crazy to me,” she said.

She and other Black educators are wary of what may happen during the second Trump administration.

Ismael Jimenez, the Philadelphia’s director of social studies curriculum, said he feared the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress could try to use a threat to withhold federal education aid as a “cudgel” on districts that maintain DEI initiatives or continue to promote culturally relevant teaching

The Pennsylvania case making culturally relevant teaching optional, along with a newly emboldened federal government “might create an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship” among educators here, he said.

“The culturally relevant piece, even the symbolism of that history being taught, is a threat to many within the society,” Jimenez said. The “triumph” here, he said referring to the Thomas More society’s statement, seemed to be the right for teachers to avoid being self-aware.

While promoting equitable teaching practices is part of the Philadelphia Board of Education’s Goals and Guardrails, Jimenez noted, the city is “still venturing into the waters” of culturally relevant education.

It did so after discovering that “one of the major concerns of parents and community members” was a lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of some people who work in the district’s schools.

“In a city like Philadelphia half the demographic is Black students,” said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, Philadelphia’s chief of curriculum. “We can never not teach about who they are. It’s going to make it difficult if there are no spaces to learn about the students you are responsible for educating,”

Edwards, the Kelley principal, did hit on a note of optimism: “We have a long way to go, and we’ve come a long way, and it’s important to acknowledge how many victories we have won.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board vote clears way for city council action on 76ers arena plan

2024-11-22T02:02:12+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education took the city’s first step Thursday night in a controversial process to build a new $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers.

By a vote of 7-2, the board voted to approve an agreement that would remove the plot of land proposed for the arena from an already existing tax incentive designation. This vote clears the first hurdle in the arena-building process, even as advocates and opponents continue to pack City Council hearings raising questions and concerns. The agreement now moves to the City Council for consideration.

The board went ahead with the vote despite member ChauWing Lam urging a delay so members could fully consider the implications. She and Board Vice President Wanda Novales opposed the resolution.

“I don’t believe the benefits presented sufficiently consider the needs of our students,” Novales said. “I feel that we need to advocate for a more comprehensive approach to the community investment and student support.”

After the vote, several people in the audience shouted out, calling the board members “cowards.”

“Shame on you,” members of the public cried.

The vote does not seal the arena’s fate. If the City Council ultimately votes down the proposal in the face of mounting opposition, the board’s action on Thursday would be moot.

According to state law, the school board is required to vote on the designation before the council holds a public hearing on the same resolution.

If the arena proposal moves forward as the 76ers and Mayor Cherelle Parker intend, the team would avoid paying property taxes on the new arena altogether. Instead, they’d make annual direct payments in lieu of taxes to the city and school district — in amounts far less than what they would have paid in property taxes.

This is what is done now for the owners of the other sports facilities in South Philadelphia, including Lincoln Financial Field (where the Eagles football team plays) and Citizens Bank Park (home field of the Phillies baseball team).

In addition, as part of a separate agreement, the 76ers say they will fund several community programs, including part of Parker’s year-round school initiative.

The 76ers have negotiated “a sweetheart proposal that guarantees them a state-of-the-art facility at the expense of Philadelphia’s children,” said Lisa Li of the advocacy group Asian Americans United, which opposes the arena plan.

School board members sought to make it clear Thursday that they were not voting to approve the arena, but to remove the proposed arena land from an existing Tax Increment Financing (or TIF) district designation. TIFs are commonly used by states and localities to incentivize local economic development programs.

“The decision about whether to approve the development of the arena is entirely City Council’s. It is not our decision,” board member Joan Stern said.

But several speakers felt differently, with one characterizing the resolution as “giving the green light” to what a few called the “destructive” arena and urging the board to vote it down.

In a presentation before the board, Sam Rhoads, executive vice president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, said that the board’s action “is in no way a vote for or against the arena.” He and city finance director Rob Dubow explained that the district would receive $2.8 million in the first year of payments in lieu of taxes compared to $550,000 paid now in property taxes from businesses on the site.

The proposal to build a new 76ers basketball arena at 10th and Market Street in Center City has polarized the city. Proponents — including Parker, who appointed or reappointed every member of the school board — argue it will create thousands of union construction jobs and economically reinvigorate that section of downtown. It also would provide a place for student graduations, high school basketball games, and other events including theatrical productions and musical concerts.

But critics of the arena plan, including all major neighborhood groups that border the proposed site, claim the arena would devastate the vulnerable nearby Chinatown community and lead to dangerous traffic patterns, in addition to depriving the school district of much-needed tax revenue at a time when it is considering closing schools.

Arena proponents say the district will benefit from the deal, but critics say the math doesn’t add up

A key part of the arena proposal is the Community Benefits Agreement that, over three decades, will contribute $50 million for programs, including $7 million for extended-day, extended-year schooling, Parker’s signature education initiative; $1 million in internships; $1.5 million for youth basketball leagues; and $3 million in free game tickets allocated to the School District of Philadelphia.

Arena supporters say that activities in and around the facility will increase overall tax revenue to the district and city from the PILOTs and Use and Occupancy tax revenue, and the liquor-by-the-drink tax, which is allocated to the district. Over the 30 years of the agreement, the city is projecting the school district will receive $153 million in revenue from the arena.

But arena opponents argue that since schools are much more dependent on property taxes than the city, district leadership could have lobbied for more money.

City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who opposes the arena plan, called the community benefits deal “a bad agreement,” in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Brooks said even as the district is preparing to close schools, “our city is being sold out by this proposal.”

Brooks called the arrangement a “$400 million tax break” over the next 30 years. This is also not the first controversial tax break program the board of education has approved that ultimately reduces the amount of tax money the district receives in an effort to spur development. The board has no taxing power of its own and must rely on City Council and the mayor for its share of city tax dollars.

According to calculations by tax experts and academics working with a coalition of advocacy groups who oppose the arena plan, the 76ers would have contributed $400 million to the school district over the next 30 years if they paid regular property taxes on the arena. Under the current arena proposal, they say the 76ers would instead pay $50 million to the district as a PILOT.

Some of those same tax experts told Chalkbeat the 76ers’ projections for the cost of construction and their projected revenues are hard to parse and could end up costing the city $1 billion.

“The numbers that the 76ers and their consultants have presented are just fiction,” said Domenic Vitiello, an associate professor of city and regional planning at The University of Pennsylvania. He said the city should seek “real numbers” before approving a plan that reduces the amount of taxes paid to the school district.

Some speakers agreed. “Tonight’s presentation from the city was opaque at best,” Philly teacher George Dougherty testified to the board Thursday. A vote for the measure “is for billionaires and against our students,” Dougherty said.

Community activists say the arena proposal would negatively impact the school district

A group of Philadelphia public school parents are also circulating a petition opposing the arena because of the impact they say it will have on families.

“At a time when several of our Philadelphia district schools are in danger of closure, and many are in need of significant repairs, such as electrical upgrades, air conditioning, and asbestos removal, it is irresponsible and immoral for our city government to consider what amounts to a $1 billion tax break to 3 billionaires who do not even live in Philadelphia,” the petition reads, referring to the 76ers owners.

City Council members are considering nearly a dozen pieces of legislation regarding the arena project in the coming weeks. Now that the board voted to approve the TIF agreement, Council will continue its public hearings through Dec. 3, with a final meeting scheduled for Dec. 12.

If the proposal is approved, demolition for the arena is projected to start in 2026 with construction slated to begin in 2028.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools get state grant to plant more trees

2024-11-12T21:43:12+00:00

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Lauryn Lawson, 10, a fifth grader at Logan Elementary School in Northwest Philadelphia, likes trees and plants. So does her classmate Lawrence Butler, 11. They both take every opportunity they can to go outside and help tend the small raised bed vegetable garden on the school’s front lawn.

For one thing, planting and harvesting peppers and other vegetables “is more fun than being in the classroom,” Lawrence explained.

He also likes learning about what he eats and how they grow, like “broccoli, carrots, and lettuce,” he said.

On Tuesday, Lawrence, Lauryn, and other students were front and center with important city and state officials to highlight a half-million dollar grant to the Philadelphia school district for the planting and tending of trees on its property.

The $500,000 to the school district is part of $79.4 million in state grants to organizations and government entities that will help fund 307 environmental and recreational activities in 57 of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties. Philadelphia is receiving $5 million of that money for 17 projects.

The district’s grant will pay for the planting and upkeep of 600 trees on 30 school campuses, most of which are located in what is described as areas where it is important to focus on “environmental justice” due to poverty and other conditions that impact the quality of life. The money will also fund community engagement activities around the issue of conservation.

“We’re working to bring trails and parks close to people,” said Cindy Adams Dunn, the state secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, at the ceremony Tuesday to highlight the grant. “We try to make a difference in communities.”

The goal of her department and of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro, she said, is a park within 10 minutes of every state resident.

Philadelphia has a 10-year strategy to protect its tree canopy called the Philly Tree Plan. As one of the largest landowners in the city, the district is a big part of that initiative. The grant also involves several partners, including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Trust for Public Land, and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Parks and Recreation commissioner Sue Slawson recalled how she grew up in a part of West Philadelphia where some streets had trees, and others did not. This grant will allow her department to “educate youth on the importance of natural land,” she said.

Logan Elementary School, named after its Northwest Philadelphia neighborhood, is in a mostly rowhouse, low-income community where trees are often few and far between. The school is across wide and busy Lindley Ave. from Wakefield Park, one of the smaller pockets in Philadelphia’s extensive Fairmount Park network, the largest urban park in the country.

“We’re prioritizing tree planting in areas that need it the most,” said Matt Rader, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. State Sen. Art Haywood told the students that investing in trees at their school is testimony to their importance. “This investment of trees in your neighborhood shows that Black or white, rich or poor, we all have dignity,” he said.

Logan is also on the district’s list to get its asphalt playground updated and improved, a project in which the district is cooperating with outside partners, One is the Trust for Public Land, which is helping with Logan’s playground. Work will start in the spring and the new playground should be ready in two years, said the Trust’s Owen Franklin.

In her remarks, Dunn noted that the initiative will also help Philadelphia prepare for the country’s 250th anniversary celebration in 2026.

The Commonwealth and the country are divided, she said, not just by politics, but by access to green spaces, open sky and the great outdoors.

“The one place we can all come together is parks and trails,” she said. “Those are the places where we can reknit society and rebuild a united Pennsylvania. It gives me some hope.”

After the speeches, Lauryn and Lawrence and several other students helped officials plant a new tree on school grounds.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

What it’s like teaching the 2024 election in classrooms nationwide

2024-11-05T19:51:05+00:00

This story was published in collaboration with Headway, a new initiative at The New York Times. Chalkbeat and Headway have been posing questions about the presidential election to educators and high school students since February. We have heard from nearly 1,000 students and 200 teachers across the nation.

Inside a North Philadelphia high school, a class of 11th graders talked frankly about the most controversial aspects of the 2024 election: abortion, Project 2025, the prospect of the first female president.

Nearly 650 miles away at a middle school in Indianapolis, an eighth grade teacher avoided talk of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, holding a mock debate about cellphones and cafeteria food instead.

As the presidential election took over classroom conversations this fall, Chalkbeat and Headway at The New York Times listened in across the U.S. as students considered the stakes of the race and, for some, their own roles as first-time voters.

What we found was a mosaic of creative approaches from educators like Charlie McGeehan, a social studies teacher at the Academy at Palumbo, a Philadelphia high school. He’s challenged his students to debate one another on whether voting is a right or a privilege — or something altogether different.

The “voting is important” message tends to fall flat, he’s found, “unless you actually have them learn about it and come to that message on their own.”

Here’s a look inside four of the classrooms that Chalkbeat and Headway visited.

Charlie McGeehan, a social studies teacher at the Academy at Palumbo in Philadelphia, challenged his students to debate whether voting is a right or a privilege.

Crosstown High School, Memphis, Tennessee

The AP U.S. Government students were given a simple but unusual assignment: sip Pellegrino, nibble on cheese and crackers, and schmooze.

It was part of teacher Kat McRitchie’s election simulation, her hands-on approach to showing students the inner workings of democracy. This fall, each student took on a fictional role and acted out the pivotal moments in a presidential campaign, from primary speeches all the way to counting votes.

“They get the chance to see the interaction of individuals and institutions and to see how power flows through the process,” said McRitchie, a 21-year educator. “They feel like they have an inside look at how elections work.”

'They feel like they have an inside look at how elections work,' Kat McRitchie said of her class's simulation exercise.

On this September day, her students were acting out a less traditional focus of a campaign lesson: D.C. networking party. But before they could tuck into the snacks, McRitchie challenged the students to consider a few questions. What would their characters — conservative and liberal candidates, campaign managers, media, and representatives of special interest groups — want to talk about? What would they want to get out of the other attendees?

“At this party, you all are going to shmooze and hustle each other,” she said. “At events like these, you can see power moving.”

Her students still track the presidential race, analyzing the real-life debates and stump speeches and conventions. “We’re able to see parallels,” said Carolina Calvo, 18, who chose the role of Democratic campaign manager. “It’s clearer how this works in the real world.”

John Bush, 18, was tasked with playing the liberal presidential candidate, Gov. Chip Rhodes. Bush plans to vote for the first time and credits the simulation with broadening his perspective.

“I think when things are taught in the classroom, it can be from a greater variety of sources than I wouldn’t interact with just by myself,” he said. “And maybe helps against a little bit of polarization.”

Materials viewed by students in Kat McRitchie's class in Memphis.

Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School, Philadelphia

Inside a 7:30 a.m. 11th grade U.S. history class, most students aren’t familiar with the differences between Republicans and Democrats. They don’t know the parties’ symbols, a donkey and an elephant. And only three out of a dozen students who showed up one recent September day said they would vote, if they were old enough.

History teacher John Winters leads a discussion at Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School in Philadelphia.

Enter John Winters, known as Brother John — and, because this is Philadelphia, a lesson involving cheesesteaks.

“Democrats,” he told the students, “tend to generally have a similar point of view of the world, and Republicans have a similar point of view politically as well.” He then projected side-by-side pictures of a cheesesteak and Buffalo wings. “Some people are gonna be cheesesteak people, and some like Buffalo wings,” he said.

To help students understand where they fall, the class drills down into political ideology. Winters gave students a series of statements to rate from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” including:

“The government should use taxpayer’ money to provide free day care for all parents.”
“The U.S. government should grant reparations to all Black people for the enslavement of Africans in this country.”
“A woman should be able to have an abortion without anyone else’s permission.”

Winters then rolled out a bulletin board with a chart titled “political spectrum,” and students placed pink sticky notes where their answers landed on the spectrum. (Most fit on the left, with two students leaning conservative.)

Students placed sticky notes on this bulletin board inside Winters' room to show where they fall on the political spectrum.

Winters has taught for five years at Dobbins, an 800-student technical school in the Philadelphia ZIP code with the lowest household income. Its student enrollment is 89% Black, with most of the rest being Hispanic or multi-racial.

While this area is solidly Democratic, its usually reliable voter turnout rates have slumped in recent elections. This is a huge concern for Democrats, as President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by just one percentage point in 2020.

The 10 most common questions teenagers asked about the election

Young voters are expected to play a pivotal role in the outcome of the race, particularly in some swing states like Pennsylvania. And while Winters’ students may not think they care about politics or feel they align with one of the two major parties, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about the issues. Discussions grew heated at times in Winters’ 11:30 a.m. session of the class, after one young man shrugged off abortion as a 1 or 2 on a scale up to 10. A young woman vehemently objected.

“I don’t put it as 8, 9 or 10. I’d put it higher. Like 15,” she said. “You’re not gonna let anybody be in charge of our country, in charge of a woman’s body, you can’t do that. Men already think they can overpower women.”

Eleventh grader Ra'Niyah Marion works on a questionnaire while classmates engage in a class discussion in Winters' class.

Westlane Middle School, Indianapolis

It was hours before the vice presidential debate inside Kevin Melrose’s eighth grade social studies class. But there would be no talk of J.D. Vance or Tim Walz.

Social studies teachers at the school avoid instruction about national politics in order to remain nonpartisan, said Melrose, per direction from the district. Washington Township, where Westlane is located, is a politically and socioeconomically diverse district, Melrose notes, even though Marion County as a whole is a blue dot inside red Indiana.

And while the state did not pass a divisive concepts law that would have limited teachers’ abilities to discuss race and other topics, the scrutiny and charged rhetoric of the last few years have led teachers to tread carefully. It’s a common stance: Fifty-eight percent of K-12 teachers surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center this summer said they do not plan to talk about the election in their classrooms. Of those respondents, 22% said they were worried about parent complaints, while another 19% didn’t think discussions could be respectful.

Kevin Melrose’s eighth grade social studies class at Westlane Middle School has focused on teaching democracy through student council elections.

Melrose, the chair of the school’s social studies department, has focused on teaching democracy through student council elections. All eighth graders break into groups of four — a president, vice president, and two campaign managers — and hold classroom elections with campaign posters, videos, and in-class debates.

The winning candidates from each classroom face off for the role of eighth grade class president, who effectively leads the student council.

Students created posters for their races in Melrose's eighth grade class.

Despite the moratorium, students are paying attention to state and national politics. Some students even watched the presidential debates to get a sense of what to do as candidates. And Melrose doesn’t stop them from discussing issues that directly affect them.

Many of the students’ presidential platforms include typical school election fare such as promises of better cafeteria food and changes to the dress code. This year, many also promise to convince Westlane to loosen cellphone restrictions. Indiana this year passed a law requiring schools to ban cell phones during instructional time, but Westlane has gone further and required students to put phones in their lockers at the beginning of the day, worrying students who want easier access to their phones in the event of an emergency, like a school shooting.

The winning candidates from each classroom face off for the role of eighth grade class president, who effectively leads the Westlane student council.

“The world has changed,” said one candidate, Travis Smith. “There’s more shootings and stuff like that than at any time before.”

Other students challenged the candidates on how, exactly, they would enact their policies. If the cellphone ban is a state law, they ask, what can an eighth grade class president really do about it?

But, Melrose pointed out later, the student council has had big wins. Members successfully opened up field trips to more students, and a few days after the debates, the eighth graders were due to head to D.C.

East Bronx Academy for the Future, Bronx, N.Y.

In Christine Montera’s 11th grade U.S. History class, the past is used to explain the present.

Montera, social studies department chair at the grades 8-12 school, recently explored with her students elements of the distant past that are still being felt today: the ways regional identities developed in colonial America and the formation of the electoral college in 1787.

“My goal in teaching the election in history class is to help students understand that we truly did not fall out of a coconut tree into a current election cycle,” Montera said, referencing a viral quote from Vice President Kamala Harris, “and that all of it is based on the context and history of our country.”

Teens told us their thoughts on the election. Most expect it to have a big impact on their lives.

This background helped her students answer two urgent questions on Tuesday: Is the electoral college democratic? And does it help or hurt democracy today?

She pulled up an electoral college map of the 2020 presidential election and asked her class, “What do you notice about this map?”

Students chimed in that it looked like the Trump supporters were clustered in the middle of the map, and that there were different numbers around the map. Montera asked what those numbers meant, and students tried to guess before Montera explained that the number of electoral votes a state receives is based on their population size.

Jannatul Urmi, 16, noticed that most of the southern states were red.

“Good, what do you think that says about their regional identity?” Montera asked.

“Maybe they’re more traditional. They’re more religious, so that’s why they’re voting for Donald Trump,” Urmi offered.

The more the students learned about the electoral college through a video and then a worksheet reinforcing what they’d learned, the more questions they had.

“Can the electoral college be corrupted?” asked Arisnoely Vivaldo, 16.

“Why does it still exist if so many people are against it?” Urmi wondered.

“What happens if the elector doesn’t follow the majority?” asked Alexander Cataquet, 16.

“They’d go to jail, right?” Urmi responded to him.

Then the class returned to one of Montera’s guiding questions: Is the electoral college helpful or hurtful to democracy? Many students settled on hurtful, critiquing that individual votes don’t have equal weights in each state and pointing out the possibility of corruption if an elector goes rogue.

Christine Montera's class at East Bronx Academy for the Future strove to answer two questions: Is the electoral college democratic? And does it help or hurt democracy today?

When asked what stuck with them from Tuesday’s lesson, students said they were offered different perspectives, which in turn changed the way they think about the election and the role different people play in it.

“I never realized how much the background of a region affects the way society is now,” said Vivaldo. “Like certain social norms and ideas have passed down throughout the generations.”

Thinking about these regional identities made some students reflect on how they have come to their own political beliefs.

“I feel like I wasn’t too big on political stuff, but I feel like knowing more of the background helped me understand and have my own opinion,” said Emma Alvarado, 16, “and not just listen to what everybody else thinks around me.”

On election eve, ‘Walz’ and ‘Vance’ debate the issues at Philadelphia’s Masterman

2024-11-04T23:33:23+00:00

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On the eve of Election Day, JD Vance and Tim Walz engaged in a hard-hitting debate about a wide range of issues, from abortion to affordable health care to housing.

Asked about abortion, Vance shied away from a direct answer, saying, “There are a lot of different opinions on abortion, and that’s ok. That’s what we want. We want disagreement in our country.”

Walz shot back: “JD Vance thinks the state legislature knows more about a woman’s body than she does. This shows he doesn’t trust you with your own body, and if he doesn’t trust you, you can’t trust him.”

In this debate, the vice presidential candidates were actually students, and the exchange took place at Philadelphia’s J.R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School – the district’s most selective and one that always shows up near the top of “best high schools in America” lists.

When it was finished, the few hundred students in attendance cast their votes in a straw poll.

More about that later.

The mock debate held Monday morning culminated a weekslong process – and a decadeslong tradition. Steven Gilligan’s Advanced Placement government students divided up into camps more or less at random, chose who would represent the candidates, researched their positions, and lobbied their classmates. Gilligan, a social studies teacher, has been doing this exercise for elections since 1998, and not just those for president but for mayor, congress, senator, governor, and even district attorney.

Ray Eggerts, who portrayed Democrat Tim Walz, and Sarah Zdancewic, as Republican JD Vance, debated for an hour before several hundred schoolmates, covering just about every issue of importance in the campaign. They answered sophisticated questions developed by the AP government students on 10 topics including inflation, tariffs, foreign policy, drug trafficking, climate change, the crisis at the border and the influx of fentanyl into the U.S, disinformation and free speech, abortion, housing prices, and affordable health care.

Unlike in some exchanges between the actual candidates, there were few platitudes or superficialities here.

One back-and-forth between the student debaters, on housing and Kamala Harris’ proposal to give $25,000 to first-time home buyers, went like this:

“Minnesota, the state that I lead, is number one when it comes to millennial home ownership,” said Eggerts as Walz. “The solution to the housing crisis is for the federal government to help people and construction companies make first time homes for people, right? The more houses we have, the more the cost goes down.”

Responded Zdancewic as Vance: “When you give people $25,000 when buying a house, it is not actually going to decrease the cost, but make the seller increase their prices.”

On the issue of free speech, Eggerts said while it is crucial and in the Constitution, it is dangerous to leave “unchecked” disinformation that leads to denials of past election results or “an attack on the Capitol or violence against immigrants.”

Zdancewic countered: “It concerns me that you’re saying that people should be prevented from saying the things that they believe just because you disagree with it.”

Gilligan decided the mock debate would focus on the vice presidential candidates rather than former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Having a student try to portray Trump would have been too distracting, he said. He didn’t want to put anyone in the position of presenting what could be interpreted as a caricature.

“We wanted to get beyond personalities and focus on the issues,” he said. “We saw that both candidates seemed reasonable in the vice presidential debate and that it was more sophisticated.”

Students were diligent in their research, Gilligan said, but not many volunteered to actually play the candidates. Eggerts got Walz, and Zdancewic got Vance, based on a coin flip.

Over the quarter-century he has been doing this, race and gender never mattered in choosing which students would play the candidates, Gilligan said. “During the debate between Clinton and Obama in 2008 [during the Democratic primary], Hillary was a boy and Obama was a girl,” Gilligan said.

Both Eggerts, who lives in Northern Liberties, and Zdancewic, from University City, said that their own personal views were secondary to attempting to understand and master the positions of their assigned candidates.

Still, “it’s an interesting exercise to represent someone you disagree with,” said Zdancewic. Diving into the policy debate and trying to rationalize the positions gave her a deeper understanding of issues, she said.

Eggerts said that he mostly agreed with Walz, but he also had some differences with him, including on the Israel-Hamas war and climate change. He also said he wished the Harris-Walz ticket would get firmly behind Medicare for all.

“Honestly, I lean more left than Walz,” he said.

The two teams also prepared short campaign ads. The one for Walz leaned heavily on the “Coach Walz” dynamic, with him running on a football field, while the ad for Vance was all about being a statesman.

In their closing statements at the debate, the two students got creative with alliteration. “No matter the issue you care about, Harris-Walz are the ones with the right policy … When compassion calls, vote Tim Walz, when freedom calls, vote Tim Walz, when progress calls, vote Tim Walz,” Eggerts declared.

Invoking inflation, the border, and drugs, Zdancewic said, “I implore you, take the right stance, vote for yourselves, vote for JD Vance.”

The Masterman campaign and mock debate is the last vestige of a Student Voices program funded by the Annenberg Center for Public Policy, which started in the 1990s and was designed to get more young people engaged in public policy and current issues.

After the debate, students voted in a straw poll, and 74% went for Walz, Gilligan said. Some students, however, said that how they voted didn’t necessarily reflect their real views, but rather whether they or their friends worked on the Walz or Vance teams.

Despite all of their research, neither Eggerts nor Zdancewic, who are both 17 years old, can vote Tuesday. Both said they were disappointed by that.

“I wish I could,” said Zdancewic. “I’m really upset I can’t.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia Academies evolves to help students ‘pick their direction’ for career and college

2024-10-30T11:00:00+00:00

Robert C. Williams’ great-grandmother, who raised him, made sure he went to school.

“My story was that I always liked going to school, I had to go to school,” Williams recalled.

But he “got in with the wrong crowd” and started losing interest in his courses because he wondered where they fit into his future.

By his own telling, he was on his way to dropping out of Edison High School in 1980 when he got back on track to graduate and his life path was set by a program that started in the school district just over a decade before: Philadelphia Academies, Inc.

Williams went to the school-within-a-school for applied electrical science, which happened to be the first one established in the city. Williams went on to a decades-long career as an electrician and electrical engineer.

“It was the best thing they could have done for me,” he said.

Philadelphia Academies was founded in the school district in 1969, amid concern that students of color were being shunted disproportionately into non-academic, “vocational” courses. Since then, the organization has walked a fine line between keeping students interested in school and giving them practical skills, while not seeming to limit their horizons. But over the last several years, the organization has refined and expanded its mission to meet changing workforce needs.

As it did when the group started, Philadelphia Academies focuses on preventing students from dropping out. Its 9th Grade Success Network provides support in 24 high schools to concentrate on the needs of students in their freshman year, when the slide toward dropping out often begins. And its programming is still rooted in particular careers and trades.

But now, Philadelphia Academies, which serves about 6,800 students, also stresses the importance of going to college, and clearly defines its role as giving students options while connecting their education to the real world. It’s also evolving away from its self-contained model and towards working in 32 schools through career and technical programs and the ninth grade success network.

“The mission is more now about how to make school a place where students want to attend” through interesting, practical courses, said Christopher Goins, the organization’s president and CEO. “They pick their direction.”

The initiative recently released data showing that in the high schools where Philadelphia Academies has a presence, the percentage of Black and Latino ninth graders on track to graduation is increasing at a greater rate than at high schools where the program is not located.

The group has also branched out into areas that some people might not associate with career-oriented programs. Earlier this month, the organization received a roughly $399,200 state grant to support its career pathway program focused on early childhood education at Parkway West High School.

Also in October, the City Council adopted a resolution from Councilmember Anthony Phillips commending Philadelphia Academies.

Nazirrah Terry, a Parkway West junior who lives in Strawberry Mansion, applied to the high school specifically because of the early childhood program. “I want to work with children,” she said, adding that she has “a bunch” of younger siblings.

Terry aspires to eventually work in, or even own, a day care center.

Program expands its reach, career options for students

Philadelphia Academies — or PAI — was established 55 years ago in response to an alarming dropout rate, especially among Black boys. It did so at the urging of civic leader Charles Bowser and Lee Everett, an executive with PECO, the city energy company, as a strategy to keep students on track to graduation.

For most of their history, the academies operated as schools-within-schools that emphasized practical skills in fields including construction, health care and hospitality. It also formed partnerships with local industries so students could be more connected to the world of work.

Of the 32 career and technical education programs supported by PAI, eight of them are now middle schools. That’s because the organization also wants to plant the seed of career awareness in younger students while also assuring that they enter high school prepared for the more rigorous coursework, especially in math.

“We expanded to middle schools so they don’t come into 9th grade off track,” Goins said.

In the current PAI model, students visit employers and participate in workshops on career development, financial literacy, resume writing, and interviewing.

Over the years, there have been academies focused on banking, law, and aerospace engineering. Programs supported now range from culinary to cybersecurity, construction trades to tourism, health to sports marketing, horticulture to film and video.

While the program focused on careers in early childhood education might be relatively recent, it does hearken back to the organization’s roots by evolving the focus on Black boys from dropout prevention to establishing “a robust pipeline to support more Black men becoming educators,” Goins said.

Roughy 4% of the teachers in Philadelphia are Black men; the nationwide figure is around 2%.

Parkway West Principal Will Brown said if you had told him when he was age 12 that he would grow up to be a teacher, he would have laughed. But that’s what he became, after he had a high school internship working with young children. Now he heads the 220-student school.

He envisions Parkway West’s early childhood pathway starting to prepare students for teaching at all levels, as well as for other careers that involve working with children and families.

Parkway West High School Principal Will Brown works with students in the early childhood academy.

“Not everybody wants to be a teacher, but if they decide to be a counselor or a social worker, we want them to have foundational knowledge of young people,” Brown said.

Kingston Wright, an 11th grader at the school, said he “didn’t know the school had early childhood education until I got here,” he said.

But now, based on his experiences learning about young children, he has decided he wants to go into “some sort of teaching.” Over the summer, he had a six-week internship at a child care center. “I like working with [children],” said Wright, 16. “That influenced me.”

Junior Jay Bush, also 16, said he wants to be a history teacher. “This class helps me understand kids, what they need,” he said.

Data suggests Philadelphia Academies helps students with coursework

Recent data provided to Chalkbeat by PAI indicates that the support offered by the program could be helping students with their overall academic course load.

For the last school year, 68.8% of ninth graders in the district were on track to graduate in schools getting PAI support. That was 2.2 percentage points higher than in those schools for 2022-23, according to the organization’s analysis.

The school district says ninth graders are “on track” if they have earned at least a C in classes in the four core subjects — math, science, English, and social studies — plus one other course. The district says students who are on track at the end of ninth grade are more than twice as likely to graduate.

At 66.7%, the on-track figure for Black boys was 5.7 percentage points higher than the year before, the figure for Black girls was 5.8 percentage points higher at 71.3%.

The overall on-track rate for all district high schools without the academies program is 77.9%. That figure includes selective admissions schools, and it has dipped recently.

Kathryn May, PAI’s assistant director, works with the 9th Grade Success Network. She said that at Jules E. Mastbaum High School, the on-track percentage has gone up by 19.7 percentage points to 69 percent since 2021.

“We’ve seen a lot of practices that have worked at one school adopted by other schools,” May said.

May coaches Amy Foster, Mastbaum’s assistant principal for ninth grade, and studies data to see which students need extra support so “we can put interventions in place,” she said.

Foster said the Philadelphia Academies team helps her work with teachers whose students are chronically failing their classes to see how they can adjust their teaching to help more students pass classes like Algebra 1.

As for Robert C. Williams, he was grateful for his career in the electrical field, but always felt something was missing. He was working at the Marriott Hotel engineering department when he took the day off and caught an episode of “Oprah.” The subject, he said, was “finding your passion.”

“I remembered when my great-grandmother would ask me what I wanted to be, I would always say, ‘a teacher,’” Williams recalled.

So, while still working, he enrolled at Community College of Philadelphia, then Temple University, then Lincoln University. He earned two degrees in education. For years, he went on interviews for teaching jobs, but didn’t get hired.

Eventually, he got a phone call from the Philadelphia district. There was an opening for an electrical teacher at Mastbaum.

He just started his seventh year there.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org .

Report finds alarming level of teacher attrition in Philly, suggests solutions

2024-10-23T10:00:00+00:00

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A new report by a coalition of local education-focused groups has found an alarming level of teacher attrition in Philadelphia district and charter schools, a trend especially true for teachers who are nonwhite and have fewer than three years experience.

Describing an “urgent need to to accelerate efforts to retain newer teachers and teachers of color,” the report, compiled by the Philadelphia Talent Coalition and led by Elevate 215, lays out several strategies for improvement. They include higher starting salaries, helping new employees pay off their student loans, more mentoring and coaching of new teachers, and building “welcoming and supportive” school cultures.

“The reason why this is so important is that research shows most of the time teacher attrition has a negative impact on student learning,” said Ed Fuller, the Penn State professor whose research contributed to the report’s conclusions. “It’s harder to build strong, safe and welcoming communities when you turn over people quickly.”

Schools rely on building relationships of trust between students and teachers and students “need to know there is somebody in school who cares about them, and that is hard to establish when you lose teachers all the time,” he said.

Turnover also results in high levels of emergency certified teachers – those who have not completed all the coursework and requirements to become fully qualified in their field. In the Philadelphia school district, one in five teachers are not fully qualified; in charter schools, the percentage is closer to one in four.

The release of the report comes as the district and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers are negotiating a new contract. In August, the two sides decided to extend the current contract for one year.

In a statement, PFT president Art Steinberg called recruitment and retention of teachers “a long-standing problem for the district, which shouldn’t need another report to know that improving pay, work environment and professional support are the solutions. It’s not yet Halloween and we’re already seeing teachers and staff quitting out of frustration with their working conditions, which tragically comes at the expense of students deserving of stability and consistency throughout the school year.”

He added he was “heartened” that key district leadership “appear to understand that stronger compensation as well professional development and support must be a priority in our members’ new labor contract.”

The PFT is not an official member of the talent coalition.

Among the report’s findings:

– Of teachers hired in 2017, just 55% were still working in 2022-23 in district schools, while more than half of those working in charter schools left by then.

– The percentage and number of teachers of color in Philadelphia public schools are increasing, but they leave at greater rates than white teachers.

– While two-thirds of the teachers employed in Philadelphia work for the school district, as opposed to in charter schools, charter schools employ a higher proportion of teachers who have just one to three years of experience. Nearly 1,800 of the 3,200 people in their first three years of teaching in Philadelphia during the 2023-24 school year worked in charter schools.

– Charter schools have a slightly higher percentage of teachers of color than district schools.

– The pandemic had a big effect on teacher retention in Philadelphia. While teachers for the most part stayed during the virtual year in 2020-21, attrition spiked the year after that, especially among new teachers, those teaching in charter schools, and nonwhite teachers.

The data also dispel the myth that teachers who leave Philadelphia do so for better-paying jobs in better-paying suburban districts. By contrast, most of the teachers who left their jobs in 2022-23 left education altogether.

“We hear that teachers leaving are going to the suburbs, but that’s not true to what the data says,” said Scott Gaiber, Elevate 215’s deputy chief of talent initiatives,

in an interview. “It’s important to debunk that notion. The main issue is people leaving the teaching profession entirely.”

Teachers of color also make up a shrinking percentage of people enrolled in teacher preparation programs, and they leave these programs at higher rates than white enrollees do, the researchers found.

“There are a lot of things [the district and charter schools] could do immediately,” Gaiber said, including determining “how to allocate resources and funding” more specifically to teacher retention strategies.

The report includes descriptions of some initiatives already in place. The Mastery Charter network gives stipends to teacher leaders, for instance, and the school district’s latest contract provides retention bonuses of $1,200 to teachers who returned this year, and $2,500 over two years to those who stay in particularly hard-to-staff schools. It noted that the district does reimburse teachers $600 for school costs and that Esperanza Charter School offers $8,000 to those earning their certification.

Michael Farrell, the district’s chief learning officer, was not available for an interview, but said in a statement that the report provides “practical tools and data-backed strategies that will … accelerate our efforts in creating a stable and diverse workforce.”

Fuller analyzed attrition data, while Research for Action parsed trends by race and emergency permits. The next step is to analyze the data by school to track the movement of teachers within Philadelphia. That study will help determine which schools generally retain teachers and which see lots of staff instability.

Elevate 215, formerly known as the Philadelphia School Partnership, was founded in 2011 with a mission to expand “high-quality seats” in city schools. PSP raised money and gave grants to schools, mostly but not exclusively to charters. It courted controversy; critics felt it was mostly interested in charter expansion and support of private schools at the expense of the district. It was rebranded as Elevate 215 in 2022.

The Philadelphia Talent Coalition includes the district, several charter schools and charter networks, including Mastery and KIPP, as well as the William Penn Foundation, LaSalle, Temple, and St. Joseph’s universities, Community College of Philadelphia, Teach Plus, Children First, United Way, and the City of Philadelphia.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org .

New English curriculum shows science of reading’s promise but can leave Philly teachers frazzled

2024-10-17T21:26:12+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district’s demanding new English language arts curriculum is getting mixed reviews from teachers.

One of their major complaints is that they must spend a lot of time making sure they can use provided materials in their lessons. They also say there is not enough class time to help lagging readers, and that they haven’t been adequately trained to teach the new curriculum.

At the same time, teachers do not dispute its emphasis on the science of reading, which is now generally accepted as the best method for literacy instruction. There are also indications that teachers are seeing students engage better with reading materials and demonstrate stronger literacy skills.

The new curriculum is part of an ambitious instructional overhaul the district launched last year, when it spent $70 million in pandemic aid on new math, English language arts, and science materials. About $25 million went to the new reading curriculum from EL Education, including Expeditionary Learning for grades K-8 and Study Sync for 9-12. Officials hope this helps students improve on sobering academic outcomes: On last year’s state exams, only about 34% of Philadelphia’s students in grades 3-8 scored proficient in reading.

The curriculum shift also represents the latest chapter in a long-running tug of war in Philadelphia between the value of imposing a regimented, standardized curriculum, and the power of giving teachers leeway to be creative and innovative.

But as with any big initiative in school districts, the devil is in the details.

“It tells you to use [certain] cards or pictures, but they aren’t provided,” said Shelly McKeown, a second grade teacher at the Lowell Elementary School in Olney. “You have to make tons of copies and cut things out yourself.”

Worse, she said, in her school, there aren’t enough books for all the students: “There are only five or six copies of each text.” That means several students share a single book — not great for encouraging emerging readers.

Aly Boyd, a literacy specialist at McCall Elementary School in Queen Village, said she favors the science of reading, which requires systematic instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness as well as promoting fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

But while some of the curriculum makes sense, Boyd said, “overall it’s not cohesive. The tools are not aligned to the objectives. I wish I knew why.”

Many teachers, she said, “are scrambling” to prepare and to cover everything in the time provided, especially when they are facing children with skill levels all over the map.

“You always go back to teacher knowledge as the best tool as long as they know the content area,” Boyd said. “But I don’t think this curriculum makes it easy for teachers to learn.”

In a statement responding to questions from Chalkbeat about the new English curriculum, district spokesperson Monique Braxton said the district has “been thoughtful in providing support” to teachers.

She cited 12 paid — albeit optional — professional development sessions in the spring, an optional summer institute on the science of reading, and additional “mandatory and voluntary” sessions since the school year started.

In addition, she said, the district provides coaches and learning specialists to help teachers.

While the EL Education curriculum is grounded in the science of reading, “texts are more complex than teachers are used to, and the amount of content within each lesson is very dense. It can be a steep learning curve,” said Laura Boyce, the executive director of Teach Plus PA, a teacher advocacy group that supports lessons based on the science of reading.

The teachers’ guide for the curriculum, Boyce noted, is well over 100 pages long for a six-week unit.

New curriculum represents latest pendulum swing for teachers

Through much of the 2010s, teachers could choose from several different programs for reading instruction, Boyce said.

But a 2020 study by the Council for Great City Schools found that district curriculums did not “put enough emphasis on foundational skills in the early grades,” among other deficiencies. About three years ago, city teachers created a homegrown reading curriculum. While some people liked this “by Philly, for Philly” approach, it was never formally evaluated for quality, Boyce said.

When the district adopted the slate of new instructional materials last year, Superintendent Tony Watlington warned people not to expect that the EL Education curriculum would lead to instant improvement. But he did tout its emphasis on the science of reading, and district officials said they had done their research.

“Before we decided on this, we engaged stakeholders, teachers, community members, and asked what they were looking for,” said Dr. Nyshawama Francis-Thompson, the district’s chief of curriculum and instruction, in an interview.

In contrast to the era when Philadelphia teachers often took the lead on choosing or developing curriculum, Mary Williams, a professor of education at La Salle University, said via email that she has heard from teachers that the lessons are too scripted.

“This program is not going to be successful unless the teachers get some flexibility in how it is implemented and get more professional development support and coaching,” she wrote.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers went so far as to conduct a recent survey of teachers on the curriculum, and presented a rundown of the most common complaints to district officials.

Some 800 teachers responded. Among the top concerns were too little time to cover the material, not enough training, and insufficient tools to help students who fall behind, said PFT President Arthur Steinberg.

“We saw there was some unrest with it, people weren’t happy, so we wanted to nip it in the bud and get more information from as many members as we could,” Steinberg said.

The union wants to help create a response to teachers’ concerns “so people in Harrisburg don’t call us failing anymore,” Steinberg said, referring to legislators who decide how much state education aid to send to Philadelphia and other districts. (The PFT has not shared detailed results from the survey publicly.)

State lawmakers are making their own push to get more Pennsylvania school districts to change how they teach reading.

Earlier this month, the Senate adopted a bill passed previously by the House that encourages districts to adopt curriculums based on the science of reading, although it doesn’t mandate them to do so and doesn’t provide corresponding funding.

It would authorize the Pennsylvania Department of Education to create a state literacy council that would develop lists of acceptable curricula, and help schools assess students’ reading skills, among other things.

“This gives kids a fighting chance,” said Rep. Ed Neilson, a Democrat from Northeast Philadelphia, during a House debate on the bill. “My son got lucky to learn how to read. This bill will help kids like mine.”

Boyce said advocates will push Gov. Josh Shapiro to include $100 million in his proposed budget for next year dedicated to this initiative.

Curriculum gets good reviews for older grades, student engagement

For all the issues with the new curriculum, some teachers say their students are benefiting.

“My students are more engaged, they are able to answer comprehension questions more easily, they have a bigger vocabulary in their speech,” said Kristyn Kahalehoe, a kindergarten teacher at John Hancock, a K-5 school in the Far Northeast.

While the rollout hasn’t been perfect, she said her students “are able to answer questions about the text” while also having “a higher retention of letter names and sounds.”

At a seminar last month at Drexel University on the science of reading, first grade teacher Kinu Aneja told attendees that she thought the new curriculum was “strong” due to its emphasis on phonics and because it dictates the need “to meet students where they are.”

But with sometimes as many as 30 students in the class at varying stages of development, she said a teacher can nevertheless get “overwhelmed.”

And the district hasn’t necessarily provided everything teachers might want to use with the new curriculum.

For instance, it includes a “tools challenge” in which students learn about tools and also work on their motor skills. Among the tools needed are spatulas, eyedroppers, and tweezers. But the district did not provide those things, expecting that teachers would bring them from home.

District spokeswoman Christina Clark did say that part of the curriculum is “supplemental” and not mandatory.

Kahalehoe said her students are doing well with the new curriculum but acknowledged that she may have it easier than those in higher grades. “I wouldn’t have the same perspective as a seventh grade teacher,” she said.

Aly, the reading specialist at McCall, said she considered the curriculum to be much stronger in the higher grades than in the lower ones, when phonics is most important.

The new curriculum does not provide a second grade teacher easy access to kindergarten-level phonics tools, for example, that could be useful for students still at that stage of development.

For help, teachers could “click around online,” she said. But that, she said, “is very time consuming. … It’s frustrating.”

Aneja, who spoke at the Drexel forum, is in her fourth year teaching in the district, and her third at Bache-Martin Elementary School in Fairmount. In a subsequent interview, she stressed that kids come to classrooms from different backgrounds and at different academic levels. Adapting to the new curriculum is a “hard adjustment,” she said.

“The big takeaway is that in theory the curriculum makes sense, but it requires a lot of prep and studying on the teachers’ part and right now that’s hard to implement,” Aneja said.

Still, Aneja has high hopes the new curriculum will ultimately benefit students.

“At the end of the year, we’ll be able to see a fuller picture,” she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly museum’s school lunch exhibit shares insights into history of nutrition, childhood

2024-09-30T18:37:54+00:00

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Pizza. Square pizza. Mac and cheese. Mac and cheese and pretzels. Cheese breadsticks with marinara. Triple decker PB&J sandwiches — with a hidden slice of whole wheat bread in the middle.

These were some of the answers posted Friday night on a board at the Science History Institute in answer to the question: “What was your favorite school lunch?”

The interactive exercise is part of the new exhibit at the museum called “Lunchtime: The History of Science on the School Lunch Tray.” Eating lunch at school is something that just about every person in the country has experience with, but rarely thinks about as a source of insight about America’s development.

The exhibit about how school lunch developed as a staple of American life says much about the U.S. and its attitudes towards compulsory education, society, poverty, nutrition, and children. It demonstrates how Philadelphia was key to the history of school lunch, and the crucial role of pioneering women scientists in promoting a healthier America through “home economics.”

The extent to which students can access free school meals could be on the ballot this year. Democrats will likely seek ways to expand it, while Republicans will probably search for cutbacks.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, has touted the expansion of school meals while he’s been governor. Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which is expected to guide former President Donald Trump’s second term if he wins, proposes shrinking federal nutrition programs.

“The history of school lunch is the history of women in science and women in the labor movement,” said Jesse Smith, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs and creative content, during a talk to about 200 attendees at the exhibit’s opening reception.

The number of states that offer free school meals to all students has grown in recent years. Nine states did so as of last year.

The museum highlights Sarah Rorer, the daughter of a chemist but who was self-taught in chemistry and physiology. Rorer was a driving force behind the late 19th century push for compulsory education, arguing that schools kept students “from the harms of factory work,” and protected them “from the real dangers children faced in a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing United States.”

While “home economics” eventually got a reputation as being a vocational course in schools primarily for female students, it was actually a crucial movement started by women trailblazers in the late 19th and early 20th century that set the foundation for many advances, including the development of nutritional guidelines.

“Philadelphia was always a pioneer in school lunch programs,” said Teresa Fleming, the school district’s interim chief operating officer.

In 1894, Philadelphia was among the first cities to offer meals to students thanks to visionary women like Emma Smedley, who led the city, and the nation, in professionalizing the school kitchen.

Trained in home economics, Smedley wrote a book in 1920 as a guide for other cities about Philadelphia’s efforts. “The person in charge should have business training and acumen,” she wrote, “as well as scientific knowledge of foods and should be endowed with social vision, understanding both the business and broad educational aspects of the work.”

By 1920, 300 lunch employees served food to 50,000 children each day in 46 of Philadelphia’s 213 public schools.

Other women, like Ellen Richards, focused on the fledgling science of nutrition. To counter the then-popular notion of eugenics, which said selective breeding would improve the human race, Richards instead promoted “euthenics,” studying how habits around food and eating would lead to human advancement.

The National School Lunch Program was established by the federal government in 1946 to offer free or reduced-price lunches to students who qualified based on income. But there was often a stigma to accepting free lunch, and many students would skip it rather than signal to their classmates that they qualified based on their families’ income.

“People take school lunch for granted,” said Nada Mays, a dietitian. “And there is a little bit of a taboo toward school lunch.” Over the years, people have been critical of the actual nutrition the lunches provide, and students have been known to call them “gross.”

Such views, she said, are “extremely problematic for those children who might have food insecurity and don’t have other options but are still embarrassed to eat lunch in school.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal School Lunch Program sets nutritional guidelines and it is paid for by a combination of federal, state, and local funds. But sometimes funding and guidelines get caught up in politics.

In the 1980s, for instance, President Ronald Reagan’s administration famously suggested that to save money the government could classify pickle relish as a vegetable — although the incident is commonly remembered as involving ketchup.

Meera Siddharth, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said funding is not the only issue. While schools work hard to follow the USDA guidelines, sometimes just scheduling lunch can be an issue, with some students having lunch periods at 10 a.m. or earlier.

“Sometimes kids skip lunch, or the school lets them go out, so they don’t always get a healthy lunch at school,“ she said.

In part to counteract this, a group of students has set up Rebel Ventures, a West Philadelphia nonprofit working with the Netter Center at the University of Pennsylvania that created a healthy multi-grain fruit breakfast cake called the Rebel Crumble.

“That is a good thing, making something that is palatable to their peers,” she said. “A lot of kids are food insecure in Philadelphia, there are food deserts, and it’s hard not to buy processed foods.”

In 2014, Philadelphia started offering free lunch to all students. In addition to negating the stigma associated with those meals, officials determined it was cheaper to do this than to process the paperwork from the more limited program.

Today, all Philadelphia students can get free lunch and breakfast in school. Feeding those 116,000 students “is a monumental task” that 925 food service workers “undertake every day,” Smedley said.

Rhyan Fernandes, an eighth grader at Southwest Leadership Academy, said that her school serves “chicken and rice and beans and peas and sloppy Joes and all that type stuff.” While her schoolmates like it, she said, “I never get in that line. I don’t know. I’m picky.”

If she could redesign her school menu, she said she’d like better cheesesteaks (the ones they already serve are not up to her standards) and more variety for breakfast like eggs, bacon, and grits. “I would love that,” she said.

The exhibit runs through January.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Philly’s Central High is named a national Blue Ribbon school for a record third time

2024-09-23T22:29:49+00:00

Just two years into the tenure of its first Black and first woman principal, historic Central High has been named a national Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education — for a record-setting third time.

Central is the country’s second oldest high school in continuous operation. Along with Masterman, it is also among the city’s most selective. It is the only school in Philadelphia to win the award this year.

Students and staff with tubes of confetti gathered to celebrate on the south lawn of the school at Broad and Olney as Kate Davis, whose title is president rather than the principal, made the announcement.

“This is an achievement that recognizes the continued academic excellence of Central High School,” Davis told the crowd. “This is an achievement that celebrates the dedication of our faculty, our students, and our families.”

Confetti in red and gold, Central’s colors, soon filled the sky.

Davis, an alumna of Central who was named its president in April 2022 at age 34, is expecting a baby. She will be going to Washington, D.C., in early November to formally accept the award, three weeks before her due date. Her parents were among those in the crowd Monday.

“This is only one small moment in our school’s storied legacy,” Davis said.

To cheers, Superintendent Tony Watlington said the achievement reminded him of basketball legend Michael Jordan, whose Chicago Bulls teams had two separate “three-peats,” or strings of three consecutive championships.

The Blue Ribbon program honors high-performing, often innovative schools, especially those that show progress in closing achievement gaps based on student race and economic status.

Central was one of 356 schools nationwide given the honor this year and one of four in the Philadelphia region. Private and charter schools are also eligible.

Founded in 1836 as a school for boys, Central was first named a Blue Ribbon school in 1987, just four years after the school started admitting girls as the result of a lengthy court battle. It was honored again in 2011.

Since the Blue Ribbon program began in 1982, 15 Philadelphia district schools have been given the honor. Six besides Central have been designated twice, and five of those are high schools with citywide or special admissions criteria. The other is Penn Alexander elementary school, which has a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. Central is the first city school to be cited three times.

The last Philadelphia district school to get the designation was the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush in 2022.

Schools don’t apply for the honor. Someone unknown in the Department of Education nominates schools, to which officials send “a comprehensive application about your instructional program, extra curricular programming, mission and values and beliefs,” Davis said. “You engage honestly in a dialogue that goes on for months.”

The last requirement is to meet all the state’s targets for standardized exams, which Central did this year.

The latest information on the district website on student test scores shows that in 2022, just 42% of Central students scored proficient on the state math test — a huge drop from its usual near-perfect figures. District spokesperson Christina Clark said this was because most ninth graders starting high school after the pandemic year chose not to take the state Keystone algebra test that year, as they usually do at Central. They have until 11th grade to sit for the test.

Davis said that this year’s test scores, which will be released to the public soon, will show a huge rebound.

The latest honor also comes after the district moved to an admissions system that puts all qualified students in a lottery, prioritizing students from traditionally underrepresented ZIP codes, rather than relying largely on principal choice. And it is still struggling with significantly increasing the proportion of Black and Latino students to more closely match districtwide enrollment.

“We know as young people came back from COVID, you see real challenges with standardized exams,” she said. “My school has been impacted just as other schools have, but we continue to see improvements.”

Jake Benny, a Central junior who last week was named as an alternate student member of the Board of Education, was among those cheering the announcement.

“It just shows that Central is back, better than ever,” he said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

With closures on the table, principals defend their schools before Philly board of ed

2024-09-20T15:52:25+00:00

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A parade of principals extolled the virtues of their schools Thursday to the Board of Education, moments before it took action to ramp up a comprehensive facilities study that is likely to result in at least several school closures across the city.

“We need you to … champion how great our public school system is [and] what active support can be provided to build student enrollment,” said Robin Cooper, the president of the principals’ union, the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators. “We need you to properly promote and cheer us on.”

Principals made up nearly half the 30 speakers who addressed the board, and several others were on the waiting list.

They outlined how their schools had robotics clubs, dance and drama programs, bands and choirs, even with small student populations. One rushed out of breath from a back-to-school meeting to address the board. Another pointed out that the district once deliberately invested in small middle and high schools as a learning strategy.

Despite the pleas, board members voted unanimously on two contracts totaling nearly $5 million and a resolution that will set the facilities process in motion.

“School systems, educational and community needs shift over time,” said Board President Reginald Streater, who noted that Germantown High School, his alma mater, closed in 2013, 100 years after it was founded, along with more than 20 other schools in a wrenching process. “We are clear that in order to be successful in achieving our goals, we must provide our students and schools the conditions they need to be successful. The facilities planning process is the next step in working towards these goals.”

Superintendent Tony Watlington said the new comprehensive facilities review – phase 8 of an initiative that started a decade ago – will optimize building utilization in a way that would offer more pre-kindergarten sites, allow the expansion of arts and physical education programs, bolster career and technical education programs, and generally improve academic rigor.

“We have a number of schools in the district that are significantly overenrolled and a number of facilities significantly underenrolled,” Watlington said. “We will address both of these issues in a facility plan that is focused on student achievement and in a manner that supports the community.”

Among other outcomes, Watlington said, he hoped the plan would allow all eighth graders access to algebra. It is currently available to students only at selected schools, highlighting inequities within the district. Algebra is a requirement for admission to Masterman, the district’s most selective high school.

Watlington said he planned to appoint a project team to oversee the process and promised that the district would hold several virtual and in-person listening and learning sessions, in collaboration with the mayor’s office, during October through December. A final plan will be completed between February and the fall of next year, he said.

Most, but not all, of the principals who spoke were from schools with low enrollments that presumably would be candidates for closure.

Loud cheers followed principal Sabrina Feggins’ plea for her school, Kearny Elementary, which has fewer than 200 students. Principal Aliya Catanch-Bradley of Bethune, a K-8 school with just over 400 students, dashed from a back-to-school night to give her testimony.

“We are just as good as any other school,” she said. “We are a school that takes back all of our children after all our charter school colleagues send them back to us … we don’t deny our students, we would never.” Her school, in a low-income North Philadelphia neighborhood, has just over 400 students.

Will Brown, principal of Parkway West, noted that schools like his – a small, experimental “school without walls” that dates back to the late 1960s – were founded specifically to be small and include real-world experiences into student learning.

“Rightsizing is a corporate term,” he said, adding that his school is among the “fastest improving in the state,” with test scores that have climbed above their pre-pandemic levels. “Our students are achieving and moving forward to become city leaders.”

Crystal Edwards, principal of WD Kelley school, recounted how student test scores, and student and teacher attendance have improved in her school, which has 222 students. Quoting Shakespeare, Edwards concluded, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.

While he didn’t testify at the meeting, Arthur Steinberg, the president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, issued a statement warning that this round of facilities planning “must not repeat the mistakes of the past,” and that the district must fully consult each school community before any decision is made. “Any attempt to repeat prior mass school closures … will be met with fury by the PFT,” Steinberg said.

The resolution passed by the board says that district-operated schools have a capacity of 180,000 students, but currently enroll 116,000. In addition, several district buildings that are now rented to charter schools have a capacity of nearly 20,000 students, but enroll less than 14,000.

The contracts were for DLR Group for nearly $4.5 million for planning services and $430,000 with Brownstone PR and Insight Education Group for community engagement.

Defending teacher Keziah Ridgeway

Several speakers spoke up against the district’s removal from the classroom of Northeast High School social studies teacher Keziah Ridgeway after the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia filed a complaint against her.

The complaint accused Ridgeway of antisemitism and a threat of violence, citing a social media post that included an emoji of a gun.

In emails sent to the Northeast community about the reassignment of a staff member, presumably Ridgeway, Northeast Principal Omar Crowder cites “statements made on social media that may violate school district policy.” The emails do not mention any classroom behavior or assignments.

Ridgeway has said she has been the victim of harrassment and threats against her in response to her pro-Palestinian views. In one classroom assignment, she asked students to compare a modern oppressed group’s use of art to Black spirituals. At a Black History Month assembly, she highlighted a video made by two students of a podcast about Palestinian art.

“I have witnessed a concerted effort to accuse teachers in the District, including Ms. Ridgeway…of endorsing anti-semitism and violence because of statements of sympathy for Palestinians and work with students in her classroom,” said retired English teacher Dina Portnoy. “These accusations are without any merit.”

The Board of Education also swore in new nonvoting student members Charles Rinker, Kenzy Ahmed, and Jake Benny.

Northeast student Hazel Heiko called Ridgeway “an amazing teacher who changed the way I act and think,” and called her removal a form of censorship. City Council member Nicolas O’Rourke submitted written testimony to the board calling the charges against Ridgeway “baseless.” State Representative Chris Rabb also submitted a statement saying “we must not allow students or educators to be attacked for discussing critical global issues.”

Without speaking about the Ridgeway case, Watlington announced that the district is launching an initiative with Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, along with the organization Facing History and Ourselves, to promote a “dialogue of respect” in classrooms around contentious political issues.

Clarification Sept. 23: This story has been updated to clarify the circumstances of Northeast High school teacher Keziah Ridgeway’s reassignment.

Correction Nov. 15: This story has been updated to clarify which groups the district contracted with for community engagement.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

School closures ‘likely’ in Philadelphia in next few years, school board president warns

2024-09-17T22:03:16+00:00

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Several Philadelphia public schools will “likely” close over the next few years, the city Board of Education president said Tuesday, stating that the school district’s leadership is “done kicking the can down the road” regarding school facilities planning.

President Reginald Streater told reporters the board intends to vote on several items at its Thursday meeting that would commit the board and the school district to involving community input in figuring out how to upgrade the city’s aging school buildings and how to use them more efficiently.

“The time is right” to do this now because of the district’s improved financial situation, Streater said.

Streater said the idea is to figure out “the best way possible so that we can best deliver our resources to our students,” while involving community members and city leaders. “It’s not just ceremonial. It is an actual document that will be signed and will bind the board to a process to include the community,” he said.

As district enrollment has shrunk with the rise of charter schools and stagnation of the overall city population, several Philadelphia’s school buildings now sit mostly empty. Others have been closed for extended periods of time due to costly renovations or environmental hazards. Streater said closures, co-locations, and “repurposing” buildings will be part of the facilities plan: “We have schools that have 200 students in them, or 100 students in them.”

Today there are just under 120,000 students in district-run schools, with another 64,000 in charter schools. In 2000, there were over 205,000 students in 261 district schools, according to district data.

Streater said the board, in cooperation with the district and Mayor Cherelle Parker’s office, will include plans for school closures as part of the final step of its process to produce a facilities master plan.

Since he took office, Superintendent Tony Watlington has been promising to produce such a plan that would set a timeline and budget for repairs and renovations to Philadelphia’s deteriorating school buildings. Watlington repeatedly pushed back the deadline for completing such a study, as did his predecessor, William Hite.

The district has some recent and controversial history with school closures that grew out of facilities planning. In 2013, the district initially planned to close 37 schools and relocate or make other changes in dozens more, based on a report from an outside consulting group that included minimal community input. At packed and often emotional meetings across the city, residents pleaded that their schools be kept open. Ultimately, 23 schools were shuttered.

“We do understand this is going to be tough work … what I think the board can say is this will not be like 2013,” said Streater, who attended Germantown High School, one of the schools that closed in 2013. “We will engage the community … to make sure we give students what they deserve.”

As temporary school closures due to flaking asbestos, inadequate air conditioning, and other structural issues have plagued the district, City Council members led by Education Chair Isaiah Thomas have ramped up the pressure on Watlington to produce a facilities plan. Watlington told the council in April it could take an additional two years to finalize it. He had previously promised the plan would be ready by June 2024.

“Our school facilities are one of our city’s most pressing issues and families across the city have been sounding the alarm for years about it,” Thomas said in a statement to Chalkbeat Tuesday. “While this crisis has a hefty price tag, I am glad to see it getting the attention it deserves.”

Streater said despite delays, the facilities planning process work “didn’t stop.” He said for the past two years, the district has worked to write a five-year strategic plan, create a “swing space” plan for temporary school closures due to environmental hazards, and begin the work of building a “data warehouse” for facilities information.

Information about school facilities hasn’t always been especially easy for the public to access. The district took down a previous website that housed information about facilities earlier this year because it was “not owned by the district.”

Meanwhile, on the first day of school this year, all 63 schools without air conditioning dismissed students early due to excessive heat concerns.

Prior estimates have found it would cost nearly $8 billion to fully upgrade and modernize the district’s buildings, which are on average over 70 years old.

There are two resolutions on the agenda of Thursday’s board meeting about facilities plans.

The board plans to contract with an as-yet-unnamed communications consultant for “community engagement and facilitation support”, and with another unnamed firm for “facilities planning services.”

The resolutions for these services do not have a price tag attached.

This story has been updated to include an additional comment from Board of Education President Reginald Streater.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Parents navigate latest changes to Philadelphia high school admissions

2024-09-16T17:01:53+00:00

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To help her deal with a situation that’s “a little frightening” to her, Karimah Lynum has her spreadsheet.

On one tab, Lynum lists the five selective public high schools in Philadelphia that her eighth grade daughter Kendi wants to attend, detailing their admissions requirements and other details about them like their racial composition and graduation rates.

Another tab lists Kendi’s standardized test scores. Now a student in a private school, Kendi has taken several of these tests to increase the chances that her scores on at least one will qualify her to apply for her top choices.

A third tab lists private schools that are affordable and might match her daughter’s interests, just in case Kendi doesn’t win the lottery — in a real, not just metaphorical sense — and get an offer from a public school she wants to go to.

For Lynum, finding the right high school for her daughter practically amounts to a full-time job.

“It seems like a simple process,” Lynum said, “but it’s not.”

Starting now and running through February is school selection season in Philadelphia, when eighth grade students apply to high school. Since the lottery system for high schools began just a few years ago, the district has tweaked the system several times, and the process has provoked criticism and even anger from students as well as educators. Getting the high school admissions system right has been one of the bigger challenges of Superintendent Tony Watlington’s tenure, which is now in its third year.

In talking about her journey, Lynum noted that she is fortunate enough to afford options beyond public school, and can make time to do research. She worries about those who have fewer resources and less time to devote to understanding the ins and outs of the system.

“It must be really hard for them,” she said.

The window for students to apply opened Sept. 13 and runs through Oct. 23. Students will receive offers and wait-list decisions in January.

Officials will hold town halls and application assistance labs to help parents and students through the process. Schools will also hold their own open houses, and a high school fair is scheduled for Sept. 27 and 28 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

In 2021, the district changed its selection process in an effort to make it more equitable and “anti-racist.” Instead of a process that had been heavily dependent on the judgment of principals, students who met basic qualifications for selective schools would instead be entered into a lottery.

Officials also sought to open opportunities to a wider range of students, especially those living in neighborhoods impacted by multi-generational and concentrated poverty.

To do that, it gives preference to students in several ZIP codes which historically rarely sent students to highly selective schools like Central and Masterman. Students from those prioritized neighborhoods are automatically accepted to their top choice if they meet all the qualifications.

For the system families are using this fall that affects enrollment for the 2025-26 school year, the process once again has new rules. For the first time, students will rank their five choices in order of preference instead of just listing them. The priority ZIP codes for automatic admission to qualified students have been modified this year. And through a new algorithm, students will get an acceptance to just one school, while being wait-listed only at those that are higher on their list.

It is still theoretically possible that students could fail to get any offers, but the new system makes it less likely.

District encourages parents to ensure applications aren’t ‘wasted’

Lynum was among a few dozen parents and guardians who attended a town hall earlier this month at Carver High School of Engineering and Science in North Philadelphia, where Ericka Washington, the deputy chief of student enrollment, and Melanie Harris, the district’s chief information officer, explained the new process.

They stressed that students and families should carefully look at each school’s criteria before putting it on their list.

“We continue to see families who apply to schools for which the child does not meet the criteria,” Washington said. “That is a wasted option.”

They also emphasized that the criteria are fixed. If a school requires a student to score in the 80th percentile on a standardized test, a student will be ineligible if they scored in the 79th percentile on math, say, even if they meet or exceed all the other qualifications. Similarly, if only nine unexcused absences in a school year are allowed, having ten is disqualifying.

For selective admissions, the district initially looks at grades and attendance records from sixth and seventh grades, but only uses students’ best numbers in determining eligibility for a given high school.

Washington and Harris explained that before the lottery, there may have been some wiggle room with the official qualifications if principals made the final choices. Not any more. Students won’t even go into a lottery for a school if they don’t otherwise qualify.

In five high schools that also have middle grades — Carver, Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP), Hill-Freedman, Science Leadership Academy @ Beeber, and Masterman — eighth graders will automatically be offered a spot as long as they put that school down as their first choice and otherwise qualify.

For some schools, like Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA) and Science Leadership Academy, which is project-based, students must be interviewed or present relevant work just to be entered into the lottery for that school, in addition to meeting the other criteria.

Once the application period is over after Oct. 23, families can appeal decisions that declare students ineligible for certain schools to which they applied in December and January.

Parent hustles to learn more about Philadelphia schools

What worries Lynum is that it is still possible for students who do well to get no offers. That’s why she has her backup plans that include private schools.

Lynum, who lives in Mount Airy, goes to every event she can where people might be discussing Philadelphia schools. While she has lived in Philadelphia for 16 years, she grew up in Tampa, Fla., so she feels she doesn’t know the system inside out.

“I feel it’s a disadvantage that I didn’t go through the school system here myself,” she said.

Picking five choices and ranking them in order of preference is not as straightforward as it seems, she said: “I had to learn about this from word of mouth and asking people questions.”

So in addition to attending events like the town hall, Lynum seeks conversations with city natives wherever she can find them, asking them where they went to school and why. She also plans to attend open houses with her daughter at the five schools that will be on Kendi’s list.

In addition to academics, she feels that a school’s demographic makeup and overall atmosphere is important — she said she doesn’t want Kendi to go to a school where she would feel isolated as a Black student.

She has also hired a tutor to help Kendi with her test-taking skills, just to be safe, but she doesn’t worry about her daughter acing any required interviews. Though a teenager, Lynum said wryly, Kendi “is engaged as a kid, she speaks in full sentences, she can carry a conversation.”

Even though she and her husband are scientists — they both work in the pharmaceutical industry — Kendi has another career in mind.

“She’s an artist,” said Lynum, with both pride and a bit of befuddlement in her voice. “I don’t know where she got that part of her.”

Lynum noted that Kendi has many talents. She draws, she designs dresses, makes clothes, and sings: “She’s nothing like her parents.”

But she’s also sure to add that Kendi “is also good in science and math.”

So what’s Kendi’s top choice for high school? The High School of Creative and Performing Arts.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Program designed to ease Philly teacher shortage helps school aide fulfill lifelong dream

2024-08-28T20:12:45+00:00

Throughout the 2024-25 school year, Chalkbeat Philadelphia will follow a new teacher, Kahn-Tineta Smith, as she adapts to the joys and challenges of working in the city school district. This is the first of several periodic check-ins we hope will shine a light on the state of the Philadelphia teaching workforce.

Kahn-Tineta Smith was facing a crisis. The little girl with the carefully braided hair didn’t like the color of her magic marker and was making her displeasure known.

It was time for a hug.

Another little girl threw her marker down.

“We draw with our markers, we don’t play with them,” Smith said gently.

It was her second day teaching preschool at the Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in North Philadelphia, and the culmination of a lifelong dream. At age 52, after two decades working in city schools as a paraprofessional, she is now a full-fledged teacher. Smith works with 10 3- and 4-year olds, a number that could soon grow as parents continue to register their children.

“Now I’m still all over the place,” Smith said during a respite from her activity-filled morning, “but once I get the curriculum down, I will keep them engaged.”

She smiled. “I’m so tired.”

But she loves it. She dreamed of doing this job for nearly half a century, even as she found work in fast food to help support her three children.

Smith is one of 75 paraprofessionals who have made the transition to teaching this year as part of a district initiative called Para Pathway that started in 2022. With $2.5 million in federal pandemic aid supplemented by $1.7 million district funds, Para Pathway has trained more than 100 paraprofessionals for teaching careers by helping them earn associate and bachelor’s degrees.

Para Pathway is far from a luxury, because Philadelphia is fighting a teacher shortage. The district is starting at least its third straight school year with hundreds of classroom teacher vacancies. The number of graduates from Pennsylvania’s teacher education programs has plummeted 71% over the last decade, reducing the pool of available teachers.

To help deal with the shortage, the district created Para Pathway for its 2,500 paraprofessionals like Smith who work as teacher aides and classroom assistants. Besides helping in classrooms, they may do some tutoring, patrol the hallway, keep order on the playground, and supervise after-school programs.

Smith’s time as a paraprofessional in the school district was spent mostly at Bartram High School, starting in 2004. She earned her teaching degree in early childhood education earlier this year from Cheyney University, one of five higher education institutions that participate in Para Pathway.

Bethune Principal Aliya Catanch-Bradley said in filling out the faculty this year, she and her team deliberately tapped Smith and one other Para Pathway graduate, even though “we had other options.” While the district started the year with 347 teacher vacancies, according to Superintendent Tony Watlington, Bethune is fully staffed, the principal said.

“These are pillars of the community and role models for our children” as well as mentors to current paraprofessionals who might want to follow in their footsteps, Catanch-Bradley said.

Even with Para Pathway, finding a teaching job took a bit of serendipity for Smith. At a district hiring fair earlier this year, she went from table to table looking for a school that needed an early childhood teacher.

She didn’t get much interest until she stopped at Bethune’s table. Catanch-Bradley and Bethune Assistant Principal Yasmin Evangelista “were so welcoming,” she recalled.

“I filled out the paperwork right there and was hired,” she said.

Dreaming of being a teacher while working at McDonald’s

For Smith, Para Pathway was the answer to a prayer. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a teacher.

Growing up in Southwest Philadelphia, she said, she would conduct classes for little cousins and other children in the area. “I had a school in my house,” she said. “I gravitated to being an educator; I knew that was my calling on this earth.”

She also wanted to be a role model. Smith describes herself “from the neighborhood” and acutely aware of what children need to thrive. “When I was in school, I had many teachers help me,” she explained, “and that’s what I wanted, to give back to others, to be a positive entity for young people.”

Plus, she said, “I was my children’s first teacher.”

Smith was raised by her mother and grandparents. Her mother moved around so much when she was a child that one year, she had to repeat a grade due to so many absences. But later, her family signed her up as a student to be part of the school district’s voluntary desegregation program, meaning that she traveled to Northeast Philadelphia by bus for grades 7-12.

When she graduated from George Washington High School in 1991, she had an eight-month-old daughter. After the ceremony, she recalled, she took off her mortarboard and put it on her baby’s head.

“Mommy graduated,” she told the child.

But going directly to college was not an option. And over the next 12 years, Smith had two more children, raising them mostly by herself. “Life happened,” she said.

When her children were young, she always worked at places like McDonald’s to support them. “I was raising my kids, and I always had a job,” she said.

Still, Smith found time to help her community. In the early 2000s, she participated in a program called the National School and Community Corps, a program run by City Year that provides help to “struggling schools that needed extra people.” At Harrity Elementary School, she tutored and helped with after-school and summer programs.

The City Year experience, she said, opened her eyes and started her on the road to being a teacher: “I saw how the schools were running, what children were lacking academically and socially. That piqued my interest more.”

As a child in Southwest Philadelphia, Kahn-Tineta Smith pictured herself as a teacher. A Philadelphia district program that started in 2022 helped turn that goal into reality.

Smith applied to be a teacher’s aide. In 2004, after three years of subbing in that role around the district, she was assigned to Bartram, where she stayed for 17 years.

She made several stabs at college over the years, including at Widener University and at Community College of Philadelphia. But Smith started her journey toward full teacher certification in 2019 — after the youngest of her three children graduated from high school.

At that point, she told herself: “I did my job as a mother. Now it’s time for me to go back and pursue my dream. It was time to do me.”

Schools drawing on paraprofessionals’ experience with kids

Smith eventually earned an associate degree in education from Delaware Community College in 2020.

Although she had worked as a paraprofessional in a high school, she decided she wanted to teach the youngest children. What she learned from being around teenagers, she explained, was that they needed help earlier.

“I wanted to catch them when they were little,” she said, “to give them structure, to help especially with their social-emotional learning.”

She also realized, from her experience as a parent and from her years at Bartram, that the road to reading proficiency has to start early as well.

Two years after she earned her associate degree, the district started Para Pathway, which is run through a partnership between the district and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

“We wanted to draw on the experience of educators who worked in our system to begin with and had experiences with our kids,” said PFT President Arthur Steinberg, explaining some of the motivation for Para Pathway. “They’re invested in the system, and are less likely to leave. And they look like the kids in the community, and a lot of times they know the parents.”

He added that the district now has to ensure that those who’ve transitioned from paraprofessionals to fully certified teachers “get the proper support.”

Catanch-Bradley, the principal at Bethune, added that teachers’ solid middle-class salaries give those like Smith “the ability to be bigger providers for their families,” compared to the $18.35 an hour earned by paraprofessionals.

“We’re excited,” Catanch-Bradley said.

Smith also has flexibility when it comes to future teaching positions: Her certification allows her to teach up to the fourth grade.

While Philadelphia has several early childhood programs, including some that are under federal Head Start, of which Bethune’s program is a part. There is also PHLpreK, which former Mayor Jim Kenney worked hard to expand.

On Tuesday morning, her second day on the job, she was already responding to children’s various needs.

Of her 10 students, three of them had never been to school before. One little boy wailed pitifully and then fell asleep. She let him be. A little girl wandered around and protested loudly if she was unhappy about something. When she screeched, Smith coaxed her onto her lap and calmed her down.

Smith never looked ruffled or nervous. She had help from her very experienced classroom assistant, Anita Parker, who said she has been working in early childhood education since 2002. In fact, Parker might have thoughts about becoming a fully certified teacher herself one day.

“She’s doing great,” Parker said of Smith.

Smith herself is confident, although the dictates of the curriculum — with its focus areas, question of the day, schedule requirements, and specifications for daily large-group and small-group activities — can be daunting.

“Once I get this curriculum down, it’s a piece of cake,” she said. “I love the little ones, and I’m glad I did this.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: Philly schools chief Tony Watlington addresses teacher shortage, goals for this school year

2024-08-20T11:00:01+00:00

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Tony Watlington is starting his third year as Philadelphia superintendent of schools — but he is not above going back into the classroom himself.

In discussing the district’s persistent teacher shortage, Watlington acknowledged the gravity of the situation, and that some central office administrators may find themselves deployed to classrooms this year, at least on the first day of school.

Which, he said, wouldn’t be all bad.

“If Tony Watlington showed up to teach a few social studies classes, I think they would still get some great instruction,” he said as part of a wide-ranging interview with Chalkbeat about his plans and challenges for the upcoming school year.

Watlington assumed leadership of the country’s eighth-largest school district in June 2022. He has prioritized improving academic achievement, making the district’s “customer service” — as he put it — more welcoming and helpful, and increasing the presence of district officials in neighborhoods to build partnerships with families.

There’s been notable progress on his watch. Some test scores have improved. More students attend school regularly. And the four-year high school graduation rate has increased, albeit gradually. He likes to say that Philadelphia is on its way to being “the fastest improving urban school district in the country,” citing a study from this year.

At the same time, some key high school academic indicators are stagnant or declining, and a large share of students still miss a lot of school. Perhaps most crucially, the district has been consistently unable to hire enough teachers.

Watlington noted that as of mid-August, its “fill rate” for all teacher positions is 95%, which means the district still has more than 400 vacancies. That translates to some 14,000 students lacking a permanent teacher when they return to school, a number that by itself is big enough to rank among the 10 largest districts in Pennsylvania. These issues are dominant as the district and teachers union prepare to negotiate a new contract.

Ahead of the new school year, Watlington shared his hopes and concerns for what’s ahead.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you update us on the issue of teacher vacancies?

The reason we’re not at 100% is in part because there is a decline in the number of people who are choosing to get a teaching degree in Pennsylvania. So generally, when people ask me, have you filled all the positions, sometimes we’ll say, I think you’re asking the wrong question, because we need to make sure that we’re recruiting and hiring people who are prepared to do this job.

We’ll be deploying individuals from district headquarters to provide some help with classroom coverages as we continue to hire.

That still means that many students will start the year without a regular, long-term stable teacher.

I have a teaching license. I may have to suit up and go teach a few myself.

The biggest shortages are in science, technology, engineering, and math, foreign language, and special education teachers. Those are some of the toughest areas to fill, partly because you can make more money in the private sector. That’s why we have to pay our teachers more.

If you’re a teacher in the South or the Midwest, and you have the credentials, come on to Pennsylvania. We welcome you with open arms and not have to test and go through all these hoops. I thought it was the craziest thing when I came here as superintendent, and I had to sit for a three-hour test with a camera on, watching me the entire time.

We are investing resources and getting more of our paraprofessionals through a degree program at no cost.

The district is also starting a new English Language Arts curriculum this year. Are teachers adequately trained?

For a district of our size to launch a new curriculum in math in kindergarten through 12th grade in all district schools last year, and to then launch an English language arts and reading curriculum for the next year, is somewhat unprecedented. But it’s the right thing to do. Eighty-three percent of our teachers last year reported that they felt competent to teach the new math curriculum, but what they told us is that they needed more time.

We did a much better job this year of supporting our teachers to be able to teach the new English curriculum. And I’m really proud of our teachers, because they understand that we’ve got to make sure that poor kids who move around the city don’t have to learn different curricula. Either we are going to be a system of schools or we’re going to be one united school system.

What else are you planning to focus on this year?

Number one, we are going to focus on accelerating achievement. We’re also teaching our teachers how to engage students more effectively.

Number two, we’re going to focus on improving our customer and constituent service. We will expand the two-way communication system that I piloted in my office all last year.

The third thing we are going to focus on is building stronger partnership with our families, and we’ll do that by relocating the district assistant superintendent offices to 15 areas throughout the city, many housed in schools. If you’ve got a concern about the lunch menu, transportation, academics, or you feel like your child’s paper wasn’t graded appropriately, you’ve got one place in your community to go straight to the person who supervises those schools.

And in addition to that, we’re going to do a good job of executing Mayor Cherelle Parker’s priority for extended day, extended year pilot schools.

Could you explain a little more about how that kind of responsiveness translates into better achievement for kids?

When I give you better customer service as a parent you’re more likely to talk to the teacher, to talk to the principal, to read my communications. You’re more likely to feel like you’ve been heard, and when you feel like you’ve been heard homes and schools can work as partners in children’s learning.

We’re going to lead in improving those relationships, and we’re going to win our parents and families over because they see that we care about their children and about them.

We’ll be providing training on little things, how to say “good morning,” “thank you,” “it’s been a pleasure to work with you today.”

Tell me more about plans for extended-day and year-round school.

In year one, we have not made any changes to teachers’ or principals’ daily schedules. The before- and after-school programming is being run by outside providers, in partnership with the city and district.

Attendance data is going to be so important for us to see which parents participate and which don’t. We’ll be surveying parents about what they like, what they don’t like. We’ll also be getting feedback from the schools in terms of what’s working or not.

We know that it will be a help for kids who will not be on the streets, instead being with competent, caring adults in the early morning or late afternoons. Enrichment will be available during vacation breaks.

While you have seen some positive trends under your tenure in achievement and attendance, it is still true that only about a third of third through eighth graders are reading on grade level, and less than a fifth have grade-level math skills. Have you set improvement targets for the coming year?

We’re talking with principals and we will begin setting academic targets for the district, for each learning network and for each school, something that’s not been done in recent history to my knowledge.

Even though we were among the fastest-improving school districts post-COVID in third through eighth grade reading and math, we didn’t do well in the high schools. In the 2023 school year, in biology and Algebra 1, we actually went in the wrong direction.

We’ve got to continue to invest in third through eighth grade so that we’re sending stronger students to our high schools. We’ve got to continue to support and invest in our teachers in the high schools so that they have the best-in-class curriculum. And then we need to help our teachers to be able to fully understand the curriculum standards and how to teach them, and also how to teach kids in a way that engages kids in the learning. That’s a hard thing to do.

Violence in the city overall has been trending down, but there have been high-profile incidents like the shooting of eight Northeast High school students at a bus stop. What is the district doing to combat violence?

Attendance really does matter. Kids who come to school at least 90% of the year, and who are making sufficient progress in their academic classes, are less likely to be victims or perpetrators of violence. It’s why we’re so focused on it.

In 2022-23 in the district, just 57% of students attended school 90% of the time. Last year it went up to 60%.

Part of our underachievement is explained by: Our kids just not being in school enough. Kids learn more in brick and mortar schools with a teacher than they do on a computer. Every year that we improve, we have to say, “good job, schools,” “good job, young scholars.” Our kids need to hear more positive messages from us adults in the city, and we can do it.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Students will get more power in Philadelphia’s revamped school admissions process

2024-08-13T19:33:41+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district is revising its selective admissions lottery process yet again by giving students the ability to rank several choices, adjusting waitlists, and employing a widely used algorithm.

Officials are instituting the changes after a survey by the consulting firm Accenture found widespread dissatisfaction among students and families with how the system worked in its first year in 2022-23.

The new system “will allow us to do a better job extending more offers and when we have vacancies we can more quickly fill those vacancies with qualified students,” said Superintendent Tony Watlington at a back-to-school event on Tuesday.

The district decided to change its high school admissions process three years ago in order to expand access to the district’s citywide and selective middle and high schools. Historically, those schools enrolled relatively few Black and Hispanic students from low-income families living in certain parts of the city.

But so far, the new system, which also prioritizes certain ZIP codes, has made slow progress in reaching its goal. And last year, the lottery left many other citywide admissions schools with hundreds of unfilled seats, sparking anger and causing staff cuts. After the 2023 audit, the district tweaked its admissions process for the 2024-25 school year, but has decided another overhaul is warranted.

The school selection process for the 2025-2026 school year opens on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024 at 4:00 p.m., and closes on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024 at 11:59 p.m.

These are the major changes to the selective admissions process that will take effect for the 2025-26 school year:

Students will rank their schools and waitlists will operate differently. Students will be able to rank their top five choices. If they are accepted into their third choice, for instance, they will remain on a waitlist for their first and second choices, but dropped from consideration for their fourth and fifth choices. Currently, students submit five schools in no particular order and might be accepted into all five or none of them, even if they meet the qualifications. In a statement, the district said that “offers will be made based on the order in which an applicant ranked their five schools, the applicant’s eligibility, and seats available at the school/program.”
The district has changed the priority ZIP codes: From its inception, the lottery system prioritized students from certain ZIP codes, most of them in North and West Philadelphia. They are 19121, 19140, 19133, 19136, and 19124 and 19134. For the coming year, it is dropping 19132, and adding 19134, based on data showing which ones have the lowest representation of students at the most highly selective schools.
Offers to qualified middle school students who want to stay at their school are guaranteed. Students in five selective schools that start in fifth or sixth grade and go through high school will be assured a ninth grade seat if they rank their school as their first choice and meet all admissions requirements. The schools are: Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP), Carver High School of Engineering and Science, Hill-Freedman World Academy, Masterman, and Science Leadership Academy at Beeber. Before, these students had to enter the lottery like everyone else.
The district is using a different algorithm to match students with their choices. It will now use a version of an algorithm that previously won the Nobel Prize and is known as the “deferred acceptance” algorithm. It’s been used for everything from matching medical students with residency programs to connecting potential dating partners on the Hinge app. A version of the new algorithm is already in use by the city’s Apply Philly Charter enrollment system.
Students have a new way to research options. In February, the school board approved a $1.6 million contract with Avela, a software company. According to the Accenture report, the system under the company the district previously contracted with, SchoolMint, was rife with technical difficulties and errors that frustrated families and school counselors. Avela’s tool, called Explore, is a more comprehensive and user-friendly tool for students to research their school choices, according to the district.
Schools will no longer accept PASA scores in applications. The Pennsylvania Alternate System of Assessment is a standardized test for students with significant cognitive impairments. It is taken by under 1% of students in the district.

Questions about algebra, tests linger for selective admissions

The lottery system, which debuted in 2022, replaced a longstanding process that relied heavily on principal choice and favored students who attended schools with enough counselors to provide advice and help with applications.

The district has different entry requirements for its array of selective admissions and citywide admissions schools, most of which are middle and high schools. Qualifying students must meet minimum percentiles on standardized tests — ranging from being in the top 50% to the top 20% for magnet schools like Masterman and Central — and satisfy grade and attendance requirements.

The new admissions system won’t address all of the challenges and controversies around admissions.

One of the more high-profile issues involves eighth grade algebra. The district is working to expand algebra access, but most schools in the prioritized ZIP codes don’t offer it. And Masterman, Philadelphia’s flagship high school, requires applicants to have taken eighth grade algebra. District spokesperson Christina Clark said she did not have information on whether algebra access is expanding for this coming school year.

Most district students take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, and can use those standardized test scores to satisfy admissions requirements. Students coming from private and charter schools may submit scores from a different standardized test, such as the Terra Nova. But judging the impact of eliminating the PASA could be difficult.

Under a 1995 consent decree known as LeGare, the district has been under a court order to offer equitable access to all its schools to students with disabilities and English learners. In announcing the new system, officials did not make any reference to LeGare.

Abigail Beljean, who has two children in the district, is a former counselor at the Wissahickon Charter School. She helped students make their high school choices, and said that she hoped the new system would not impede opportunities for students with disabilities to schools.

In her experience, a student who might need an alternative assessment like the PASA could also “be an incredible artist or musician,” she said, and could succeed at schools like Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA) and GAMP.

She noted that before the lottery, principals could use their discretion to admit students who missed the required percentile on a standardized test by just a point or two. They no longer have that option.

Overall, she said, while the district “has made some good changes,” to make the process more fair, she hopes it maintains “some kind of pathway” for students who barely miss a test-score cutoff, or who have in the past taken the PASA test rather than the PSSA.

“If a kid can’t take the PASA, but has no other standardized test to submit, what do they do?” she said.

Clark said the PASA test doesn’t translate easily into percentile achievement, so is not suitable for judging readiness for the magnet schools. The district is encouraging students with Individualized Education Programs to take another approved alternative standardized test, or they can apply to waive that requirement.

Overall, said Jane de Lartigue, whose seventh grader at Houston Elementary School in Mount Airy will be applying to high schools this time next year, the new system “seems more equitable.”

Lartigue said that parents she has talked to and those in online discussion groups are hoping that students will now “have a better chance of getting into a school that they would prefer.”

“In theory it will help parents get a school that best matches their needs, while also freeing up other school spots sooner in the process,” said parent Emily Chaudhury in a comment posted to the NW PHL Public Schools Discussion Group on Facebook. “This will get more kids offered spots in the few rounds of wait-list offers than what has happened in previous years, leaving fewer kids without spots and fewer schools with empty seats – and staff reductions.”

While most admissions occur at the high school level, the new lottery process will apply to students currently in pre-kindergarten through eleventh grade who are applying to any school outside their regular neighborhood catchments that have admissions standards.

Philadelphia Bureau Chief Carly Sitrin contributed to this story.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Alliance to bring back Philadelphia school libraries gets $150,000 federal grant

2024-08-09T17:04:16+00:00

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When Deborah Grill was at Roosevelt Middle School in Germantown in 1994, the Philadelphia school district had 176 functioning school libraries with full-time certified librarians.

Today, there is just one full-time librarian.

“People think of it as an extra,” said Grill, who was a teacher, literacy coach, and librarian in her 34 years with the district.

That mentality is now changing. The school district, along with the advocacy group Philadelphia Alliance to Restore School Librarians (PARSL), applied for and received a nearly $150,000 federal grant to develop a plan for increasing the number of school libraries.

Study after study, Grill said, has shown a positive correlation between having a quality school library program and student achievement in reading. It is a correlation, not a causation, she stressed: Schools with libraries are likely to be better funded overall, with a more stable teaching staff and other resources.

But the research also shows that having trained librarians is especially beneficial for low-income districts.

PARSL was founded two years ago by educators, policymakers, business leaders, and others interested in the issue. Deb Kachel, an educator and former school library director in Lancaster County who is a member of the steering committee for PARSL, said the group will look into how other cities, including Boston, rebuilt their school library systems.

“There are not enough librarians,” she said, adding that only about 20 teachers now in the system are certified to do that in Philadelphia. She said the group will investigate what barriers other cities faced in putting their school libraries back into service, what solutions they found, and how they paid for the initiative: “We’ll take those strategies and apply them to Philadelphia.”

The district now has four certified librarians working as such, but three are part time — teachers assigned a few hours a day or week to library duty in their schools. In a few schools, parents and volunteers occasionally staff libraries. The only school with a full-time librarian is Masterman, the most selective in the city.

The Philadelphia district, she said, is in the process of hiring a director of school libraries who will be “instrumental” in developing a plan to recruit and train more people. “We know there are teachers who are interested” in doing this, Kachel said.

The project is one of 35 nationwide that won grants, out of 141 originally submitted, from the U.S. Institute of Museums and Library Service as part of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. In addition to researching strategies in other cities, the planning group, which will include the district and PARSL members, will also build a pipeline to recruit a diverse group of candidates to obtain librarian certification.

Ultimately, the initiative, slated to begin in the coming school year, will create a “five-year, replicable strategic plan to restore school librarians … crafted and vetted by district officials and community leaders,” including strategies for communications, funding, and university training options, the PARSL proposal for the grant says.

It will also look at existing building conditions in the district’s schools and what needs to be done to renovate and update long unused library spaces. It is creating a website that will include surveys, presentations, reports, research, and findings.

While Drexel University discontinued its school librarian certification, a few other nearby colleges and universities offer programs, including Rutgers University and the University of Pittsburgh, Kachel said. But since the training is online, potential librarian candidates have several options, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Grill, a member of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, an advocacy group made up primarily of former teachers, frequently testifies before the Board of Education about the benefits of school libraries.

She told the City Council during school budget hearings that she was “heartbroken” to learn that the Roosevelt library where she worked was “once a lively resource for…students and teachers [but is] now just a flooded, moldy room.”

The libraries fell victim to severe state and local budget cuts to the district beginning in the 1990s. But that wasn’t the only factor at play. With the rise of the internet, many educators and policy makers felt that the traditional libraries, with shelves of books and multi-volume encyclopedias, were obsolete.

But, if anything, the need for trained school personnel who could help students find their way through the new world of endless information was, and continues to be, more necessary than ever, Grill said.

“Someone has to tell students how to find relevant sites, and reliable sites,” she said. “That is the missing piece. They teach information literacy, media literacy, digital citizenship.”

Those are “durable skills,” she said, that will benefit students throughout their lives.

In advocating for more trained librarians in schools, Kachel would ask principals and other officials about these skills and they would say that they are being taught.

“But when we ask, who is teaching them and at what grade level and is there a written curriculum, then we get silence,” she said. When students get to college, many of them find they are unprepared to do the kind of research they must do for their courses.

Pennsylvania has no requirement for school libraries, she said. Fifty-nine districts in the commonwealth, or more than one in ten, don’t have them.

“Our state requires that prisons have libraries,” Grill said, “but not schools.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia property reassessment will boost schools revenue by $115 million over 5 years

2024-08-05T20:19:19+00:00

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Mayor Cherelle Parker said Monday that the city’s current reassessment of property values will generate about $115 million in additional revenue for Philadelphia schools over the next five years.

“That’s not why we did it,” Parker said, “but that’s something we can all be happy about.”

The city last did a reassessment in 2022. At Monday’s press conference, Parker and city Director of Finance Rob Dubow both said that the city needs to keep its assessments up to date in order to make them “fair, equitable, and accurate.”

In the past, the city sometimes went years between reassessments, making them skewed and uneven as some areas gentrified and the city’s demographics shifted. The city has also historically failed to collect delinquent taxes, which penalized the district, since more than half of property tax revenue goes to the district.

The Board of Education, which is appointed by the mayor, has no taxing authority of its own. The district is completely dependent on Philadelphia city government and the state for its revenue.

Parker called a press conference to announce that the reassessment will increase taxes for the average homeowner by about $330 next year, while reminding them of the homestead exemption and other programs targeted to those living on low or fixed incomes.

That increase comes on top of a $125 million boost in city funding for the district as a result of Parker’s earlier decision to increase its share of city property taxes from 55% to 56% in the 2025 budget.

The total annual district budget is $4.5 billion, of which about 41% is provided by the city. Most of that amount comes from property tax revenue. The state contributes 46%, with the rest coming from federal sources.

At the press conference, Superintendent Tony Watlington promised that “we will provide a return on investment for every one of these dollars.”

He said the additional revenue Parker announced will help pay for extended-year programs in up to 20 pilot schools, and a relaunch of Parent University.

Watlington also reiterated his oft-made points that since he took over the district in 2022, key statistics have been trending in positive directions: dropout rates have declined, student and teacher attendance has increased, and test scores and the four-year graduation rate have risen.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

New Philadelphia curriculum goes all in on science of reading

2024-07-26T16:45:08+00:00

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Kristyn Kahahaloe still remembers a little boy from her class in a New Jersey early learning center when she was a rookie teacher starting students on their journey to becoming readers.

The boy, who was in kindergarten, “just couldn’t figure it out the way I was teaching it,” she said. “This bright blossoming flower kept shrinking and shriveling, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Despite her years of teacher education, Kahahaloe, now a kindergarten teacher at the John Hancock Elementary School in Philadelphia, concluded that “my lack of knowledge was why he was not learning how to read.”

For decades, disputes over how best to teach students to read has divided teachers, scholars, and policymakers. Was the answer phonics or “whole language”? What about “balanced literacy” versus “structured literacy”? New terms like “phonemic awareness” and “foundational skills” entered the vocabulary, but didn’t settle the debate.

Like their colleagues nationwide, Philadelphia teachers were buffeted about by the debates. Many received scant training in their teacher preparation programs in explicit reading instruction. And once in the classroom, they were often left with a hodgepodge of materials and resorting to “doing what they think is best,” as Kahahaloe put it.

That is about to change. For the upcoming school year, the Philadelphia school district is putting into practice a new reading curriculum as part of a $70 million investment in updated instructional materials in English Language Arts, math, and science. The early grades language arts curriculum from EL Education replaces a teacher-driven one, and is grounded in the science of reading, the now-accepted consensus on what works best for literacy instruction. Given what recent test scores say about reading skills in district schools — and classrooms nationwide — such an intervention could make a big difference in school and beyond.

“There is no question at this point that the science of reading is the way to teach students to read,” said Nancy Scharff, a literacy expert and professor at St. Joseph’s University and a consultant with Read by 4th, the Philadelphia-based campaign to have all children read proficiently by the time they enter fourth grade.

But adopting a curriculum that matches best practices doesn’t guarantee it will succeed in classrooms. There are concerns about whether teachers have been sufficiently prepared to use it, and the district cautions that it will take some time for educators and students to see results.

‘More continuity for teachers and for kids’

The “science of reading” is built around a five-pronged approach — phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension — that is based on research on how the human brain works.

Concerns about how reading is taught and low reading scores have spurred many states to pass laws recently mandating what approach and curriculum their schools should use, with the science of reading often at the foundation of such statutes.

The Pennsylvania legislature considered putting provisions in its 2024-25 budget requiring districts to adopt the science of reading approach, with mandated teacher training and sophisticated testing of students to detect learning differences. But those provisions — estimated to add nearly $70 million to the budget next year— were cut from the final bill.

For the past several years in Philadelphia, the district had been adhering to a curriculum that was created in-house by teachers themselves. But it often lacked sufficient materials to go with it. Many teachers were stressed out trying to find the right books to use.

“I think this will allow for a lot more continuity for teachers and for kids,” said Meredith Mehra, the district’s deputy chief of teaching and learning. “A lot more resources are embedded that will take the pressure away from teachers to create them.” Teachers “can think more about the kids in front of me than what text I am going to use.”

Just 34% of students in grades 3-8 achieved proficiency on the Pennsylvania reading tests last year, although scores did improve in some respects in 2023.

Research shows that being a proficient reader by fourth grade makes a huge difference in future life outcomes. Yet state test scores show that 71% of city fourth graders are not reading at grade level, notes Read by 4th. And half the city’s adult population is functionally illiterate, according to federal data estimates.

Jennie Bogoni, executive director of Read by 4th, said she sees the new curriculum as a step forward because it will standardize instruction across the district and is grounded in the science of reading.

She also cited a federal report from earlier this year that Philadelphia has been ahead of most other urban districts in making up pandemic-driven learning loss in reading and math.

“The district has made incredible progress bouncing back from the pandemic, and this curriculum should accelerate this change,” she said.

Scharff said that the new EL Education curriculum equips all teachers with the tools “to make sure children learn to read, emphasizing what we call foundational skills.” They include not just instruction in decoding, phonics, and phonemic awareness, but the development of background knowledge.

“If a student can decode a word competently but doesn’t know what it means, it doesn’t matter. Background knowledge needs to be part of the program. This curriculum does that effectively,” she said.

She noted that many children in Philadelphia come to kindergarten without much exposure to books — although many groups are working on access to reading resources — and so lack a strong knowledge base: “The best thing is to teach them to read so they can broaden their knowledge base … .the ‘science of reading’ is not just phonics.”

Third grade teacher K.P. Edwards said has been reviewing the curriculum on his own over the summer and hoped that it will make his job a little easier. Students come to him with a wide range of skills; in one class, he said, he had a girl reading at a seventh grade level and another who could barely recognize letters.

“I am cautiously optimistic,” he said.

Science of reading curriculum isn’t a cure-all

Scharff noted that while a new curriculum that covers all the right bases is helpful, it is not a magic bullet. “It is going to take time for teachers to be comfortable with it, learn it, and become adept at using the new materials,” she said. “We have to be very careful about looking for instant gratification.”

Laura Boyce of Teach Plus, which works to recruit teachers to Philadelphia, is a bit more skeptical.

“Things have gotten polarized in the science of reading debate,” said Boyce. If educators only focus on phonics and don’t develop skills around building content knowledge and vocabulary, “that’s a problem,” she said. So is an approach that assumes students will deduce words from pictures and other cues and downplays explicit phonics instruction, she said.

Boyce is also concerned about whether teachers have been adequately prepared to use the new curriculum: ”From what I’ve seen so far, there’s no evidence of a super strong plan for teacher development.”

The district held a week-long training session earlier this summer that was attended by about 400 teachers, and is planning more professional development in the weeks before school starts after they start teaching. They also plan ongoing teacher coaching throughout the school year.

Mehra estimated that “it will take a whole year’ for teachers to become comfortable with the curriculum and see results. “It’s unfair to teachers to expect more than that,” she said.

K.P. Edwards, a third grade teacher at Philadelphia's Muñoz-Marin Elementary School, said he's "cautiously optimistic" about the ability of the new curriculum to improve students' reading ability, and feels fortunate that he's received prior training that helps him with it.

Edwards, who teaches third grade at Muñoz-Marín Elementary School in Kensington, where all of the students in his school were from economically disadvantaged families and nearly 90% were Latino, many with limited English skills, the school’s demographic data from last year showed.

“I’m lucky, I’ve had a school based coach who helped me develop strategies for teaching literacy,” he said. Those strategies relied on many of the principles embedded in the new curriculum, including explicit phonics teaching.

“I’m hopeful,” he added. “With that model we had some gains. I’m hopeful next year we will have actual workbooks and more resources.”

Kahahaloe’s difficult experience with the boy who wasn’t responding to any of her efforts motivated her to find the proper training for teaching reading.

She enrolled at Fairleigh Dickinson University in north New Jersey to learn the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction, which was designed for students with dyslexia but which can work for all children.

She thinks the new curriculum will help. But for her, the people in the classroom will be the decisive factor for whether it works.

“A curriculum doesn’t teach kids, teachers teach kids,” she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

College Together provides different path for Philadelphia students to earn their degrees

2024-07-02T10:00:00+00:00

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Sanya Sek worked hard in high school. She got all As, including in Advanced Placement courses. She applied to college and even got into Bryn Mawr.

But her parents, both of whom had fled the Khmer Rouge in war-torn Cambodia when they were young, could not afford college, even though they prized education. The financial aid she was offered fell short of covering all the costs, including room and board, books, and the myriad ancillary fees. So she enrolled instead in Community College of Philadelphia.

“I took the safer option,” she said. “I had hopes to get into a decent college, but I felt the hard work I put in didn’t get the result I wanted.”

Sanya Sek said she benefited from College Together's project-based approach to learning.

But then Sek, 22, met Oscar Wang and discovered College Together, and a whole new set of doors opened for her.

Wang, 32, has worked since 2013 on mentoring first-generation students from Philadelphia to attend college. He started a group called Mentor for Philly while still a student at Haverford, which morphed into Philly College Team after he graduated in 2014.

But after working with dozens of students, he realized that most never finished their degree.

Mentorship, he reasoned, wasn’t enough. Enter College Together, which now has a staff of six, a spacious Center City office, and counts 21 college graduates who have passed through its program, including Sek and Rodriguez.

“It’s been a 10-year journey to answer a single question, how to get more Philadelphia students not just into, but through college,” Wang said. And not just through college, he added, but armed with marketable skills and free of debt.

Pursuing a degree through College Together is affordable – even no cost to students who qualify for Pell Grants. It has several partners, including the school district, the Mastery and KIPP charter networks, and foundations including the Philadelphia Foundation, Claneil Foundation, and the Samuel L. Fels Fund. Most crucially, it partners with Southern New Hampshire University’s Global Campus, an online school, through which students can earn their degree by doing a series of projects that develop real-world skills necessary to succeed in today’s job market.

While in the program, they can do their coursework from home or from College Together’s Center City office on Walnut Street, where they have access to one-on-one tutoring, laptops, research assistance and, often, food.

The help he needed to stay on track

MarcAngelo Rodriguez, 26, grew up on the mean streets of Kensington, stayed out of trouble, and graduated from Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School in 2016. He enrolled in CCP, but left within a year. Then he tried training to be an automotive technician at Universal Technical Institute, a for-profit trade school.

When that didn’t pan out either, he worked different jobs – in retail, food services, security. His real goal was to be a police officer, and ultimately a detective.

Marcangelo Rodriguez dreams of becoming a detective. He was one of 21 students who earned a degree through College Together this year.

Rodriguez heard about College Together and got in touch with Wang. Now both he and Sek possess college degrees they likely would not have attained otherwise. Sek is pursuing a career in communications, and Rodriguez has dreams of becoming a detective.

Typical students in Philadelphia, especially those in neighborhood high schools – mostly low-income young people of color – have been “undervalued, ignored, or overlooked by traditional institutions and structures” and needed an alternative path, Wang said. These are students “who need flexibility, for instance, so they are not punished for missing class because they had to babysit.”

He chose to partner with SNHU Global Campus because “it was built with working adults in mind,” Wang said. In establishing College Together, he discovered that in designing its online degree program, SNHU educators quizzed employers like Boston Children’s Hospital on what skills they look for, and “reverse engineered” their coursework with the goal of building student competencies. SNHU is accredited by the New England Commission on Higher Education.

Today, there are a dozen organizations around the country like College Together that work with SNHU in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and New Orleans. Together they form the Post-Secondary Success Collective.

“This is what they call the community-partner model,” Wang said, explaining that in order to access SNHU’s courses offered through its competency-based innovation lab, students have to go through a nonprofit.

The tuition is $2,333 a semester, and students can double-up on courses year-round without paying more money. He said that Mastery, for instance, touts the program as the only pathway in Philadelphia through which students can earn a bachelor’s degree for under the amount of a federal Pell grant – essentially making it free to them.

Students prize learning by doing

Sek’s parents pushed her to do well and were proud of her achievements, but their culture prioritized keeping her close over anything else, she said. For high school, she could have attended a top magnet school – she got into Central and Palumbo, among others. But her parents didn’t want her going far away – she had never even learned how to use SEPTA.

So she attended Mastery-Thomas, a charter high school that was a 5-minute walk from her South Philadelphia home.

It turned out to be a good choice, she said, with a small student body, caring teachers, and a dual-enrollment option that allowed her to earn college credits in high school. But she didn’t get much help with financial literacy – she didn’t understand loans, and her parents were all about “save money, save money,” she said. That’s how she ended up at CCP.

It wasn’t easy at first; she started during the pandemic year. Plus, despite excelling in AP courses, she was done with learning based on reading a textbook “and answering multiple choice questions … I was forcing myself to memorize everything and not retaining anything. The purpose of learning was not there for me.”

Things got better after she switched her major from liberal arts to business. After getting her associates degree, she figured she’d save money and attend a local school like Drexel or Temple. That’s when her high school adviser, with whom she kept in touch, told her about College Together.

The project-based approach to learning at SNHU suited her. While earning her degree in management, she could engage in real-world problem solving. In one scenario, she had to explain how she would de-escalate a conflict between two employees in a work setting. Another required her to set up a business plan for a new pasta restaurant in a neighborhood with a competitor just a few blocks away. To do that, she had to research demographics and develop an advertising pitch to build clientele. She relished these kinds of tasks. “They require critical thinking and emotional intelligence,” she said.

So she not only got her degree from SNHU, but convinced Wang to hire her as College Together’s first communications director.

Rodriguez made it through Kensington CAPA, appreciating its newly built campus, but also sometimes “acting like a dumb teenager who followed the crowd” and neglecting his studies. As a result, he wasn’t well prepared for CCP. While he aced courses that focused on his interest, criminal justice, he faltered in others, like English.

Plus, life happened: He got married and had a daughter.

In 2022, he said, “I did an evaluation of my life, I was still working in retail, I was 24 and I had a kid. I felt I was at a dead end … I knew I wanted a career, and I had ambitious goals for myself.” He had heard about College Together through a friend, “and Oscar invited me to join the program.”

It took him two years to get his degree from SNHU. During his college experience, he was determined to do well. Like Sek, he appreciated the real-world nature of the learning experience.

“Teachers were willing to put in the work to invest in me, and them investing in me made me want to invest in myself,” he said.

Now he is in the process of applying to the police department.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board denies Global Leadership Academy charter application for fourth time

2024-06-28T18:54:54+00:00

The Philadelphia Board of Education voted for the fourth time Thursday to deny a charter for a proposed Global Leadership Academy International High School because the revised application did not meet academic, financial, or operational standards.

The board has five new members appointed by Mayor Cherelle Parker. But the board’s vote to reject the application from Global Leadership Academy (GLA) continues a significant multi-year trend: It has not approved a new charter school since Philadelphia regained local control of its schools from the state in 2018. Still, the privately managed but publicly funded schools — including cyber charters — now educate nearly 80,000 of the city’s students.

The vote was 7-0. Whitney Jones abstained and ChauWing Lam was absent. Jones, a finance manager who has worked for charter organizations, said he abstained due to a business conflict.

The board denied the application despite a statement of support from Councilman Curtis Jones and the political connections of Naomi Booker, a veteran city educator who is the driving force behind the two existing K-8 Global Leadership Schools.

The board did vote to grant five-year renewals, with conditions, to four other charters — Ad Prima, Laboratory Charter School of Communication and Languages, Mariana Bracetti Academy, and Maritime Academy — without any dissent.

In their final action meeting of the 2023-24 school year, the board also voted to approve a $20 million contract with various external nonprofits and community organizations to fund Parker’s year-round school initiative, which is kicking off this fall at 25 pilot schools.

During her mayoral campaign last year, Parker never made clear whether she favored creating more charter schools in the city. Instead, she stressed that she wanted to see an end to any competition between the district and charter sectors. But except for Jones, her new appointees voted against the revised GLA application.

Booker, who was present at the meeting but did not speak, is the founder and CEO of Global Academies, which runs Global Leadership Academy Southwest and Global Leadership Academy Charter School in West Philadelphia, both K-8 schools.

GLA Southwest, the former Huey Elementary, is one of 21 district schools that officials turned over to charter management under the Renaissance program with the promise of rapid transformation. That promise that has not been realized.

Six students from GLA Southwest, all wearing crisp navy blue blazers with the GLA logo, pleaded with the board to approve the new high school.

“Having another option like Global Leadership Academy Charter High School is important for students like me who need a good place to learn,” said Troy Williams, who described the stressful process of applying to selective district high schools.

“Parents are struggling to find a good high school that fits what we want.”

The two existing GLA schools would be feeders for the proposed high school, although GLA officials planned to open the new school in the former Cristo Rey building in North Philadelphia, far from the other schools’ West and Southwest Philadelphia locations. The proposed school was set to start with 150 students and expand to 600.

While applicants touted the new school as a destination for current GLA students, they also claimed the school would be a separate entity from the other GLA schools, Mariel Ziegler, interim chief of the district’s charter school office, told board members.

Board member Joyce Wilkerson wasn’t buying that. “I do believe it is the same operator, and think it is important to consider the academic performance of the schools they currently operate,” she said.

Ziegler’s presentation of the charter school office’s evaluation of GLA’s revised application showed that the two existing Global Leadership schools had much lower achievement levels than the district as a whole or a set of comparison schools.

In 2022-23, while 34% of district students and 35% of students in peer schools scored proficient on the state PSSA exam in English Language Arts, just 19% of GLA Charter School students did so. That figure also represented a sharp decline from the 40% proficiency that GLA’s schools reached in 2017-18. In math, just 4% of students reached proficiency, compared to 17% in the district as a whole and 15% in peer schools.

Wilkerson also questioned Global Leadership’s financial viability, citing its shaky credit rating despite an influx of federal pandemic aid: “It’s hard to believe the schools could be at risk of defaulting with all the federal resources out there.”

Jones, the councilmember who represents the district where the two existing Global Leadership schools are located, nevertheless urged the board to approve the charter. “When I walk into Global, I feel something special,” he said, adding that many parents had called him about getting their children into the schools. “To be honest about it, the facts are that it’s a good school.”

But Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, a watchdog group, cited her group’s recent findings that most charters enroll fewer students than they’re authorized to.

“No reason has been presented to change the board’s mind about rejecting this school,” Haver said. “There is no need for a new charter in any part of the city.”

Wilkerson’s positions on charters contributed to recent controversy.

In April, the City Council refused to vote on confirming Parker’s renomination of Wilkerson, who had chaired both the Board of Education and the School Reform Commission when the state ran the district. Members cited her opposition to several new charter schools. Parker responded by declining to name a replacement for her, and she continues to serve.

The district’s charter office has also been accused by some charter leaders of being biased against Black-run charter schools. But a state audit cleared it of any intentional discrimination. GLA founder Booker is Black.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly needs to hire more than 450 teachers, with the worst shortage in special ed

2024-06-24T19:37:49+00:00

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Brittney Whitehead, assistant principal of the small, innovative high school in Northwest Philadelphia called Building 21, came to the Philadelphia School District’s educator hiring fair last Friday with one goal: She wanted to recruit certified special education teachers.

But Whitehead left disappointed.

At the end of the two-hour event, held at the district’s headquarters at 440 North Broad Street, she had only found one possible candidate for those positions.

“I thought that this Grow your Own pipeline … would have made a lot more of a variety of people, but we didn’t really have many,” she said, referring to a district program that supports paraprofessionals to get full teaching certification.

“You can definitely feel the impact of a teacher shortage and on top of that a special ed teacher shortage,” she said.

As of now, the district needs to fill at least 452 vacancies among its nearly 9,000 teaching and counseling positions before school starts at the end of August, according to a list distributed to attendees at the hiring fair. But it is always a struggle to fill all available jobs – and the problem is getting worse. There have been more than 400 vacancies reported in each of the last two years, meaning that in any given year, thousands of students could face a revolving door of substitutes during crucial times in their development.

And by far, the biggest shortage is among special education teachers. Of the 452 vacancies, about 150 were special ed. That’s one-third of the total.

“Nobody can find enough special education teachers,” said Edward Fuller, a professor of educational studies at Pennsylvania State University who researches the teaching profession. “It’s staggering how bad the situation in special ed is.”

And the vacancies now don’t fully account for the high rate of teachers who leave, many after the school year starts. Fuller’s latest report found that 13% of district teachers quit their jobs in 2022.

While not limited to Philadelphia, he said, the shortages are most acute in high-poverty districts with majority Black and Hispanic students. Schools are also struggling to find teachers of English language learners, he said.

“There are no more vulnerable child populations than these two, and that’s where our vacancy rates are highest,” Fuller said. “This should not be acceptable.”

Thousands of Philly students go without a permanent, certified teacher

As a rule, Philadelphia fills 98 to 99% of its teaching positions in any given year, said Amanda Mitchell of the district’s educator recruitment team. While that sounds high, it still can leave thousands of students without a permanent, certified teacher.

In 2022, the district started the school year with some 200 vacancies. Last year, the number was nearly twice that, with just a 95% “fill rate” weeks before school started.

Neil Geyette, principal of The U School, talks with a prospective teacher, Nakia Hagans.

Of the 200 people who registered for last week’s event, 149 showed up, said Mitchell. They included teachers who are new to the profession, teachers with experience elsewhere, and current district teachers seeking a new assignment.

The number of people graduating with teaching certificates in Pennsylvania has declined 67% over the last decade, Fuller said. And many people are working in schools with emergency certifications.

Under those certifications, people have a bachelor’s degree but not a teaching degree, or have a teaching degree in an unrelated field. They have three years to earn the proper credentials.

In the meantime, they have to prove that they are enrolled in a certification program. Sometimes, though, the person leaves before the three years are up, a scenario that essentially perpetuates the use of non-certified teachers.

Fuller said that, based on his latest research, 24.4% of teachers in Philadelphia have emergency certification – compared to less than 3% in Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties. In Delaware County, which includes Chester-Upland and William Penn, it is 8.5%.

At the hiring event, applicants could speak to representatives from 70 of the Philadelphia district’s more than 200 schools, each of which advertised the positions they needed to fill.

A growing number of students with special needs

For the past year, Neil Geyette, principal of The U School, which he founded in 2014 to serve marginalized students, said he had to hire a teacher for an emotional support class through an outside recruiting firm. Many people who wind up in the district under these circumstances come from related fields, such as social work, and have experience working with children – but not as teachers.

The person had an emergency certification, and he worried that she wouldn’t be able to handle it. But, he added, “she did a great job.”

That isn’t always the case. And as Fuller’s numbers show, city schools are increasingly relying on emergency certifications to fill all their jobs, especially in special education, said principals and others who sat at tables waiting for potential recruits to stop by.

Emergency certification “is starting to become the norm,” said Whitehead. “It’s harder to find people who have traditional education backgrounds not under emergency cert or that have been in education for longer than three years.”

Complicating matters is that in some schools, and especially since the pandemic, the special education population is soaring. Geyette said up to 36% of the students in his school receive special education services, compared to a districtwide rate of 19%. That figure is also trending upward; as recently as 2020-21, it was 17.4%.

Geyette said he found one or two potential hires at last week’s event.

“More students have been identified as special education since the pandemic,” said Ayanna Walker, principal of the Workshop School, which has a project-based curriculum and, like Building 21 and the U School, was created for students seeking alternatives to large, neighborhood high schools. She said that at Workshop, if all the prospective ninth graders who have signed up actually enroll, the special education rate next year will be 47% – nearly half the student body.

Some eager teachers can’t find positions

Justin Avery at the Philadelphia school district's recruitment fair. There were not many openings for social studies teachers like him.

While attendees at the hiring fair who were certified in special education had dozens of choices, teachers trained in other fields found their options limited. After special education, the next biggest category to fill was for elementary teachers, with around 100 openings at schools with grades kindergarten through sixth.

But for some teaching categories, there are very few openings, as Justin Avery learned. Avery is certified to teach social studies – not a high-demand field. Of all the vacancies on the district’s list, less than a dozen specified social studies.

Fewer than 2% of teachers nationwide are Black males – the number is closer to 5% in Philadelphia – but Avery has been out of work for a year after being laid off due to budget cuts in his previous district in South Jersey. He has two master’s degrees and 18 years of experience.

“I guess I’m overqualified,” he said.

But after talking to representatives from several schools at the event, he thinks he might have a chance of picking up a position as a writing teacher.

He’s hopeful. Still, he said, “It’s been a challenge.”

Chloe Pyle searches for potential music teacher openings at the teacher hiring fair.

As a student-teacher while getting her master’s degree in music education from University of the Arts, vocalist Chloe Pyle she experienced two extremes of city education: Friends Select – small, Quaker, private, and in Center City; and Frankford High – big, old, in a gritty neighborhood and forced to temporarily relocate most students due to asbestos problems.

She fell in love with Frankford.

“It was so different from my own high school,” said Pyle, who grew up in rural Delaware. “It completely changed how I viewed education. Some of those kids live lives that the kids in the other school would never understand.”

Backstories aside, she said, “they were all just students in music class.”

Whitehead, from Building 21, said more than 40% of their students have Individualized Education Programs, and that the school has increased its special education staff from four to nine teachers, and there are still two vacancies.

At the end of the event, educators like Whitehead often didn’t have many more options than when they started. She interviewed several career-changers, she said, including a former banker who wanted to teach English learners. But that was one need her school doesn’t have.

Stll, Whitehead noted, the shortage is palpable and whether candidates are new to the profession on emergency certification or seasoned veterans with the right credentials, “they’re all needed.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Azia Ross is a summer intern for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. You can reach her at aziaross@chalkbeat.org.

More money for schools in Pennsylvania will yield thousands more high school graduates, report finds

2024-06-20T20:09:49+00:00

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New research from the University of Pennsylvania shows that sending billions more to school districts in the Commonwealth will more than pay for itself over time by increasing high school graduation rates and college enrollment levels.

The report backed up an analysis of the state’s Basic Education Funding Commission that recommended an increase of $5.1 billion in state funds, distributed in a way that assures adequate spending for all districts, weighted according to students’ needs. It comes just a few weeks before the June 30 deadline for approving the state budget and its level of education aid.

“We know that high school graduates over their lifetime make far more income than students who disengage and drop out,” said Brooks Bowden, a professor of education policy at Penn’s Graduate School of Education who supervised the research conducted by graduate students David Loeb and Katie Pullom.

High school graduates pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government welfare support or enter the prison system. Bowden said the report’s findings make sense “if you think of education as a public good and a pathway to freedom and a sustainable livelihood” for more students.

The Democratic-controlled House earlier this month passed a budget that includes the $5.1 billion in additional school aid, which also is included in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget.

The commission, made up of a bipartisan group of legislators and three representatives of Shapiro’s administration, formed in the wake of Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer’s Commonwealth Court ruling in February 2023 that the state’s education funding system is unconstitutionally inequitable and inadequate.

The funding commission’s report, compiled after holding hearings across the state, found that 367 of the state’s 500 districts, including Philadelphia, are underfunded compared to their needs. It passed 8-7, with all six of the Republican legislators on the commission opposing its conclusions.

To meet the court mandate and following the commission’s recommendations, the education spending proposal approved by the House would increase basic education aid by $728 million each year through fiscal year 2031. All but five Republicans voted against it, including many in poor rural districts that would benefit from the increased spending.

In a contentious debate right before the vote, Republican legislators questioned the relationship between per-pupil spending and student outcomes and decried the lack of an accountability measure for how the money is spent.

The recent Penn study attempts to provide data to address some of those concerns by looking at the long-term consequences of increased spending on expected student outcomes. The complicated economic research studied educational results in 26 other states that have reformed their school funding systems since 1990, either to meet court mandates or out of concern for adequacy. The study then extrapolated benefits a similar increase would yield in Pennsylvania.

It looked at the impact of increased spending for three cohorts of students – those now in kindergarten, those now in sixth grade, and those now in ninth grade. It found that the benefits were greater for the youngest students, who would see improved teacher and counselor ratios – and therefore smaller classes – throughout their school careers. But the older students would also see gains in outcomes, the report said.

Saying that the estimates “err on the side of caution,” the report concludes that the commission proposal “is a wise investment that would yield quantifiable benefits to Pennsylvania’s students, economy and society that exceed the funding increase.” In calculating the effects of increased spending, it only focused on one-third of students – those most likely to graduate high school if they had better access to teachers, counselors, and other resources routinely available in wealthier districts.

For students entering kindergarten in 2024, adequate spending would increase their high school graduation rate by 4.47 percentage points – translating into an additional 3,800 students receiving a diploma. The college-going rate among the 85,000 students entering kindergarten this year would increase by 4.54 percentage points, or 3,860 students. So while increased costs over the 13 years of their schooling would amount to $4.3 billion, the benefits would exceed $5.1 billion, the report found.

“These educational improvements will translate into societal economic benefits that exceed the costs. The full benefits will likely be far greater,” the researchers wrote.

The report notes, in its analysis of current spending: “Compared to adequately funded districts, underfunded districts have more low-income students, lower staff salaries, and higher student-to-staff ratios. Average total revenue per need-weighted student is $4,600 lower in these districts. The disparities are particularly stark for the 100 most underfunded districts, where total revenue per need-weighted student is $6,000 lower than in adequately funded districts.”

It said that more equitable and adequate spending on K-12 schooling would also help the state’s economy by shoring up the educational workforce through hiring an estimated 18,000 more teachers and increasing teacher salaries in underfunded districts by an average of $7,000 a year. The additional funds would allow most of the underfunded districts – 82% – to provide the same teacher-student and counselor-student ratios as wealthier ones.

“What the evidence shows is that as students receive more high quality schooling over time, their outcomes are better,” said Loeb. While beneficial for students now, it is also beneficial for students in the long run.”

A spokesperson for Senate Republicans did not respond to a request for comment on the report’s findings.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

After home school and online learning, Philly student graduates near the top of his class

2024-06-13T23:16:46+00:00

About this series: Four years ago, Chalkbeat reporters documented the stories of high school freshmen experiencing a critical year through Zoom calls and from behind masks. These students, who experienced freshman year at a distance, are now graduating seniors. How did the pandemic shape their high school lives? How did their expectations for these formative four years play out? We caught up with these members of the Class of 2024 to find out.

Four years ago, Yahya Long was preparing to go back to school after a near lifetime of learning at home. He hadn’t been in school since one brief, miserable experience in third grade.

But then the pandemic hit, disrupting his plans. He had to wait even longer to do in-person learning at a school he and his mother felt was a perfect fit for him: Workshop School, a quirky place that started out as the automotive academy of West Philadelphia High.

Ninth grade at Workshop was remote – a disappointing experience not only because it delayed his being with peers, but because Workshop stressed hands-on, project-based learning, which was hard to do on Zoom.

At Workshop, Long looked forward to indulging his love of animation and other self-directed, creative pursuits, as well as catching up on his socialization skills, which he admitted were rusty.

But on Thursday in his speech to his classmates and their families as salutatorian of Workshop’s 36-member Class of 2024, he said graduation was a “momentous occasion” preceded by trials and tribulations.

“Our journey to get to this position in our lives was a rocky road to say the least,” he said. “From practically having our freshman year ripped from us because of COVID, and then being forced to adjust.”

Yahya Long greets family and friends after the graduation ceremony on Thurs., June 13, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Long plans to continue his education at Arcadia University, located just outside the city limits in Elkins Park, and study art and animation.

His speech was witty and self-revelatory. “These four – really three – years of my life have been pretty monumental to my development,” he said. “I remember in the 10th grade being a shy weirdo in the corner who kept to himself and made sure he wasn’t noticed, which I think I failed at miserably.”

Workshop helped him evolve, he said, “to a weirdo who is slightly less shy and willing to speak in front of a crowd of people, pretty crazy if you ask me.”

Now 18, Long has blossomed. At first, he said, going to school in person was just “something to do, a reason to get out of the house.” But attending Workshop in person for three years gave him structure and the chance to interact with peers. Teachers encouraged his creativity and interests.

At first, he said in an earlier interview, he found interaction with other students and teachers to be difficult.

“I wasn’t that outgoing and talkative. I was not antisocial, just shy.”

But he adapted well. Although Workshop started out as an automotive academy, and many in the mostly male student body do prepare for careers as mechanics, Long wasn’t one of them.

“I think I put on a car tire once, that’s the most I did,” he said, laughing.

Instead, he spent his time making art. In 11th grade, he was an intern for a semester at the University City Arts League, where he discovered the Fabric Workshop. “Screen printing, working with textiles, that seemed chill,” he said.

Artwork courtesy of Yahya Long.

As a career, he said, “I want to do art. I want art to give people experiences, to make them feel good, to have a positive experience of the things I make, to say, ‘Whoa, that’s cool.”

Frogs often show up in his artwork – as a child, he learned to read with the book Frog and Toad. In his typically taciturn way, he shrugged when asked to elaborate on this attachment beyond his first exposure through that book.

“I don’t have a deep answer, I just like frogs,” he said. “I just like how they look.”

To hear him tell it, his artwork reflects whatever is preoccupying him at the moment, from “circles to robots to ordinary people.” One storyline that he has explored is “a big robot that goes to different planets across the galaxy.”

He also has done animation of a Spider-Man-like character flying and tumbling through the air.

As an animator, he would like to have his own company. “If the opportunity arose to work for Disney or Pixar or game companies, that would be cool. But I really want my own control over things I want to make.”

He is not, by his own admission, “a person who wants to change the world or be president. I want to make it, while you’re here, that you have a good time.”

Initially, Principal Ayanna Walker told Long that he would be the school’s valedictorian, and his reaction was matter-of-fact, she said. “It was not that he was almost mad, but more like, ‘Oh, now, I have to give a speech.’”

But just the day before graduation, when final grades were calculated, it turned out that he was salutatorian. With a 3.8 grade point average, he fell a tiny fraction behind Johari Williams.

He also took this news in stride. “He’s comfortable with who he is,” Walker said, “and he doesn’t need the validation. It’s not too often that you know who a child is at an early age. He’s one of those people true to their identity … his own person … you never see him with a crowd … he’s talented, artistic and smart.”

A school with a special mission

The initiative that became Workshop started in 1999 at West Philadelphia High School as an after-school program to build electric cars, founded by teacher Simon Hauger and several other educators. By 2012, it had evolved into its own separate school with a focus that moved beyond its automotive roots to focus on hands-on projects of all kinds.

“Our school is not for kids who want to be a doctor or lawyer and go to Harvard,” Walker said. Many of its students “don’t fit in at a typical school. This school is not cookie cutter.”

Since it had such a specialized mission, it benefited from the district’s longtime high school admissions process – it has tiers of selective and citywide schools, all with criteria for entry – that gave principals a say in choosing the student body.

But in an effort to combat any bias and to open opportunities for more students to attend the city’s most selective magnets, especially Masterman and Central, district leaders inaugurated a lottery three years ago that gave preference to qualified students from five underrepresented ZIP codes. This system took away any principal discretion in selecting the incoming class.

The new process has proven to be problematic for schools like Workshop that cater to a particular type of student.

“It’s had huge implications,” said Hauger, who left as principal several years ago. “We serve some of the most marginalized students in the city.”

Workshop leaders had worked hard to give more balance to the student body and to make sure those admitted understood what the school would demand of them before deciding to attend. The lottery upended those efforts and has resulted in many students going there who are not a good fit for the school, Hauger said. There also has been a surge in students with special needs. Its enrollment is now below 200.

For Long, however, who entered just before the lottery took effect, Workshop has served him well. For his final projects at Workshop, he made a website and put together an art portfolio.

Artwork courtesy of Yahya Long.

“I just want to say I have the utmost faith in all of you to be successful people in your lives, even if you yourself don’t believe so,” he told his classmates, citing how the projects they did and the people they met taught them about networking, about finance, and about their field of interest.

“Everything will go according to plan, all you have to do is just work for it,” he said. “And finally, let us all raise our heads up high and march across the line into the unknown and embrace the trials and tribulations that await us.”

Grinning broadly, he ended with a joke that hinted at how nervous he was. Now, he said, “I am going to take a nap or something.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania House passes education funding overhaul with big aid boost for Philly schools

2024-06-10T22:26:30+00:00

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The Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved school funding legislation Monday that would significantly increase education funding and distribute it in a way designed to ensure all students have access to a quality, equitable education.

The groundbreaking legislation would amend the school code to guarantee basic education aid levels increase steadily for the next seven years. It would also implement a new funding formula that would dramatically reduce per pupil spending gaps between the state’s wealthy and low-income districts, which are on average among the biggest in the nation. It also includes changes to how the state funds cyber charter schools.

If enacted as part of the state’s budget process, Philadelphia schools would get more than $242 million more in basic education aid next year and nearly $1.4 billion more over the next seven years, and another $116 million annually if the cyber charter funding changes are approved.

It passed 107-94, after two hours of sometimes contentious debate.

The funding overhaul comes in the wake of a February 2023 ruling by Commonwealth Court judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is unconstitutional because it fails to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of education for all students. Jubelirer ordered the legislature to overhaul the funding system.

Monday’s vote was split largely along party lines, with all Democrats voting in favor and all but five Republicans opposing the bill. The bill now goes to the Republican-dominated Senate, where its fate is in question.

“There was a time not all that long ago where the state of Pennsylvania was dead last in terms of equitably funding education,” said Rep. Michael Sturla, a Democrat from Lancaster. With this bill, Sturla said, “We’re adding more money and we’re making sure it’s getting spent on proven programs.”

Democratic Rep. Jordan Harris of Philadelphia said it is lawmakers’ “moral imperative” to fully fund Pennsylvania’s schools: “You can’t starve a system and then try to blame it for its inadequacies.”

Republican legislators complained that the bill lacked accountability for how funds are spent; that more money is not guaranteed to improve student outcomes; that traditional educational systems resist innovation; and that money should go directly to parents through school choice, especially vouchers.

“Signing a blank check for public education is the most uncreative way to go about this,” said Rep. Joseph Dorsie, a York Republican. “The only solution in my view is to fund students, not systems.”

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has indicated he favors vouchers, but they’re not part of the bill passed by the House on Monday. Last year, a dispute over whether to create a voucher program in Pennsylvania held up budget talks for more than a month. Shapiro ultimately vetoed a $100 million appropriation for vouchers in the budget while calling the issue “unfinished business.”

A group of elected officials and activists, including Philadelphia Councilmembers Kendra Brooks, Isaiah Thomas, Jamie Gauthier, and Nicolas O’Rourke, rallied outside the statehouse Monday before the vote.

“Vouchers put public money in the pockets of the rich while draining resources from public schools in our communities,” said Brooks.

The school funding legislation is expected to be the centerpiece of the state’s budget this year. The state must pass its fiscal 2025 budget by June 30.

On Monday, education advocates who have long fought for school funding reform were ecstatic.

“We are headed towards a before and after moment for the children of Pennsylvania,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg of the Public Interest Law Center, which helped represent the plaintiffs in the school funding case that led to Jubelirer’s 2023 ruling. “The most unfair school funding system in the nation will be no more, as thousands of new teachers, counselors, librarians, and school nurses deliver what every child deserves: the opportunity to thrive. We urge the Senate to promptly pass this bill.”

School funding bill includes cyber charter changes

The bill passed by the House would hike basic education aid by $728 million annually for the next seven years, for a total increase of $5.1 billion over that period. Most of those funds would go to 367 of the state’s 500 districts determined by the court to be underfunded relative to their students’ needs.

The proposed budget also includes $1 billion targeted to low-wealth districts that have adopted high local property taxes in an effort to make up for a relative lack of state support for their schools. It also guarantees that no district will get less state aid in 2024-25 than it did this year, even if its enrollment drops — so called “hold harmless.”

Philadelphia ranks about in the middle among the 500 districts in per pupil spending, but its schools have been chronically underfunded. Its students are much more likely to be from low-income backgrounds than their peers in surrounding suburban districts.

District leaders passed a $4.5 billion budget last month that they balanced using reserve funds, mostly federal pandemic aid that is expiring later this year. They also forecast escalating shortfalls through 2029, starting with $88 million next year, based on current revenue projections.

Mayor Cherelle Parker and other city leaders are planning a press conference Tuesday morning urging the governor and legislature to approve a state budget that would fully close Philadelphia’s funding gap.

Lawmakers hammered out the bill following hearings across the state held by the legislative Basic Education Funding Commission in the wake of Jubelirer’s decision.

The legislation would also reform how Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are funded in a way that would save districts more than $500 million annually. With nearly 60,000 students in 13 schools, Pennsylvania has the second-highest enrollment of students in cyber charters of any state, behind only Arizona.

It would set a flat $8,000 per-pupil rate for cyber charters’ regular education students, and a little over $13,000 for those in special education. Currently, each district pays cyber charters based on their own per-pupil costs, which can range as high as $30,000 per student for a district like Lower Merion. Philadelphia alone could save $243 million through this provision.

Cyber charters have attracted criticism in the state for years. Education Voters PA, for example, released a report released last month outlining how cyber charter schools have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets while their students produce subpar outcomes. Defenders of cyber charters have said districts critical of the schools want to take choice away from students.

Chalkbeat intern Azia Ross contributed to this story.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Masterman’s first Black principal departs to take over North Philadelphia high school

2024-06-04T19:23:08+00:00

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Jeannine Hendricks Payne, who three years ago became the first Black principal of Masterman, Philadelphia’s most prestigious magnet school, is leaving this summer to take over Strawberry Mansion High in North Philadelphia next year.

Her surprise departure comes after a time of controversy at Masterman. Last month, some parents filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over the district’s response to antisemitic incidents at the school following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent war. There’s also ongoing dissent about how the district’s new lottery admissions system has affected the school.

Payne said the move is her own decision. She noted that both she and her father, Gerald Hendricks, a legendary physical education teacher and basketball coach, taught at Mansion.

“I want to be clear, I’m not leaving Masterman out of frustration,” Payne said in an

interview Monday. “If Strawberry Mansion never had a vacancy, I would not have applied anywhere else. They had a vacancy and I love that school.”

Payne’s next job will be quite different from her role at Masterman. Mansion, as the school is universally known, is in one of the poorest parts of the city and struggles with enrollment, achievement and climate. Built to hold 1,700 students, it now has just 250, making it one of the smallest high schools in Philadelphia.

It was slated for closure in 2013 and again in 2018, only to be saved following community protests and the intervention of then-City Council President Darrell Clarke, a Mansion alumnus.

Antisemitism, admissions controversy test Masterman’s leader

Two controversies in particular made Payne’s recent tenure especially challenging.

The federal complaint from parents about antisemitism in Philly schools since Oct. 7 cited incidents at Masterman, including a swastika scrawled on an outside door and a bake sale by the Islamic Student Association that allegedly included the distribution of anti-Israel literature.

Payne said she had the swastika removed within 12 hours, but some parents wanted an in-depth probe. She said she screened the fliers for the bake sale and disallowed some of them.

But well before the Oct. 7 attack, a group of Masterman parents were unhappy with the school’s direction.

Payne took the reins at the school just as the district inaugurated a lottery admission system in 2021 for its most selective schools, which guaranteed admission to all qualifying students from certain ZIP codes. Officials hoped the redesigned system would offer more opportunities to historically underrepresented populations.

But in February 2023, a group of parents released a report arguing that the new system had lowered the school’s admission standards for fifth graders, with some students unprepared for its rigor.

It also argued that Masterman’s leadership “continues to make curricular and staff changes that are causing exasperation and despair in the classroom and the community” and that “[s]tudent, teacher and community morale is at a low point. … Increasingly parents and administration feel at odds with one another.”

The report complained about schedule changes that reduced access to art, music, and gym, and that other decisions led to the “decimation of language studies.”

In sum, the report said that instead of enhancing Masterman’s curriculum and electives that were prized by parents, the school’s administration “appears to view the middle school as no different from other neighborhood schools.”

Mitchell Orenstein was president of Masterman’s Home and School Association board when the parents released their 2023 report. While confirming some of the controversies that roiled the school, he said in response to her leaving: “Dr. Payne has a passion for education and a passion for addressing the needs of underserved students in this district.”

In response to widespread complaints, the district overhauled the 2021 lottery admissions process in 2023. So far the system, meant to be antiracist, hasn’t made a big dent in the representation of Black and Latino students at Masterman and Central High, the district’s other top magnet.

Recently, Masterman’s student demographics have not reflected the district’s. Proportionally, it has far fewer Black and Hispanic students than citywide.

Masterman has students in grades 5-12. Before the lottery, admission to the smaller high school was in effect restricted to Masterman middle schoolers. The lottery opened it up to all students who met the criteria.

This year, as part of the lottery overhaul, the district decided all of Masterman’s graduating eighth graders automatically have a spot in the high school if they want it.

Saterria Kersey, another former president of Masterman’s Home and School Association, said in an interview that she felt racial issues played a part in Payne’s departure.

Kersey, who is Black, cited pushback from some parents for decisions that for the most part were beyond Payne’s control, including lottery-based admissions. She also said she feels some parents were uncomfortable with having three Black women — Payne and two assistant principals — running the school.

Kersey said her daughter has chosen to leave Masterman after eighth grade; she will attend Parkway Center City Middle College next. “My daughter could have stayed but didn’t, and many other Black students made the same choice,” Kersey said.

“This is a loss for Masterman, and a gain for Mansion,” Kersey added. “They are lucky to have her.”

Before taking the job at Masterman, Payne was principal of Richard R. Wright Elementary in North Philadelphia.

She said she would like to restore middle school grades to Mansion and make it a coveted destination for North Philadelphia students. The school started out in 1966 as a junior high and added senior high grades in 1977.

In its heyday, Mansion had a top basketball program. Hendricks, Payne’s father, led its team to state championships in 2000 and 2003 and to the state finals in 2008 and 2010.

“I am returning to the school where I taught for five years and my father taught for over 20 years, the school that was the feeder location for elementary schools I led for 13 years,” Payne said, referring to Wright and Gideon, a K-8 school in North Philadelphia. “I’m taking advantage of an opening in a school community that I find meaningful.”

The district is starting a process to look for a new Masterman principal that will involve parent and community input.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

How a visual arts program for Philly students helps them understand their world — and themselves

2024-05-24T19:49:05+00:00

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Art is a way for Shamaya McTillman to deal with her emotions.

“This is something I knew I wanted to do,” said Shamaya, who will graduate next month from Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School, explaining why she made sure to stay every day after school to work on a project with Mural Arts Philadelphia. It was a way, she said, “to escape problems in school and out of school, to ease stress.”

Mural Arts, founded in 1984, works with students between the ages of 10 and 18 in 17 Philadelphia schools and recreation centers. Each site has a collaborating visual artist, and once a year it sponsors a showcase of students’ work. Mural Arts’ mission is to “empower youth to be leaders through artmaking,” according to its mission statement.

Shamaya McTillman chose “Alice in Wonderland” as the inspiration for her art.

“Every young person in the city of Philadelphia should have access to art,” Mural Arts founder Jane Golden told the gathering of teachers, parents and students at this year’s showcase on May 13 at the Icebox Project Space, an art gallery on North American Street in the Fishtown neighborhood.

Some of the students’ work will in fact be made into murals on their school’s buildings, including a whimsical design featuring dragons and unicorns by students at Edmonds Elementary School.

The theme this year was “fairy tales and folklore.” So with the help of teaching artist Jamee Grigsby, Shamaya and five of her classmates came up with a mural sculpture — nine smaller pictures, each in a box, that together make a mural — to reflect that theme.

Shamaya chose “Alice in Wonderland” as the inspiration for her segment of the project, and her panel in the sculpture shows ice cream, mushrooms, flowers and other items that evoke a “wonderland.” But in the center is a vortex, symbolizing escape, indicating that just because it’s pretty, “it may not be what you want,” she said.

“I went through so much during my years in high school, this helped me to escape things that were pushing me down,” she said. “I didn’t want to be just another person in the streets, but somebody who knows how to pick herself up.”

Next year, she will attend Full Sail University in Florida that specializes in preparing its students for careers in graphic design and other artistic pursuits.

Jane Golden, left, founder of Mural Arts, speaks to teachers, parents, students, and others at the annual showcase in Philadelphia.

Grigsby, a muralist and graphic designer, said in a note accompanying the piece Shamaya worked on that through making art, students are learning about their cultural traditions, “researching stories that have shaped our generations.”

Ultimately, she said, “they focused on using different mediums to visualize a way to tell their own stories and … express their insights with imagination and flair.”

Chidiebere Ogbenna, whose family came to Philadelphia from Nigeria, wants to make a career in animation, so having access to arts programming is important to her. Now a sophomore, she chose Dobbins because it offers a program in graphic design and animation.

She remembers that growing up, her parents told stories in which “I was the sun and my sister the moon.” So for her mural, she drew two scenes with the same tree, one in sunlight and the other in moonlight.

The opportunity to participate in the Mural Arts program is important to her future plans, she said. She has ambitions after graduation to attend Gobelins Paris or Sheridan College in Canada, which are known around the world for their animation programs.

Students at Tilden Middle School designed this mural for their school that's displayed at the Mural Arts Philadelphia annual showcase.

Shamaya is part of a huge family in North Philadelphia, with seven sisters and two brothers. Through art, she said, she learned to “love yourself now in order to love who you will become in the future.” When she was feeling particularly down, she said, Mural Arts “helped me learn and grow.”

Expressing herself through art “is a lot about understanding what you want to do not just after graduation, but where you want to be in 15 years,” she said. In college, she looks forward to meeting new people, learning about their creative process, entering into collaborations, “and just having fun.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Seventy years after Brown v Board of Education, school funding is the new frontier in education equity

2024-05-20T16:34:40+00:00

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

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In 1969, Debra Matthews was almost 9 years old and looking forward to fourth grade with her friends at Rowen Elementary when her mother told her she would be going to a different school five miles away from her West Oak Lane home.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Matthews recalled. Rowen had just built a brand new annex building that Matthews had been excited to explore. “I thought I would be going there. I was looking forward to that.”

Instead, until she graduated, Matthews, who is Black, rode a bus every morning, about a half hour each way, to predominantly white Northeast Philadelphia. First in a school bus to J. Hampton Moore elementary, then via SEPTA to Woodrow Wilson Junior High, now Castor Gardens Middle School, and then to Northeast High School.

All in the name of school desegregation.

This month marks the 70th anniversary of what is perhaps the most consequential U.S. Supreme Court decision of the 20th century, Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed Jim Crow laws in 17 states that required Black and white children to be educated in separate schools.

As the nation commemorates Brown, Philadelphians are reflecting on their own long and complicated history with school segregation.

Philadelphia was a city where segregation was not de jure, or imposed not by the laws that Brown struck down, but instead de facto — the result of personal choices, such as where people choose to live, that led to massive white flight.

For some civil rights leaders of the time, Philadelphia was a perfect test case for challenging segregation in many Northern states. While a federal case was never filed, the district experienced more than 40 years of litigation and oversight from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission aimed at integrating schools. This resulted in generations of students like Matthews, almost all of them Black, bused to schools outside of their neighborhoods and decades of court pressure to implement other policies designed to end segregation.

But, today, the city’s students are still largely attending some of the most segregated and under resourced schools in the country. The district is 50% Black and 14% white, while the city’s overall demographics are nearly 40% Black and 34% white, reflecting a longstanding pattern of most white families attending private schools. Although the city is home to a few of the most racially-mixed schools in the state, a new study out of Stanford University found Philadelphia’s schools overall remain nearly as segregated as they were 30 years ago. White students are concentrated in a little over a dozen mostly special-admissions schools and comprise just a tiny percentage in the vast majority of neighborhood schools, the study found.

In the 70 years since Brown, “Segregation in the North has gotten worse, and the Philadelphia area is no exception to that,” said Michael Churchill of the Public Interest Law Center, a legal advocacy group.

Advocates like Churchill haven’t given up on desegregation as an ideal, but they have shifted focus to the new frontier in educational equity — school funding

“The schools that have the most minority children also have the least funding,” said Churchill, who has represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking fair and adequate school funding in Pennsylvania. “And as difficult as it may be to fix the physical segregation of students, there is absolutely no excuse why there should be such funding disparities.”

The Brown anniversary comes at a time when Pennsylvania’s governor and state legislature are grappling with reforming the state’s funding system in the wake of Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer’s February 2023 decision declaring it unconstitutional. She said Pennsylvania overly relies on property taxes to fund education, depriving students in poorer areas of a “thorough and efficient” education. And she concluded, drawing on research and testimony, that Black and Latino students are disproportionately located in districts with inadequate funding.

While Philadelphia is surrounded by overwhelmingly white, better-funded suburban districts, the lead plaintiff in the school funding case is the William Penn School district on the city’s southwest edge, itself an example of de facto segregation: after more Black families moved into the district, white families once again left, perpetuating the largely separate and unequal system. Property values went down, tax rates went up, and those who could afford to move did.

And that unequal system has been proven to harm Black students, Hispanic students, and students from low-income backgrounds by depriving them of experienced teachers and educating them in aging buildings without proper temperature controls and often plagued with lead and asbestos, among other challenges.

“There is an anti-big city, anti-urban attitude,” said Roseann Liu, a visiting professor at Swarthmore College, at an event for her recently published book “Designed to Fail: Why Racial Equity in School Funding Is So Hard to Achieve,” which is a case study of the issue in Pennsylvania.

“What that really means is anti-Black. … I don’t think that state legislators are racists, but there is something to be said about people in power holding ideas about the value of different kinds of children.”

The history of desegregation efforts in Philadelphia

For decades until the 1970s, the school district strictly enforced policies and practices clearly designed to segregate its schools.

In the early and mid-twentieth century as they built new schools to accommodate the city’s growing population – including many Black families moving from the South – officials drew school catchment area boundaries to segregate students as much as possible.

And well into the 1950′s, the district maintained segregated elementary schools to employ a growing cadre of Black teachers and principals. The white power structure of the day was steadfast in opposition to allowing Black teachers to teach white students and to having Black principals supervise white teachers.

While some practices had eased by then – there were a handful of Black teachers and principals in high schools – discrimination was still very much in evidence in 1970, when the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which had begun monitoring city schools several years before, filed a complaint against the district. The commission, which at the time had the power to enforce anti-discrimination laws, wanted mandatory busing to remedy segregation.

School officials fought any effort to forcibly bus students out of their neighborhoods, especially white students, but they did agree to a voluntary plan in which students like Matthews took part. They also agreed, in the 1970s, to create several new, specialized schools such as George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science in the hopes of attracting a diverse student body.

When Constance Clayton became the city’s first Black (and first female) superintendent in 1982, she and her chief of staff, Penn law professor Ralph Smith, devised a more sweeping plan to satisfy the commission.

Clayton’s plan had two major components. One was to provide extra resources, including free extended day activities and art, music, and technology programming, to mostly Black schools in racially integrated areas as an incentive for white students to attend. Such a school was considered successfully desegregated if it reached 25% white population.

The second component was aimed at the significant number of neighborhood schools that remained virtually all-white, most in Northeast Philadelphia. Under this initiative, the district vastly expanded the voluntary busing program, with the goal of reaching 40% Black enrollment in as many of these schools as possible. Many more thousands of students than was the case in Matthews’ time were bused starting in the Clayton era.

While the voluntary busing did change the demographics of many schools, the commission, which continued to advocate for mandatory busing, took the district to court again in the 1990s. By that time, with more desegregation becoming virtually unattainable, the case evolved to focus on the adequacy and equity of funding.

Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith-Ribner ordered the district to invest more resources in the district’s poorest, “racially-isolated” Black schools. But when she also ordered Harrisburg to send Philadelphia more money to help pay for this, the state Supreme Court summarily took her off the case and the state legislature largely ignored her directive.

Around that time, when Superintendent David Hornbeck called the state’s education funding system “racist,” Gov. Tom Ridge took umbrage at the comment, an incident that helped precipitate the state takeover of the Philadelphia school district in 2002. The state controlled the district until 2018, an era that saw the rise of charter schools as the primary reform effort to improve the education of low-income, Black, and Hispanic students.

The busing continued until 2009, when the district’s second Black superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, asked that it be ended, citing the expense of busing and a waning commitment to desegregation itself for its own sake.

Students at Henry R. Houston Elementary School in Mount Airy. Houston was one of the district's targeted desegregation schools which received extra resources to attract white students. Today it is 23% white.

‘Integration 2.0′

As the nation reflects on the Brown anniversary, Philadelphia educators and policymakers have been pondering what next steps should be.

“The other legacy of Brown, is when desegregation did happen it was done at the expense of Black communities,” said Erica Frankenberg, who studies the subject at Pennsylvania State University. “It was done inequitably in that it made some communities question the importance of it.”

She said she has been “thinking about this idea of what would integration 2.0 look like, integration in a multi racial way, with equitable sharing who has to travel, making sure what is reflected in the curriculum and history classes, integrated teachers. All of that is done in some places, but it is not widespread.”

Sharif El-Mekki, a former school district and charter school principal who now runs the Center for Black Educator Development, said Brown was invaluable in that it invalidated what he described as an “apartheid” system. At the same time, he said, quoting activist Stokely Carmichael, it is not segregation per se, “but white supremacy we should be fighting against. What’s important is that we don’t have government-sanctioned forms of segregation.”

El-Mekki, who is working hard to recruit more Black teachers at a time when their attrition rate is greater than that for white teachers, said while the government and institutions should be vigilant about discrimination, they should also be doing more to support “all-Black spaces that are holistic and affirming.”

To mark the anniversary, Desireé Chang, the Director of Education and Outreach at the state Human Relations Commission that pursued the Philadelphia case for so long, said there is still work to be done.

“Students living in lower income communities are deprived of the same resources provided to students in higher income communities,” she said. “This underfunding has led to crowded classrooms, fewer teachers and outdated schools, textbooks, and an overall unequal education.”

In in Black community where Debra Matthews grew up, and still lives, and in others like it, there was long the assumption that schools with white students would be better than the one in the neighborhood. The students taking the opportunity to travel from Rowen to the Northeast filled the school bus.

Matthews, now 63, can’t say for sure how or whether she benefited from her experience traveling far from her home to attend school, having nothing to compare it to. She noted that at J. Hampton Moore, the building was more modern, the gym had more equipment, and the schoolyard was bigger than at Rowen. She recalls that she made new friends and enjoyed “a rainbow of classes.”

She remembers that at Rowen she had been on an accelerated track, whereas in her new school she was not. After her mother complained, however, she was switched.

And she recalls that when she arrived, as a nine-year-old, several of the girls in the class had letters from their parents saying that they were not to sit next to any Black students. And the teacher complied.

But, she said, over time, she made friends, even with some of the girls who had the letters. In an era when many students went home for lunch, something the bused-in students couldn’t do, she was invited to go home with a classmate.

“I did that one time, and I wasn’t impressed,” she said, laughing, recalling that the only difference between her Philadelphia rowhouse and theirs — down to the plastic covers on the furniture — was that her friend’s mother didn’t toast their bread.

“I thought I was going to see something with more splendor, grandeur. But they were just an average family. And I was missing pizza day.”

There were occasional conflicts and awkward incidents, but by fifth and sixth grade she and her girlfriends were sitting around together cutting out pictures from magazines of their favorite idols, which included both the Osmonds and the Jackson 5.

“We got along,” she said. “Sometimes, if adults just let children be children and stop trying to spread beliefs onto them, it will work out.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s charter school authorizing process complies with state laws, audit finds

2024-05-07T22:23:19+00:00

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Amid charges from some advocates and City Council members that the Philadelphia school board is biased against Black-run charter schools, Pennsylvania’s Auditor General has found that Philadelphia’s authorizing, evaluation, and renewal process complies with all relevant state laws, regulations, and guidelines.

The audit, released Tuesday, highlighted some areas for improvement, but did not raise concern about discriminatory practices. The purpose of the audit was not to explicitly respond to or investigate the allegations of racial bias.

At a press conference, Auditor General Timothy DeFoor said the audit represented “good news to share” because the Charter Schools Office “complied with all state laws and guidance, as well as its own internal processes regarding new applications.”

He also said that it was “important to note that the school board, not the charter schools office,” approves new charter school applications.

The audit scrutinized the procedures followed by the Charter Schools Office for the academic years 2022 and 2023, a period that saw seven new charter applications, none of which were approved, and four charter closures. Two of those closed had Black leadership. It also reviewed the October 2023 investigative report by the Ballard Spahr law firm into the allegations of racial bias. That report found no “intentional bias” in the authorizing and evaluation process, while calling the rate of closure of Black-led charters “concerning.”

The state audit said the office could make some improvements to its Charter School Performance Framework, such as including the responses of charter operators to its findings in the evaluations it makes public, and better monitoring of charter school admissions practices.

In explaining that recommendation, DeFoor cited the problems with Franklin Towne Charter High School, where an investigation found it had excluded students who live in certain ZIP codes with mostly Black students, “in violation of the charter school law and its own charter.”

While the 80-page audit mentions the Ballard Spahr report, it does not describe any independent investigative findings of its own on the topic of racial considerations or bias on the part of the charter schools office.

On the principle that “the oversight body and management should demonstrate a commitment to integrity and ethical values,” the audit found “no issues.”

Last week, city council approved eight of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nine appointees to the Board of Education, which has direct control over charter school monitoring through its Charter Schools Office. It declined to vote on the nomination of former board president Joyce Wilkerson after charter school advocates mounted a letter-writing campaign against her. Council president Kenyatta Johnson gave no explanation for refusing to consider her nomination except that she “didn’t have the votes.”

During questioning of the nominees, Council member Isaiah Thomas, chair of the education committee, raised angry allegations about bias against Black-led charters, which he said have been closed at a disproportionately higher rate than others. In response, board president Reginald Streater, who had also briefly been the target of the charter advocates, told council that the charter schools office followed all applicable laws and procedures.

Parker then did an end run around council by declining to appoint anyone to replace Wilkerson and announcing that she would continue serving on the board. In response, Thomas said he will convene hearings on whether the city should move to an elected or partially-elected school board, as is done in several other cities.

Peng Chao, the chief of the charter schools office, appeared with DeFoor at the press conference in Harrisburg Tuesday. He said he was “pleased the Auditor General found that our office complied with all applicable legal requirements … in Philadelphia we have a robust evaluation system that … holds all charter schools to the same set of performance standards to foster high-quality education options and improvement outcomes for all of our students.”

Saying “there is no perfect system,” he noted that “a strong system is self-reflective.” The office will “continue to learn, reassess and develop best practices as the landscape of public education evolves.”

A spokesperson for Thomas said they wanted to study the report more before responding.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

The Philadelphia mayor’s plan for year-round school is taking shape. What will it look like?

2024-05-06T11:00:00+00:00

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A plan to put in place Mayor Cherelle Parker’s promise to lengthen the school day and year — her signature education proposal — is taking shape.

But what that will look like in practice is still very much in flux.

Last week, Superintendent Tony Watlington told the City Council during an education budget hearing that a “beefed up” extended-day program will start in September in an unspecified number of schools, mostly consisting of “fun and engaging” after-school activities. In the 2025-26 school year, the district plans to offer a year-round schedule in up to 20 pilot schools, he said.

The first step of implementing Parker’s vision is adding programs and offerings this summer. But changing school districts’ traditional calendars to fully adopt year-round school is a different animal. It has typically meant shortening summer vacation and adding four week-long breaks during the school year. That shift, if it ever occurs, will not begin for well over a year, based on Watlington’s timeline.

It is very rare for year-round school to actually add instructional days. And the strategic plan adopted by the district last year cast doubt on the power of reallocating school days to improve academic achievement.

Putting in place an extended schedule — as opposed to offering more robust summer options — will need buy-in from the district’s unions, parents and other stakeholders, including agencies that now provide after-school and summer programming.

Cost has also not been discussed, though Watlington said he is seeking philanthropic help. And there are practical considerations linked to expanding programming at any particular school, such as whether it’s air-conditioned. Most city schools are not. (Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts just donated $200,000 to install air conditioners in 10 schools.)

“We have to create a demand and build partnerships,” Watlington told the council.

Watlington has mentioned the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City as one model he’s studied. Its Promise Academy charter schools’ schedules run from September through July, with week-long breaks in October, December, April, and June. The schools don’t have a longer day, but do have extensive after-school activities, and they also offer after-school and summer enrichment programs for students in New York City district-run schools within the zone.

During her campaign, when she discussed her reasons for supporting year-round school, Parker emphasized the benefits and flexibility it would provide to parents more than the potential academic benefits for students. But she didn’t clarify exactly what she had in mind.

Since taking office in January, she has changed how she talks about the issue. She now describes her vision as giving more educational opportunities to the city’s children outside regular school hours while keeping them safe.

“School is the safest place they’ll be … Ward and June Cleaver, the Cosbys, is not the reality our children are living in,” Parker said last month at an education conference, referring to the bygone popular television shows “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Cosby Show,” which presented ideals of American family life.

Philadelphia has previously tried one model of year-round school — albeit on a very small scale. In 2000, Grover Washington Middle School in Kensington operated on a shorter summer vacation with longer breaks during the year.

The goal was to reverse the effects of “summer slide,” or the decline in students’ achievement levels after the long summer break. But just four years later, the district’s then-CEO Paul Vallas ended the program, saying that its negligible academic benefits didn’t justify continuing it.

Here’s what to know about Parker’s push for year-round schooling and how it compares to other cities’ initiatives:

What’s new — and returning — for students this summer?

Both the city and the district already have extensive summer programming.

But the Summer Achievers program, which will be new this summer, could be especially significant. That’s because the 20 schools that could eventually participate in the 2025-26 pilot for year-round school will likely be drawn from the 62 schools where Summer Achievers programs will take place.

In Summer Achievers, in the mornings, students will receive instruction from district teachers in English Language Arts and math, while the afternoons and Friday will include camp-like activities and field trips. The program will also feature music, art, and sports, as well as social-emotional learning. The district is calling it a “school meets camp” experience.

This idea isn’t entirely new. A version of such a program was offered by the district starting in the summer of 2021, as schools began reopening after COVID.

Summer Achievers will be held between June 25 and Aug. 2. (For the program’s final week, the camp activities will take up full days and there will be no academic instruction.) While children in Summer Achievers will receive breakfast and lunch, families will be responsible for transportation.

The list of providers include the Greater Philadelphia YMCA, the University of Pennsylvania, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and Sunrise Philadelphia. Summer Achievers is based on pilot programs held over the past three summers, funded in part by the William Penn Foundation. (Chalkbeat receives funding from the William Penn Foundation.)

A statement from the Office of Children and Families described Summer Achievers as “a model for what summer programming can look like … in a full-day, year-round program moving forward.”

Another new program for this summer is called “Young Entrepreneurs” and is for rising ninth graders. It will run from June 25 to July 25, and will focus on developing business skills as well as providing instruction in English Language Arts and math.

The school district already offers a considerable array of summer programming for young people between the ages of 5 and 18. They range from a two-day-a-week virtual program for students entering kindergarten to month-long courses for high schoolers to make up credits for courses they failed.

Several emphasize particular skills and interests, including music – there’s an option to join a summer orchestra and a summer drumline.

Others are focused on particular populations, including a longstanding “extended school year” program for students with disabilities to shore up their skills and a “newcomer academy” for English learners.

The city recreation department runs camps around the city, and the Office of Children and Families oversees nearly 100 programs run by Boys’ and Girls’ clubs and other organizations called “It’s a Summer Thing!”

In addition, Deputy Mayor for Children and Families Vanessa Garrett-Hartley said the city is planning to provide up to 8,000 summer employment opportunities and career exploration activities for young people ages 12 and up.

It’s “work based learning, internships, job shadowing,” Garrett-Hartley said.

What will year-round school mean for teachers?

Teachers remain wary of what officials might ultimately come up with, a sentiment rooted in last year’s mayoral race.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said in an interview that Parker never discussed her proposal for year-round school with the union before making it a centerpiece of her campaign.

Without having more details, he said, his members have expressed concerns about how it may affect their jobs and schedules.

Some are also parents, he noted, “and if they have to work during the summer, this will totally impact their families and they don’t want to do that.”

In Philadelphia, the Belmont charter school network has its own extended-year program. Teachers in the network who sign up to teach over the summer get a few weeks off between the end of the regular academic year and the start of summer programming. They also get two weeks off before going back to Belmont in the fall.

But if parents have children in different schools on different schedules, year-round school could present more of a problem than a help.

All teacher participation in summer programs are voluntary; it is unclear what will happen if school schedules are changed. In the meantime, Jordan is praising the addition of enrichment activities and field trips to students over the summer, because many city children never have the opportunity to visit attractions like the Franklin Institute or the Constitution Center.

“All of this is going on around them and they are just not aware of it, and parents don’t have the funds to take them to museums, they can be costly for one child much less for three or four,” Jordan said.

What are the next steps for year-round school?

The logistics are daunting and the cost considerable. But one city councilmember said that after asking Watlington about it during budget hearings, she thinks the district is moving too slowly on the initiative.

“It wasn’t as well thought out as I thought it would be,” said Cindy Bass, who represents the 8th District in Northwest Philadelphia.”It’s hopeful, aspirational, not concrete.”

“This is the mayor’s directive. I was expecting more substantive detail,” Bass added.

Parker has separately proposed giving the school district a larger share of the city property tax, increasing its share from 55% to 56%, which she said would raise $129 million over five years. Bass said that money should be used for year-round schooling.

The school district already spends $42 million on summer and after-school programming, although COVID aid that helped pay for it is about to expire

Sharon Ward, the deputy chief education officer, said city, district, and other officials are meeting to hash out the details for this summer and for the future.

Echoing Parker’s comments from last year’s mayoral campaign, she noted that parents want more safety and enriching programs for their kids that are “more aligned with their work hours.”

Ward also said that “additional academic enrichment” will be a part of whatever’s developed, and that the city will learn from the activities already available to students.

“We’re working on it. We’re not starting from scratch,” Ward said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia mayor plans to go over City Council’s head, put contested nominee on school board

2024-04-29T21:49:48+00:00

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A power struggle has erupted in Philadelphia between Mayor Cherelle Parker and City Council leadership that could have serious implications for Parker and impact one of the country’s largest school districts.

The person at the center of that tug of war is longtime Board of Education member Joyce Wilkerson. After a public back-and-forth, the City Council voted Monday to pull Wilkerson’s nomination to the school board from its agenda for the second time. Council President Kenyatta Johnson said Wilkerson still did not have the votes to be confirmed.

But Parker is not backing down. She sent a letter to Wilkerson Monday asking her to stay on until a new appointment is made, which Wilkerson has agreed to do. The rest of Parker’s school board nominees were approved by the council April 19 and are due to take their seats Wednesday.

It’s not entirely clear what effect the dispute over Wilkerson will have on the board and the school district. But during a hearing on the nominees, several councilmembers pressed them about their views on charter schools in the city, and indicated that they would like to see the school board approve more charters, especially those with Black leadership. The board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018.

If the relationship between Parker and the council deteriorates over Wilkerson’s fate, it could have significant consequences for the school’s budget and the council’s support for long-term education plans from both the board and Parker, who has proposed year-round school for the city’s students.

Wilkerson is the longest serving member of the board, and served as its president from 2018, when the district shifted from state to local control, until 2022. Before that, she spent two years as the chair of the School Reform Commission that ran the district after the state took it over.

A smiling Wilkerson read Parker’s letter to reporters after the vote. The letter called her a “laudable” public official during her time on the board.

A separate statement from Parker’s office confirmed that she had asked Wilkerson to continue serving past Tuesday.

The mayor’s office said it has a legal opinion that spells out her authority to keep Wilkerson on the board, but did not release it. The City Charter requires the City Council’s “advice and consent” on board appointees.

And the council — specifically Johnson and Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas — appears to be signaling that the body will not be a rubber stamp for Parker’s administration.

Some officials don’t view nominee as ‘beloved friend’

Various councilmembers have told Chalkbeat they don’t have passionate positions on Wilkerson either way, but are voting with Johnson and Thomas against the backdrop of important budgetary negotiations.

Despite the role charter schools played during the hearing on Parker’s school board nominees, Councilmember Kendra Brooks denied that her concerns about Wilkerson stemmed from the board’s unwillingness to approve new charters or its approach to charters in general.

“I’ve never been a supporter of charters, so the notion that this is about charters, I push back against,” said Brooks in an interview. She started her public career as an education activist fighting for adequate resources for her neighborhood schools, among other causes, and said she would have voted no on Wilkerson’s nomination: “The years I’ve been doing this education work, Joyce was never our beloved friend.”

Pressed further, Brooks said that if Wilkerson’s presence on the board “is the only thing saving the state of education in Philadelphia, we are doomed.”

Thomas also issued a statement Monday saying he does not support Wilkerson “because our schools have been inadequate under her leadership.”

“This is bigger than one person. This is about the need for change and doing what’s best for our children and families,” Thomas wrote.

Johnson has repeatedly rebuffed questions from reporters about the reasons for the opposition to Wilkerson’s nomination. Critics of the council’s move have noted that Dawn Chavous, who is married to Johnson, also serves as spokesperson for the African American Charter Coalition, which first leveled the allegations of racial bias against the school board regarding Black-led charters.

Chavous did not respond to an email from Chalkbeat on Monday.

Before calling for a vote to remove Wilkerson’s nomination from the agenda, Johnson said that members had heard from many members of the public, including but not limited to charter school supporters, expressing concerns about Wilkerson.

“I will not make those concerns public out of respect for Ms. Wilkerson,” he said.

Councilmembers, by a voice vote, also rejected a motion to make their positions public through a roll call.

Curtis Jones was the only councilmember besides Johnson to speak publicly Monday about the situation and he expressed misgivings about the process by which Wilkerson’s nomination was being held up.

“We are barely past 100 days,” Jones said, referring to Parker’s time in office. “And we’re not allowing the mayor to have the benefit of the doubt.”

“I trust my mayor and trust my leadership,” Jones added. “If you’re asking her to cook the meal, she should be allowed to buy the groceries.”

For her part, Wilkerson said she is “delighted” to have Parker’s support and to remain a member of the board.

“When Mayor Parker announced my nomination, one of the things we talked about is the significance of continuity,” Wilkerson said.

Legality of mayor’s move is in question

Still in question is whether Council will challenge the legality of Parker’s move.

The Home Rule Charter states the nine members of the board “shall be appointed by the Mayor, with the advice and consent of a majority of all the members of the Council after public hearing.”

Parker’s Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward said the mayor interprets the charter to say Wilkerson can continue to serve until someone is named to replace her, since the council removed her nomination from the agenda but did not reject it. Parker could also choose to indefinitely delay nominating someone else, perpetuating Wilkerson’s term.

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, said in an interview Monday there has to be a mechanism by which governmental bodies like the Board of Education can continue to function even in the absence of a traditional confirmation process. Parker is betting her push for Wilkerson to remain on the board would fall under that mechanism, he said.

Philadelphia is the only district in Pennsylvania with an appointed, not elected, school board. The City Council voted in 2018 to amend the City Charter to require the council’s advice and consent for school board nominees.

Donna Cooper, a former aide to Ed Rendell when he was Philadelphia mayor and governor and now executive director of the advocacy group Children First, came to the Council’s chamber to support Wilkerson and later said in a statement: “Clearly the mayor knows how to play chess.”

The newly constituted school board’s first meeting about its long-term goals and strategy is scheduled for May 9, and their first action meeting as a voting body is May 30.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Charter school debate dominates Philadelphia school board nominees’ hearing

2024-04-20T00:10:53+00:00

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Following a heated interrogation by the City Council over charter schools, eight of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s nine nominees to the Board of Education are moving ahead. But the future of Joyce Wilkerson, the longest serving board member, remains in limbo.

The Council’s committee of the whole voted Friday to approve eight of Parker’s nominees, including current board President Reginald Streater. Those nominees will now head to a full council vote next Thursday.

In addition to Streater, Crystal Cubbage, Cheryl Harper, Whitney Jones, Wanda Novales, Joan Stern, Sarah-Ashley Andrews, and ChauWing Lam all received Council approval. Wilkerson’s nomination was deferred. The new board must be seated by May 1, but it doesn’t have to be a complete slate of nine members.

Leading up to the hearing, rumors circulated that Streater, as well as Wilkerson, would not receive enough votes because of their recent votes in opposition to several new charter schools. Streater and the rest of the nominees, barring Wilkerson, ultimately earned a unanimous voice vote from those council members present to move ahead. However, the overall tenor of the councilmember’s questions and comments signaled many of them would like to see more charter schools — specifically Black-led charter schools — in the city.

After the meeting, the board nominees made it a point to say that they were sticking together as a slate.

“We have unfinished business,” said Streater, as Wilkerson stood beside him, adding that Parker “picked the nine people who she thought could get the job done.”

Wilkerson declined to comment on why she thought there was opposition to her nomination.

Council President Kenyatta Johnson gave no reason for delaying the vote on Wilkerson, and did not speak with reporters after the hearing concluded. But based on council members’ questions and comments, several members seemed to want to send a message regarding the board’s charter school policies.

They apparently focused on Wilkerson since she led the board from 2018 until 2022; during that period, no new charter schools were approved. She was also chair of the School Reform Commission for two years before that when the district was still under state control.

The school board is the sole authorizer of charter schools in the city.

After a six-and-a-half-hour hearing, Isaiah Thomas, the chair of the council’s education committee, told reporters that “we felt like it was best to continue dialogue” around Wilkerson’s nomination but did not give a reason for the opposition. “Once we have more of a consensus, I think that you’ll see a decision being made,” Thomas said.

In addition to the intense questioning about charters, returning board members were grilled about the “deplorable” condition of school buildings and the absence of a promised school facilities plan from the school district. They were also pressed about the new, lottery-based special admissions policy that has contributed to a surge in empty student seats in many of the district’s top schools.

Thomas led a particularly pointed line of questioning directed at the four incumbent board members about what he alleges is a discriminatory charter authorization process that’s resulted in the district closing an outsize number of Black-led charter schools in recent years.

Of the charter schools that board has voted to close, Thomas said 80% of those were founded or led by Black people, even though they comprise only about 25% of the 82 charters in the city.

“Those numbers aren’t racist?” Thomas asked during a particularly intense exchange with Streater.

In fact, from 2010 to 2021, the district’s governing body voted not to renew or revoke the charters of 13 charter schools. Eight of those — a little over 61% — were Black-led.

Political divisions over the treatment of Black-led charters in Philadelphia came to a head last year following the release of an independent report examining alleged bias in the charter school approval process.

The report determined that there was no intentional bias in the authorization process. But the authors did point to inherent flaws in the system that resulted in Black-led charter schools being non renewed or closed in “greater numbers than their peers.”

Several councilmembers and public speakers on Friday chastised the board for what they perceive as a failure to address any of the systemic flaws noted in the report.

Councilmember Anthony Phillips outright asked the board members: “Will you champion public charter schools as vital partners in creating a system of great schools that better serves Philadelphia students and families?”

None of the nominees answered that question directly. But board member Lam said: “Every charter decision made is a difficult one,” noting that while public dollars fund charter schools, the district does not manage them.

Councilmembers hold considerable funding power over the district, determining how much of city tax dollars are allocated to schools. The Board of Education has no taxing power of its own.

Parker never said explicitly during the campaign whether she favored the creation of more charter schools. But her close ties to charter consultant Dawn Chavous — who is married to Council President Johnson and served as chief of staff to state Sen. Anthony Williams, one of the state’s leading charter proponents — has raised eyebrows among traditional public school supporters.

Chavous also serves as spokesperson for the African American Charter Coalition, which first leveled the allegations of racial bias against the school board regarding Black-led charters.

Several public speakers expressed their support for Wilkerson including Loree Jones, the district’s former director of external affairs. She praised Wilkerson’s “brilliant competence and solid balanced approach” to decision-making.

Asked if Wilkerson’s nomination would be considered before the May deadline, Thomas said, “I’m not sure. I mean, negotiations are unpredictable.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania students must take state standardized tests online by 2026

2024-04-18T20:06:29+00:00

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Pennsylvania will require nearly all students to take state standardized tests online by 2026, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Thursday.

During a press conference at Pittsburgh’s Northgate Middle School, Shapiro said the move would free up more classroom time for learning, save the state money, and reduce time spent on test preparation and processing.

Schools across the state can already choose to administer their Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and Keystone state exams online or using pencil and paper. But by 2026, all schools will be required to give all tests online, Shapiro said. However, paper-and-pencil assessments will still be available for students who need special accommodations, according to a statement from the state Department of Education.

The Philadelphia district already administers online assessments and each student is provided a laptop or tablet device, said spokesperson Christina Clark in an email. Though “we do not know what the specific requirements for online PSSA/Keystones districtwide will be,” she said, “we are confident that we will be able to make any necessary adjustments that are needed by 2026.”

The window for administering this year’s PSSA in schools, including Philadelphia, starts next week. According to a statement from the state Department of Education, 32% of schools in Pennsylvania have already started giving their assessments online.

In explaining the decision, Shapiro said that students do “a ton of interactive learning on their computers” and moving the tests online would be a better fit for their classroom experience. The state also plans to adapt the online tests to include more items like drag-and-drop elements, sorting, and graphic manipulation questions.

Educators have long argued state tests are a burden and impact classroom flow while providing limited information on what students are learning. Forty-eight states, including Pennsylvania, already offer optional online testing. And New York City is also moving to drop the pencil and paper alternative for some grades by 2026.

“We are spending too much time on these fill-in bubble sheets,” Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Khalid Mumin said, adding that this move is part of Shapiro’s promise to “reimagine” public education in the commonwealth.

The traditional tests, mostly multiple choice, are limited in value and “take too damn long,” Shapiro said. He also said they place a major bureaucratic burden on teachers that’s separate from their primary job.

To be sure, online tests have their limits. There is some evidence that students tend to perform worse on exams taken on a computer, tablet, or other device than on one taken with pencil and paper.

Shapiro’s announcement about online exams wasn’t the only testing news from Thursday’s event.

To better assess student progress and achievement, the state Department of Education is also developing a new “benchmarking” tool to help educators identify if students are on track to succeed, flag any potential issues early so they can be addressed before testing begins, and help teachers “respond to unique student needs to set them up for success.”

“What we really want [is for] our teachers and students to be able to collaborate on learning, that’s the environment that we want to create,” Shapiro said.

At the same time, Shapiro took the chance to criticize testing broadly. He said the state is working to “get rid of [standardized] tests entirely.” But he noted he can’t do that without losing $600 million in federal aid.

The main federal law governing K-12 requires standardized testing in certain grades and subjects. Shapiro said his administration is working with the federal government to relax the standardized testing requirements on states.

“Trust me, the moment that they provide some easing of those requirements, we will ease them as well here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said.

Mumin said the Pennsylvania Department of Education will be ready to help districts make the switch in 2026 through professional development, webinars, tutorials, monthly newsletters, a help desk, and more.

“No student is going to be inhibited by this process or held behind by this process,” Shapiro promised.

In a statement following the announcement, Shapiro’s administration also claimed the move to online testing would save the Commonwealth $6.5 million a year and reduce its carbon footprint by cutting back on printing, packaging, and shipping test materials.

Carrie Wynn, an 11th grader at Northgate who appeared at the press conference, said taking her state tests online eased some of the pressure that can come with the exams.

“I cannot stand here today and say that moving to online testing has made me more excited for testing, but it was not the nerve wracking change that I had anticipated,” Wynn said. “It was more similar to the way we learned in class than the old paper tests … while they still aren’t fun, that made these tests less stressful for me.”

The PSSA is given in the spring to students in grades three through eight in English Language Arts, math and science.

The Keystone exams are administered in winter and spring to high school students in Algebra I, Biology and Literature. Keystones are currently most commonly administered via pencil and paper.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia will stop the teacher shuffle between schools known as ‘leveling’

2024-04-16T18:36:13+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district will stop shifting teachers around between schools after the academic year starts, a dreaded practice known as “leveling,” Superintendent Tony Watlington announced Tuesday.

The longstanding procedure reassigns teachers based on actual enrollment for each school, instead of predicted enrollment. But teachers and parents have long complained that the annual teacher shuffle at the end of October disrupts and harms student progress as well as school stability.

This school year, 59 schools lost teachers under leveling, according to the district, and 88 teachers changed schools.

In a letter to parents and a video posted on social media Tuesday, Watlington said the district “will reallocate up to $8.8 million from Central Office cuts and energy savings to fund the discontinuation of leveling in any schools or classrooms after the beginning of the school year.”

Christina Clark, a spokesperson for the district, said it’s the district’s intention to eliminate leveling permanently “unless there are significant funding reductions.” During the pandemic, the district suspended leveling only to bring it back.

“We are committed to investing in and protecting our classrooms to the extent we can,” Clark said in a statement.

To make sure that all schools are staffed appropriately from the outset, Watlington said the district will do more outreach to families over the summer to get more accurate enrollment data. If it can estimate more precisely how many students actually show up, it can make sure that enough teachers are assigned to each school, he said.

Education, city officials and parents welcomed Watlington’s news.

“We’re relieved and excited that the district and Superintendent Watlington listened to the parents and community members’ cries to stop leveling,” said Emily Pugliese, co-president of the Houston Elementary Home and School Association, Philadelphia’s equivalent of a PTA; Houston lost a teacher through leveling last October. “We’re really hopeful we’ll see the end of it forever and our students won’t have to go through the damaging process of losing a teacher and being in a classroom with too many kids.”

Why parents worry about the teacher shuffle

During the leveling process, some schools gain teachers, if their enrollment has been underestimated, and others lose them if it has been overestimated.

Because teachers are allotted according to strict class size limits — 30 students in grades K-3 and 33 above that — the lack of two or three students could mean the difference between losing a teacher and keeping one. It could mean the difference, for example, between having two fifth grade classes with 17 students each, or one with 33.

But due to requirements of the teachers contract, if a school loses a position, which teacher relocates has been based on seniority rather than on a principal’s judgment. This meant that if the fifth grade was not large enough to support two teachers, it would be the second grade teacher who has less seniority who is reassigned, resulting in disruption for more than just fifth grade students.

The leveling practice also doesn’t take into account whether the rising fifth grade in the school is large enough to accommodate two teachers the following year, leading to further instability.

The practice has occurred in Philadelphia since the 1970s, but in recent years there have been efforts to dial it back. The district suspended leveling during the pandemic but resumed it in 2022.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan said Tuesday that Watlington’s decision would promote school and classroom stability. Katherine Gilmore Richardson, the City Council’s Democratic majority leader, issued a statement saying she supported the district’s decision, as did Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, the chair of the education committee.

“I have spoken with countless families on how their children have been impacted by leveling,” Gilmore Richardson said, adding that smaller class sizes in early grades were particularly beneficial for students of color and those from low-income families.

The district’s federal pandemic aid is ending and it faces a budget shortfall without significant funding increases. But the $8.8 million cost Watlington said is sufficient to stop leveling is a tiny fraction of the district’s $4.5 billion budget, and he made sure to say the money was coming from savings elsewhere. The district cannot raise its own funds and is dependent on the city and the state for most of its revenue.

In the midst of a statewide teacher shortage, the district started this school year with more than 200 vacancies for teacher positions, although it’s not clear how many of those positions have remained vacant throughout the year.

Clark said the district started this school year with “the most teachers of any fall in the last eleven years, and our teacher applications for open positions is significantly higher than this time last year.” She said Watlington’s team is confident the rate of filled positions will be even higher in the fall. Clark did not say whether the district has filled all its vacancies for this year.

Leveling has long been a sore subject for parents who say the practice harms students and is something the district should be able to avoid.

During testimony to the City Council in February, Seleny Fernandez, a parent of a 7-year-old at Clara Barton Elementary School, testified in City Council about her concerns that leveling had on her children’s education.

“A lot of those kids, they have big problems learning,” Fernandez said, “And then if you [take] away their teachers, what is going to happen? More problems.”

Fernandez’s husband, Luis Ramirez, told the council that at Clara Barton, their daughter was regularly in classes of 28 kids or more. He argued that this situation in the richest nation in the world “cannot be a money problem.”

“As a concerned parent, I get emotional because my daughter is in this mess,” Fernandez also said.”To me leveling is the same thing as looting. The school district is coming to my school and looting us of the most valuable resources.”

This story has been updated to include comments from a spokesperson for the school district.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Parker’s picks for Philly school board back her vision for year-round school, longer days

2024-04-02T22:24:45+00:00

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Mayor Cherelle Parker introduced her nine nominees for the Philadelphia Board of Education Tuesday, saying they represent the diversity of talent, experience, backgrounds, and neighborhoods needed to bring Philadelphia’s school district into a “new era.”

Shaping the school board “is the most important decision I have to make,” she said.

“The unifying factor of the nine, they put children first, they all had that in common.”

Parker, whose picks must now be approved by the City Council, opted Monday to nominate four current members and name five new people.

Seven current members had sought reappointment, but she decided to replace Leticia Egea-Hinton, Lisa Salley, and Cecelia Thompson.

The new board, slated to take office May 1, will face major challenges in a district that has long struggled to provide a quality education to all its students, many of whom come from families in poverty and from neighborhoods plagued by violence. On Tuesday, Parker highlighted aging facilities and a teacher shortage as two such issues facing the board.

Any plan for improving schools needs to include “facilities modernization … more career and technical training, and quite frankly a diverse and a stable teacher workforce that gets the respect that it deserves,” Parker said.

Parker also spoke highly of Superintendent Tony Watlington, who was at her side during the event. She made it clear that she approved of his leadership and wants him to stay.

“I have been impressed with his innovative thinking, also the competitiveness when he describes the potential of the School District of Philadelphia to be the largest fast-improving school district in the nation,” she said. “You have to have that kind of belief in our young people and the people that keep our educational system going.”

Parker also reiterated her commitment to seeing through major education proposals she made during her 2023 campaign: a longer school day and year-round school. Her board choices echoed that priority as they were introduced, even though there has been scant discussion of how much that might cost and how to do it with a teacher shortage. Watlington has said that he plans to create a pilot program in 15 schools next year.

“I am particularly motivated by the concept of year-round schooling,” said Joan Stern, one of Parker’s nominees who would be a new member. Board veteran Joyce Wilkerson said she looked forward to “enriching supports for students before and after school and throughout the year.”

Parker noted that the state has a $14 billion surplus that could be used to provide more education aid to Philadelphia and other districts. She has also proposed increasing the city’s share of school funding by giving the district a higher percentage of property tax revenue.

She and her nominees also expressed optimism. Parker and Watlington pointed out that the dropout rate has been decreasing, and that Philadelphia has made greater strides than most districts in rebounding from pandemic learning loss.

Learn more about Parker’s Board of Education nominees and hear their comments from Tuesday’s press conference below, beginning with the five nominees who would be new to the board.

Crystal Cubbage

“I want to serve because too much intellect, creativity and raw talent in my hometown goes unrealized,” said Cubbage, the executive director of the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative.

Cubbage is an engineer who has worked at NASA and taught physics in public and private schools.

Cheryl Harper

Harper, a former teacher who worked for the district in human resources, said that she planned to see for herself what is happening in schools.

“I intend to go out into the community and sit down with principals and teachers … and talk about the things they are doing that are positive,” Harper said. “We’ve already lost part of a generation, and we need to be able to keep what we have.”

To do this, she said, it is important “to recruit the best and brightest teachers.”

Wanda Novales

Wanda Novales, who taught and led schools in the district, founded and was principal of the Pan American Charter School in Kensington, which uses the International Baccalaureate curriculum. She is now the executive pastor of City Reach Church and described her own experience as a child in an under-resourced Kensington school after moving to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico and not speaking English.

“I have found that no matter the type of school or neighborhood, a student’s progress and a parent’s hope is still the same,” she said.

Like Parker, Novales said that “I believe that we can work together to provide a standard of excellence for school buildings, even in poor neighborhoods like the one I went to school in.”

Joan Stern

Joan Stern is a finance attorney who worked for the city, state, and school district over a 50-year career. Stern was instrumental in the founding of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, or PICA. Parker called her “the mother of Philadelphia’s fiscal stability.”

Stern said she was “particularly motivated by the concept of year-round schooling and making capital improvements that give children the best places to study at any time of the year.

She also said that “public education is a public good,” and that all taxpayers are responsible to pay for it, “whether they have children in the system or not.”

Whitney Jones

Whitney Jones said he started his career on Wall Street, but realized that wasn’t for him, and pivoted to working with non-profit organizations to shore up their finances. He has worked for charter school networks and is now chief financial officer at the Children Crisis Treatment Center.

“I decided to use my background to build generational community wealth,” he said, and pass on the “blessings” he gained from his own upbringing by parents who prioritized education.

Current Philadelphia board members also excited to continue

The four current members of the board nominated by Parker also spoke about why they wanted to continue serving.

ChauWing Lam described her own background as an immigrant and how she sometimes had to miss school to help her parents run their restaurant. “School was where I was given opportunities,” she said.

Sarah-Ashey Andrews, the board’s youngest member and a public school graduate, said she was concerned about equity. “I was the little girl from North Philly who didn’t necessarily have the opportunity of quality schools in my neighborhood,” she said.

Wilkerson led the board from 2018 to to 2023, and prior to that chaired the School Reform Commission, which ran the district when it was under state control. She said she applied to stay on because “continuity” is key, and that “how we govern the district in coming years will play a huge role in children’s outcomes for decades to come.”

And Reginald Streater, the current board president, said to Parker that he is “looking forward to promoting your vision,” including year-round school, teacher retention and recruitment, repairing school buildings, “and educating the whole child.”

An attorney, Streater is a graduate of Germantown High School whose family experienced housing insecurity when he was growing up.

“I am a living testament to the transformative power of education in Philadelphia,” he said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker picks 5 new members for school board

2024-04-01T18:13:19+00:00

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Mayor Cherelle Parker is pushing to remake the Philadelphia Board of Education by appointing five new people to the nine-member body, including two with strong past ties to charter schools and organizations.

But Parker, who released her nine appointees on Monday, also wants to keep the board’s president, Reginald Streater, along with three other current members.

The new names Parker chose are:

Crystal Cubbage, a former teacher and executive director for the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative.
Cheryl Harper, a former Philadelphia district employee and distinguished educator for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Whitney Jones, the chief financial officer at Children’s Crisis Treatment Center who has also worked for the nationwide KIPP charter network and for a charter school consulting firm.
Wanda Novales, founding CEO and principal of Pan American Charter School.
Joan Stern, a public finance attorney and former special counsel for the district.

In addition to Streater, the current members chosen by Parker to stay on the board are Sarah-Ashley Andrews, Joyce Wilkerson, and ChauWing Lam.

Parker’s picks will now be submitted to the City Council, which will hold public hearings and vote on each nominee. If the council confirms her picks, as is generally expected, then the new board will take office May 1 to start four-year terms.

The Philadelphia school board has the power to drive education decisions in the city including voting on and monitoring the district’s $4.5 billion budget, hiring the superintendent, and influencing curriculum decisions including the purchase of new materials. It also has the power to authorize new charter schools, close underperforming ones, and expand charter seats.

Education advocates have been watching Parker’s decisions closely to see whether her administration would preside over a new era for charter school expansion. Since regaining local control from the state in 2018, the school board has not approved a new charter school but has allowed current charters to grow by more than 2,000 seats.

“I said I wanted a school board with a diversity of skills, from different neighborhoods, sectors and communities, some with deep knowledge, some with new ideas, a group that truly reflects my vision of One Philly, a United City,” Parker said in a statement Monday. “I’m confident we’ve assembled that board.”

Current members Leticia Egea-Hinton, Cecelia Thompson, and Lisa Salley sought to stay on the board and were among the 27 names submitted to Parker by the Educational Nominating Panel. But Parker didn’t reappoint them. Board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez and member Julia Danzy previously took themselves out of the running.

During her campaign last year, Parker indicated she may be open to growing the charter sector, which are publicly funded but privately run schools and enroll upwards of 70,000 students in the city. Thompson and Salley, who were not selected by Parker to continue on the board, voted several times in favor of renewing or approving new charter schools that other members opposed.

“I want quality seats and I don’t care where they are,” Parker said in an interview with Chalkbeat before the election, adding that she “will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions.”

Alongside Superintendent Tony Watlington, the new board will also be tasked with determining what Parker’s promise for “year-round school” means in practice.

Watlington has said that he plans to start piloting year-round schooling this summer at 15 schools. At last week’s school board meeting, Watlington said plans for that pilot are still “under development” and he is “not yet ready to roll anything out.”

Parker said she would be appearing alongside her nominees in a press conference Tuesday. If confirmed, the new board picked by Parker will have seven women and two men.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board adopts preliminary $4.5 billion budget

2024-03-29T01:42:05+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education adopted a preliminary $4.5 billion budget Thursday for fiscal year 2025 that shows its yearly expenditures will outpace revenue but will be balanced with reserves.

The “lump sum” budget presented by Chief Financial Officer Michael Herbstman does not include any significant cuts at the school level. A five-year projection shows escalating shortfalls each year, starting with nearly $88 million in 2025 and ballooning to $745 million in 2029.

Those projections do not take into account any extra money coming to the city as a result of last year’s Commonwealth Court decision, which declared Pennsylvania’s current school funding system unconstitutional.

“Even as we face declining revenues, we are committed to doing everything we can to protect the classroom at all costs,” said Herbstman in presenting the numbers to board members.

Even though yearly revenue is falling behind expenditures, the district will end 2025 with a fund balance of $695 million due to the reserves, according to Herbstman’s numbers. Those reserves include what’s left of federal pandemic aid and other sources.

The budget does include proposed increases in education funding from Gov. Josh Shapiro and Mayor Cherelle Parker. Shapiro has proposed increasing state aid to education by $1.4 billion, about $240 million of which would come to Philadelphia. He called it the first downpayment on bringing the state’s school funding into constitutional compliance.

Parker has proposed a $100 million increase in the city’s contribution to the schools, while reiterating that the state should bear most of the burden of making education funding fair and adequate across the state.

Superintendent Tony Watlington made the case during the meeting that the district has made good use of additional funds, citing the results of a national study showing that Philadelphia recovered to pre-pandemic achievement levels faster than any other urban district. He noted that the state’s Basic Education Funding Commission determined that Philadelphia is underfunded by at least $1.4 billion annually.

He said that he planned to pilot in 15 schools an extended day and year-round school, which Parker proposed during the mayoral campaign. He did not put a price tag on the initiative.

He also said he planned to relaunch Parent University, which offers classes so parents can help their children with schoolwork, and start a major recruitment effort to get more Black and Latino male teachers.

The board approved the preliminary budget by a unanimous 8-0 vote. Board member Leticia Egea-Hinton was absent.

The district’s final budget must be approved by both the city, while the state’s contribution to education is still a matter of negotiation as it finalizes its spending plan. The board will hold a hearing on April 25, and city council will hear testimony on April 30. The city approves its final budget on May 30 and the state on June 30.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly police will notify schools about students found at traumatic events under pilot program

2024-03-25T21:06:42+00:00

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One day earlier this school year, a fifth grader came to school and was acting a little off. His motivation was down, his attention elsewhere, and his behavior unsettling.

It turned out he was traumatized because he had seen his father murdered the day before, said Brandy Blasko in the district’s office of school safety.

Unfortunately, this kind of scenario is not that uncommon in Philadelphia schools. In response, the city school district and police department have unveiled a $1 million program to help students deal with such trauma.

The program, announced by officials at a Monday press conference at the Philadelphia Military Academy, is called Handle With Care. It will train 300 police officers and 100 educators to sharpen their awareness of students’ exposure to violence and help them cope with trauma. It will be piloted in 15 schools starting next school year that are in the 22nd Police District, which covers parts of North Philadelphia.

While the program has been long in the works, it’s taken on new urgency in the wake of two shootings involving students leaving schools earlier this month in which one was killed and another 10 injured.

Handle With Care is a child-protection program first piloted in West Virginia and now used there statewide, as well as in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and elsewhere. The program starts with police who respond to a call and arrive at the scene of a traumatic event, from the execution of a search warrant to violence or sudden death. If a child is present at the scene, the police collect the child’s name and where they go to school, then notify the relevant school officials.

This system allows teachers and others to offer support, postpone tests or other academic work, and refer the child to nurses or counselors, among other responses. The program will also provide training to police and school personnel about the impact of trauma on children and how to respond to it in school, and officials will follow up with families.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, who used to be the school district’s police chief, said it had been “a dream of mine for a long time” to bring such a program like Handle With Care to Philadelphia.

He noted that violence can impact schoolchildren even if they are not directly involved. In 2021 in the 22nd district’s 4.3 square miles, 300 people were shot and 70 killed.

“We’re starting here, in one of our most challenged communities,” Bethel said, adding that he eventually wants to use the program in the entire city.

But Bethel also said that children are exposed to all kinds of trauma-inducing events, from witnessing car accidents to being in a household with domestic violence. Such circumstances, if not addressed, can lead to discipline problems, dropping out, and criminal activity, he said.

“When we do something different, we can change that trajectory,” he said.

Children who have witnessed violence “have to sit in class carrying this burden on their shoulders,” said Jayme Banks, the school district’s deputy chief of prevention, trauma and intervention.

“Their level of stress interferes with their ability to succeed, to form positive relationships, to make friends,” Banks said.

Bethel said the communication between police and school officials would be year-round, even when school is not in session.

At Monday’s press conference, two students from the Philadelphia Military Academy attested to the need for the program.

Nadia Porter, who is the school’s command sergeant major, said that the programs will be “very useful” because “a lot of kids are not seen as trauma victims, but as problem starters.”

Kaheem Bailey-Taylor, the brigade commander who mentioned the two recent shootings in which one student died and 11 were injured, received an honor from his ROTC program for going to the aid of a student who had been shot at a birthday party.

“This program will bring some hope to the youth,” he said.

Referring to the student who witnessed his father’s death, Blasko said that at first, “No one knew why he was acting that way,” she said. “Now they will.”

The grant funding for Handle With Care in Philadelphia is from the U.S. Department of Justice. The 15 schools that will participate in the Handle With Care pilot program are:

Richard R. Wright.
Robert Morris.
Paul L. Dunbar.
James G. Blaine.
William Dick.
Ethel Allen.
Tanner G. Duckrey.
Edward Gideon.
William D. Kelley.
General George G. Meade
High School of Engineering and Science.
Philadelphia Military Academy
Vaux Big Picture High School.
Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical High School.
Strawberry Mansion High School.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly schools should get bigger cut of tax revenue than mayor’s proposal, group says

2024-03-20T20:18:33+00:00

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One of Philadelphia’s leading education advocacy groups wants the City Council to allocate more money to city public schools than the mayor has recommended in her proposed budget.

In a lengthy report released Wednesday on the state of the city’s children, Children’s First said Philadelphia should devote 58% of property tax revenue to the district, up from the 55% schools get now.

Children First Executive Director Donna Cooper estimated that an increase to 58% would bring in an additional $61 million to the district next year due to the higher percentage, although she said that figure could rise to as much as $98.6 million if expected revenue growth is included.

In her budget proposal, Mayor Cherelle Parker says the school district should get 56% of that tax revenue.

While that and other parts of Parker’s proposal would add $24 million to the district’s coffers next year, it wouldn’t necessarily be enough to stave off potential cuts due to the end of federal COVID relief funds. District officials are forecasting a $400 million shortfall in fiscal 2025 without additional revenue. The district’s operating budget this year is $4.5 billion.

“Students need much more and they deserve much more,” said parent advocate Jazmin Banks at a press briefing on Children First’s report. “We cannot afford any cuts to the school district’s budget.”

Parker herself proposed the 58% figure during the mayoral campaign. In her budget address, she also called for year-round school, which the district plans to pilot in 20 schools in 2025 and will come with added costs, although Parker did not provide a price tag.

In an interview after the Children First event, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said increasing the district’s share of city property tax revenue to 58% is not off the table as budget negotiations continue. But he emphasized that council members must “protect the fiscal health of the city” while doing what it can to support the school district.

Johnson also said he thinks “the onus is on the state” to make sure Philadelphia’s schools are adequately funded. He cited the 2023 Commonwealth Court ruling that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is unconstitutional and shortchanges Philadelphia by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget includes $1.1 billion in additional funding for education, of which about $300 million would come to Philadelphia.

The Children First report also called for the city to invest in creating 250 more seats in its early childhood education program, PHLPreK. It also said the city should increase its investment in after-school programs and other out-of-school-time activities to keep students safe.

Without additional funding, 8,000 seats in out-of-school-time programs may be lost with the end of federal pandemic aid. Keeping those activities at recreation centers and other venues would cost $8.8 million.

Several parents and grandparents spoke of the need for the city and the district to more proactively address increasing violence, primarily through additional support for diversion programs to reduce the number of young people who wind up in juvenile detention centers.

The report noted that in 2023, 243 young people in Philadelphia under the age of 19 were injured by gun violence, and 31 of them died.

“That number should be zero,” said Geanna Williams-Davis, who has eight grandchildren in the city. “We have to stop violence in the city, period. That means investing in young people, making sure kids have enriching activities to do after school and over the summer and on weekends as well. Too many of our kids are dying unnecessarily.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

What Philadelphia public schools could get in new city budget

2024-03-14T19:28:57+00:00

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Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s self-described “big” and “bold” first budget would increase funding for public schools, include a pilot plan for year-round learning, and create a new workforce pipeline program in the Community College of Philadelphia.

But despite ample city coffers due to post-pandemic years of unusually strong revenue collections, the proposal — and accompanying five-year financial plan — still relies on state funding to make up the district’s anticipated $400 million shortfall for the next fiscal year.

This is Parker’s first budget and the blueprint for how Philadelphia’s 100th mayor — and first woman to hold the job — intends to run the city. While shored up by temporary federal pandemic funding for the past few years, the underfunded school district is facing a $407 million gap for fiscal 2025, aging buildings, a gun violence epidemic that injured 10 students last week and killed one, a mandate to make up lost special education services for thousands of students, significant charter school costs, and teacher shortages.

Parker said her budget would increase city funding for the district, with a current budget of $4.5 billion, by $24 million in fiscal 2025. That would come partly from increasing the school district’s share of property tax revenue from 55% to 56%, which would bring in an additional $18 million. The district also gets revenue from other local sources, including an annual city grant which this year amounted to $282 million.

Parker said she also wants to increase the local contribution to the school district by $2 million each year going forward, and announced a plan to speed up the sale of delinquent tax properties, which she said would also raise more funds for the district.

Her budget proposal would bring the total to nearly $140 million in additional city funds for education over five years, the mayor said, with $129 million going directly to the school district and $10 million to a new workforce program at the Community College of Philadelphia.

Parker also doubled down on her year-round schools proposal and promised to pilot the initiative in schools starting this fall.

“On public education, our goals are high — they must be,” Parker said during her budget address to City Council on Thursday. “For far too long, our students have struggled with far too little. The days of settling for crumbs are over. Our students deserve a full loaf and they’ll get it.”

As Parker gets ready to name a new Board of Education, she signaled her support for Superintendent Tony Watlington, who was in attendance on Thursday. She told him, “You’re my guy.”

Watlington and Board of Education President Reginald Streater issued their own statements in support of Parker’s proposal following her address.

Year-round school, city workforce pipeline, and more: what’s in the budget for schools

The mayor’s major education platform during the campaign was for year-round school and a longer school day, which will be expensive and undoubtedly require union negotiation. She never put a price tag on the proposal, but both she and Watlington came out in favor of a pilot to test the concept.

Parker said her budget includes a “plan for full-day and year-round schooling — offering students educational enrichment throughout the year, with schedules that work for working families.” She said her office of education will launch the initiative in 20 pilot schools this fall.

But she did not give a dollar amount during her address Thursday.

Parker also spoke passionately about the impact gun violence has had on Philadelphia students and families. She said the recent spate of shootings at SEPTA bus stops after school dismissal has “left our city shaken.”

“Enough is enough,” Parker said.

The budget includes $33 million in new investments in public safety for fiscal 2025, increasing the total amount to more than $600 million over five years.

She said she wants to hire 400 new police officers every year and fund 100 officers doing primarily “community policing.” She also wants to add new patrol cars, unmarked cars, video software, cameras at parks and recreation sites, drones, and upgrades to investigative equipment.

Parker also said youth safety is tied to opportunities outside of the classroom which is why she proposed $3.2 million for youth sports

“I know youth sports aren’t just about wins and losses — they’re about giving children hope,” Parker said. “”We should be supporting them.”

For postsecondary education, Parker announced $10 million for the Community College of Philadelphia in partnership with the school district to “establish a first-in-the-nation City College for Municipal Employment” — a city workforce pipeline she said will prepare more students for jobs in city government. Participants will “earn a stipend while they learn and graduate into good city jobs” Parker said.

What the budget leaves out

The mayor’s plan to increase the district’s share of property tax revenue to 56% is significant, but won’t entirely solve the district’s looming shortfall. Parker had said during her campaign that she would like to see a larger share of city property tax revenue go to the school district, mentioning 58% as a goal.

Rob Dubow, the city Finance Director, said at a press briefing on Wednesday that they decided to shift the tax revenue split to 56% rather than 58% because the administration is moving “in concert” with what Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed and what district officials said they needed in their budget presentation before the school board.

Last month, Shapiro proposed a state budget that would increase overall education spending by $1.1 billion, of which nearly $300 million in additional funds would come to Philadelphia. The city’s school costs are primarily covered by the state and the city; last year the state provided 46% and the city 41%, with federal money – mostly pandemic relief funds – making up the rest. Usually, the federal share is much smaller.

Parker cited the 2022 court ruling that Pennsylvania’s education funding system is unconstitutional and the finding by a legislative commission that Philadelphia alone needs $1.4 billion in additional state funds to meet the needs of all its students.

On the district’s aging facilities, Parker said “we need to modernize our existing schools and build new ones,” saying she would be “working with our allies on City Council” including Education Committee Chair Isaiah Thomas. Thomas has proposed creating an independent authority to handle school construction and renovation, but Parker did not comment on that proposal Thursday.

The primary education initiatives of her predecessor, Jim Kenney, were PHLPreK and the city investment in community schools, which bring social service resources and personnel into school buildings.

Dubow said PHLPre-K would be funded at the same level as last year. Under Kenney, PHLPreK served 17,000 students over several years, providing about 5,000 seats at any one time, and he regarded it as one of his biggest legacies.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s who could be chosen for the new Philadelphia Board of Education

2024-03-13T00:06:34+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education will have at least two new members, according to a list of candidates submitted to Mayor Cherelle Parker.

The 13-member Education Nominating Panel voted to approve its shortlist of 27 finalists at a public meeting Tuesday evening. The list includes former teachers and administrators, education advocates, business leaders, and labor union officials and appears to represent a range of ages and neighborhoods.

Otis Bullock Jr., chair of the panel, said the group was “just looking for diversity all around the board.”

“You need some folks on here with some gravitas … and legislative experience,” Bullock said. He added if the school district is looking to legislators in Harrisburg for additional funding for the cash-strapped district, “you need some folks that know how to do that.”

Parker’s board picks will have the power to set the education agenda in the nation’s eighth largest school district. Board members can authorize or deny new charter schools, hire and evaluate superintendents, guide curriculum decisions, and approve the district’s $4.5 billion budget.

Seven of the names on the panel’s list are current board members, but board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez and Julia Danzy were not on the list. Earlier this month, Fix-Lopez unexpectedly announced she would be resigning, and Danzy had previously indicated she would not be reapplying.

Which candidates Parker chooses to sit on the board — in conjunction with her budget proposal expected to be released on Thursday — will signal her education priorities for the city.

Parker has indicated she may be more open to expanding the charter school sector than her predecessor Jim Kenney. The school board has not approved a new charter school since 2018. Charters, which are publicly funded but privately run, now educate upwards of 70,000 students in Philadelphia, about a third of those enrolled in tax-supported city schools.

Indeed, many of the public comments at Tuesday’s meeting included calls for more charter seats and resources for those schools, a fair authorization process, and an end to charter school closures.

Many of the written comments, which were read aloud at the meeting, were identically worded, and echoed something Parker has said. She wants to eliminate the “us vs. them mentality” between district-run and charter schools.

Despite speculation that Parker’s nominating panel would try to load the shortlist with pro-charter activists, few of the 27 people on the list appear to have direct or deep connections to charter schools.

This is the first full school board nomination process since 2018, when former Mayor Kenney chose his nine appointees to replace the School Reform Commission. It had governed the city school district since 2001, when the state took over the district citing financial and academic distress. Since then, Kenney appointed a few additional members to replace some who resigned.

Lee Huang, a former board member, said Tuesday he would not “sugarcoat” that serving on the board was challenging at times. The position is unpaid, demanding, and comes with intense public scrutiny.

“It was long hours …. and you’ll get yelled at,” Huang said. “That’s part of the job.”

Parker will choose nine people (or request more names if she is not happy with the 27) and send those to City Council, which will hold public hearings. With its approval, the board members will take their seats starting May 1.

In alphabetical order, here’s the list. The mayor’s office provided biographies for each candidate.

Sarah-Ashley Andrews (current board member)
Nakia Carr
Timothy Crowther
Crystal Cubbage
Leticia Egea-Hinton (current board member)
Cindy Farlino
Mark Gittelman
Cheryl Harper
Keola Harrington
Michael Henderson
Jameika Id-Deen
David Irizarry
Dominique Johnson
Whitney Jones
ChauWing Lam (current board member)
Letisha Laws
Maddie Luebbert
Colleen McCauley
Cheryl Mobley-Stimpson
Wanda Novales
Michelle Palmer
Lisa Salley (current board member)
Marisa Shaaban
Joan Stern
Reginald Streater (current board president)
Cecelia Thompson (current board member)
Joyce Wilkerson (current board member)

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia teachers will get bonuses, 5% raises in approved contract extension

2024-03-08T00:30:00+00:00

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The Philadelphia Board of Education voted to approve a one-year contract extension for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers that includes raises, retention bonuses, and more.

The contract was approved unanimously at a meeting Thursday night. The extension “reflects the deep respect we have for all of our PFT members,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said before the board vote.

Watlington emphasized that the extension was agreed to well before the contract expiration date of Aug. 31 and represents a “good faith partnership” with the union. It’s a significant departure for a union and district known for down-to-the-wire negotiations.

He said he expected that collaborative spirit to help with his reform blueprint for the district known as Accelerate Philly.

The district and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on the contract extension late last month.

District Chief Financial Officer Mike Herbsman said he hoped the contract, which includes a raise and bonuses designed to attract job candidates, would “have a significant and meaningful impact on our ability to recruit and retain teachers.” The district opened the school year with 200 vacancies.

Union membership voted overwhelmingly to ratify the contract Wednesday evening; 84% of those present, or 2,096 people, voted yes, while 16%, or 399 members, voted no. Those who voted against the contract, including Building 21 teacher Eric Hitchner, said the contract didn’t go far enough to secure improved working conditions for teachers.

The contract will cover more than 14,000 district employees, according to Jeremy Grant-Skinner, the deputy superintendent of talent, strategy, and culture.

Notably absent from the agreement is anything altering the current sick leave policy, which detractors say punishes teachers for taking their allotted 10 sick days.

Here’s what’s in the new contract extension:

All PFT-represented employees — including teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, and others — will receive a 5% salary increase in September 2024.
Employees eligible for “step” increases (raises based on years of experience) will still get those.
PFT-represented employees will also receive a “retention and re-engagement bonus” of $1,200 paid by June 2024.
The Designated Schools Program — which provides $2,500 bonuses to teachers who work in schools with staffing challenges — will be extended to run through Aug. 30, 2025.
Watlington (or another district leader) and a union representative will meet regularly to discuss the superintendent’s five-year strategic plan.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of Philadelphia students are owed special education services from the pandemic

2024-03-07T23:26:49+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district has fallen way behind schedule in providing thousands of students in special education with extra services they did not receive during the pandemic, according to state officials.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education first directed the district to provide compensatory services to students in June after receiving a complaint from the Education Law Center on behalf of families.

According to the complaint, some parents and guardians were still unaware their children were entitled to extra help more than a year after students returned to in-person instruction. Families and advocates fear that many of these students may have suffered lasting damage.

“These are students who were most harmed by 15 to 18 months out of school,” said Margie Wakelin, senior attorney at the law center.

Wakelin said students didn’t receive the math tutoring, speech therapy, intensive phonics instruction, emotional support services, or other interventions that their education plans require.

In a review dated February 23 responding to the complaint, state officials found that the district has for the most part identified the students who need to be evaluated for compensatory services, but likely made decisions about what they were entitled to without properly consulting parents as required.

After analyzing 50 randomly chosen cases from four elementary schools in one of the district’s 16 learning networks, the state found only four in which the required meetings with families had occurred – yet the district made eligibility determinations in 44 of the cases.

“Not everybody is necessarily eligible, but meetings are supposed to happen to determine whether they are entitled to services,” Wakelin said.

The state ordered the district to submit evidence by April 5 that they have followed all the requirements for determining need and are providing appropriate services.

District says they face shortage of special education teachers

The closure of in-person school between March 2020 and September 2021 most severely affected students with disabilities who have either individualized education plans or 504 plans, according to the law center’s complaint. Individualized education plans, which are created by a team of school officials and parents, spell out services to which students are entitled, while 504 plans guarantee accommodations for students with conditions that could interfere with their learning.

The complaint relied on guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on what districts must do to ensure that all children, regardless of disability, receive a “free and appropriate public education.”

The district received about $528 million in federal COVID relief funding, which was meant to help address learning loss, but budget materials for this fiscal year don’t mention compensatory services as a priority. District officials did estimate in one undated request for proposal that they would need to provide services to as many as 40% of the roughly 22,000 students with disabilities who were eligible. They expected to provide the services between January 2022 and June 2024.

In a statement issued Wednesday, district officials said that they are “working to remediate educational learning loss” from the pandemic, despite a “national shortage of qualified special education teachers and related service providers.” The district opened the school year with 200 teacher vacancies.

The statement also noted that Nathalie Nérée, who has experience in several other large districts including Chicago and Broward County, Florida, became chief of special education and diverse learners at the beginning of this school year.

Under her leadership, the district “is looking forward to building transparent, collaborative and positive relationships with our families, community partners and advocacy groups as we reimagine special education for students in Philadelphia.”

Families have found it difficult to get services

Many families in the school district have found the process to get compensatory services frustrating and have sought help from the Education Law Center.

Yolanda Workman said she and her daughter met with school officials in January on Zoom to discuss services for her grandson, a fifth grader at Emlen Elementary School in Mount Airy who has been diagnosed with a learning disability. The school’s special education liaison didn’t give them much of a chance to speak, she said, and then told them that the child was not entitled to extra services. The liaison also urged them to sign a legal document confirming that.

Workman said they refused to sign and told the liaison they planned to contact an attorney. A few weeks later, they received notice that her grandson was entitled to 75 hours of compensatory services.

But neither Workman nor her daughter could say whether he was receiving the services, or what form they were taking.

Colleen Gibbons-Brown, a special education teacher for ninth and 10th graders at Strawberry Mansion High School, said that she has not seen much evidence that students are getting extra services, or that parents and caregivers have been consulted about what students need and how best to provide it.

“From what I have seen, decisions are not made as a team, but by network case managers and some administrators,” she said. “They are making a call, then informing the parents, [thus] removing parents, teachers and even students from that decision.”

At her school, she said the process for deciding whether a student qualified for extra services was hasty and flawed. For instance, invitation letters for parents to meetings about their child were generated the same day that some of the meetings were scheduled. “I’m listed as being part of the team, and I know I wasn’t attending the meetings,” she said.

One of Gibbons-Brown’s colleagues, who is also the mother of a student with disabilities, said she had no idea that compensatory services were available, even though she works in the district. The child, now 10, had not learned to read and exhibited serious behavioral issues that were exacerbated during the pandemic.

“I never heard about compensatory services,” said the teacher, who asked not to be identified to protect her child’s privacy.

She contacted a lawyer, who helped her enroll her child in an approved private school, a common alternative for students whose education plans cannot be fulfilled within the district.

Wakelin said that the law center’s goal is to compel district officials to focus on alternatives to private services, which are expensive and tend to favor parents who are savvy in navigating the system.

Meeting this mandate also falls disproportionately on some public schools. For instance, at Strawberry Mansion, a neighborhood school in impoverished North Philadelphia, 43% of its 250 students are classified as needing special education. The citywide figure is 19%.

Determining services for students is complex

Calculating what is owed to each student and then providing services is a daunting task, Gibbons-Brown said. Still, she said her school’s process didn’t consider what progress students might have made if not for the pandemic’s disruption.

If a student had not regressed beyond what they had scored pre-COVID, it was decided they didn’t need services, she said. But that doesn’t take into account any progress they should have made since.

“Analyzing the impact of COVID is more nuanced than that quick comparison,” she said. “I have students, based on one data point now and for 2019, that may look like there is no regression. Maybe not, but their progress has stalled.”

Wakelin said the process is “now in the do-over period and we’re trying to get the word out to families so they know that their children have this right.”

As complex as the task is, “it’s not like there aren’t other large urban districts that have grappled with this and come up with solutions compliant with the law,” she said.

Wakelin said the district still has not taken basic steps to reach families, saying “there’s nothing on the website, no fact sheets for parents, and minimal information provided to teachers.

“We want kids to get services, not just a ruling that this child is eligible for 50 hours they are not able to use.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school board vice president resigns

2024-03-04T23:15:09+00:00

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Philadelphia Board of Education Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez has resigned, effective April 18, and has taken herself out of consideration for a future board appointment.

Fix-Lopez cited a planned medical procedure as the reason in a statement on Monday.

In an interview, Fix-Lopez said that with the turn of the new year she got “more concerned about the demand of time.” She has an 8-year-old attending Childs Elementary School in Point Breeze and a 4-year-old who will enter kindergarten there in the fall.

She said she initially applied to stay, but withdrew from the nominating process. “I had planned full steam ahead,” she said, but when she was filling out the kindergarten application, “I slowed down to reflect. The time is too much.”

This unexpected shakeup on the board — where the members are appointed by the mayor — could create an opening for what new Mayor Cherelle Parker intends for the future of the body. Parker has signaled she may be more open to expanding the charter school sector in the city than her predecessor, Jim Kenney, and she could be angling to appoint board members who share her perspective. The board has not approved a new charter school since 2018.

Fix-Lopez said that her resignation was unconnected to any future board appointments.

“I get the optics of the timing. But honestly it’s totally separate,” she told Chalkbeat.

The board serves as the sole charter school authorizer in the city and member terms run concurrent to the mayor’s. In the years when a new mayoral term begins, board terms start on May 1.

The process of naming a new board is underway but has been quiet. Until Fix-Lopez’s resignation announcement, the future of any board members’ positions has been uncertain and Parker’s office has repeatedly declined requests for comment about the process.

Parker has convened her Education Nominating Panel, which is interviewing 121 candidates who applied by the Feb. 1 deadline. The panel is charged with recommending 27 people, three for each of the nine seats. Parker, who took office in January, will make the final appointments, who then must be approved by City Council. The panel next meets on March 12, where it is expected to release their list of recommended candidates.

Parker has not indicated whether she intends to renominate any of the current members or remake the board entirely. Board President Reginald Streater has indicated that he would like to remain.

In a Monday statement, Parker offered “deep thanks” to Fix-Lopez for her service. Streater called her “an incredible educator … who has left an indelible mark on the board” by pushing it “to govern from a student-centered perspective with student achievement at its core.”

Fix-Lopez, who teaches English at Philadelphia Community College, was first appointed in 2018 by Kenney when the district was returned to local control by the state. At the time, a nine-member board replaced the School Reform Commission that had governed the district since 2001.

She was reappointed in 2020 and picked to serve as vice president in 2022 and 2023. Members elect the president and vice president each December.

In her time on the board, Fix-Lopez has been active in establishing and enforcing its Goals and Guardrails since they were approved in 2021 to monitor district progress around academics and set standards for creating welcoming school environments for all students. She took a special interest in district policy regarding transgender and gender-nonconforming students, and in expanding translation services for families who don’t speak English.

She also took the lead in evaluations for both Superintendent Tony Watlington and his predecessor, William Hite.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s ‘Renaissance’ charter schools did not produce what was promised

2024-02-28T12:30:00+00:00

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On the first day of classes last September, the Philadelphia school superintendent and mayor joined other officials outside of Guion S. Bluford Elementary School to cheer on its 539 students as they entered the building.

The school district’s choice of Bluford for this annual ritual was telling. From 2010 to 2022, Bluford — built in 1972 to serve a growing population in the Overbrook neighborhood — had not been run by the district, but as a charter school operated by Universal Companies as part of the district’s Renaissance Initiative.

Then in the summer of 2022, in a dispute with its board of trustees, Universal ended its contract, and for that academic year the school operated in turmoil. Without its longtime manager, Bluford struggled to hire teachers, convince parents of its viability, and keep up the facility — among other problems, it lost internet access — until the district stepped in to build a new staff and assign a turnaround principal in 2023.

Bluford was part of one of the most sweeping education policy shifts ever undertaken in Philadelphia. The Renaissance Initiative — launched in 2010 under Superintendent Arlene Ackerman while the district was under state control for poor performance — strove to turn around about 10% of Philadelphia’s low-performing district schools by ceding them to charter organizations that promised to do better.

“We will transform historically failing schools and embrace bold new educational approaches with proven track records of success that can transform schools,” Ackerman wrote of the Renaissance initiative in her ambitious reform plan for the district.

At the height of the Renaissance Initiative, 22 former district schools were controlled by charter operators. But district leadership has quietly moved away from the model. Over the past seven years, four schools, including Bluford, have been returned to the district. One, Daroff Charter School, closed entirely. Now 17 schools are part of the initiative — and no new schools have been added since 2016.

“The goal was to prove that charters would work with any kid, not just about parents who were highly motivated to enter a lottery, and to show that a neighborhood school turned over to a charter organization would do better than if run by the school district,” said Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, an advocacy group.

“As far as I can tell, the data didn’t result in that.”

In fact, a Chalkbeat analysis has found that the dramatic turnaround promises of the Renaissance program never materialized.

Some schools made incremental progress over the years that slightly outpaced the district as a whole, but the group of schools overall has not seen meteoric success.

Indeed, in 2023 the Renaissance charter schools as a group mostly performed worse in standardized tests for elementary and middle schoolers than the district averages, the analysis showed. And compared to district schools, a lower share of Renaissance charters exceeded those averages.

“It was a bad idea poorly implemented,” said Chris McGinley, who served on both the School Reform Commission that oversaw the district while it was under state control and the Board of Education, which won back control of the district in 2018.

The program could be under greater scrutiny as Mayor Cherelle Parker takes office. Parker has had a mixed message on charters, continually emphasizing that she would not stand for people pitting district-run and charter schools against each other.

But she hasn’t said whether she would like to see growth of the charter sector, which already educates about a third of the nearly 200,000 students in the city’s publicly funded schools. And she has not yet named new school board members, who could decide the fate of the Renaissance program itself and its remaining charters.

Parker’s 50-member education policy subcommittee includes the CEOs of four of the seven organizations that run Renaissance charters, three of which operate schools that were recommended for nonrenewal due to subpar academic performance while the fourth was denied a new charter application based on the record of its existing schools.

Her appointees to the Mayor’s Office on Education, Sharon Ward, an activist and former state official, and Debora Carrera, a former district principal assistant superintendent, declined comment and couldn’t be reached, respectively.

Superintendent Tony Watlington declined to comment on the program.

Peng Chao, head of the board’s Office of Charter Schools, which evaluates existing charters and vets new applications, said that the outcomes for the Renaissance schools “have been mixed.”

“With a sector of over 20 schools over the course of more than a decade, it isn’t surprising that some schools have excelled in certain areas and others have struggled. Every school, Renaissance or not, has a different arc,” said Chao.

Betting on a school turnaround model

Turning district schools over to charters has been a go-to turnaround method in major urban districts for more than two decades. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, the state of Louisiana took over the New Orleans schools, shut down all but a few that were high performing, and created a Recovery School District that was essentially a system of charters. Chicago had its own Renaissance schools initiative that leaders are rethinking.

In Philadelphia, the movement flourished when the district was under state control and coincided with a push in Pennsylvania to expand the charter sector. Even before the official start of the Renaissance program, under the influence of prevailing Pennsylvania politics at the time, other district schools had become charters.

Charter expansion has long been the favored school reform strategy of Pennsylvania’s Republican governors and legislators as they resisted more spending on education and sought to weaken unions, even though the state had the widest gaps in the nation between high-wealth and low-wealth districts. Only last year did a Commonwealth Court judge rule the funding system unconstitutional.

Ackerman was betting her career on the success of Renaissance schools. She told Pew Charitable Trusts in 2010, “If I can show [parents] what the other side of the rainbow looks like, I don’t care who comes in after me. They are going to force the new superintendent and the new administration to give them what their children deserve.”

Ackerman’s vision for the Renaissance program included two models designed to offer “greater autonomy in exchange for increased accountability,” according to her 2009 reform blueprint for the district, Imagine 2014. Implicit in the entire initiative was to set up a competition to determine which turnaround strategy was more effective — more internal resources and a staff shakeup, or charter conversion. The schools that remained under district control were given more resources and called “Promise Academies,” while those that were handed over to charter organizations were dubbed “Renaissance” charter schools.

“Arlene was very strong on the idea that these programs would run in parallel with a lot of ability to compare the results from the programs,” said former School Reform Commission member Joseph Dworetzky. “I thought it was an interesting idea.” Dworetzky also said the board considered this more efficient and a way to stem the spiraling costs to the district of charter proliferation.

The Renaissance charters had defined catchment areas like traditional district schools, but otherwise operated independent of the district, the same as any other charter school.

At first, things seemed to be going well. An 18-month interim report found “The Year One outcomes for schools in the Renaissance Schools Initiative suggest that something positive is happening.” In 2014, Renaissance charters were doing a successful job keeping students enrolled for the entire school year, another report found.

But under Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, cuts to education spending between 2010 and 2014 put a strain on the entire system. The belt tightening effectively ended the Promise Academy experiment by stripping the schools of extra programs and supports. The Renaissance charters were impacted because, as the district’s budget decreased, their per pupil payments went down.

In 2011, Ackerman resigned.

Her successor, William Hite, continued the Renaissance conversions, but decided to let parents vote, first on who the new operator should be and then whether there should be a conversion at all. This caused conflict, especially at Wister Elementary School in Germantown, where Hite had second thoughts about his initial recommendation. During the 2016 debate over whether the school should become a charter, parents were bitterly split, and the School Reform Commission overruled Hite to approve the turnover.

After that, Renaissance conversions ceased.

In March of 2020, as McGinley was preparing to leave the school board, which by then had resumed control of the district, he proposed a resolution to formally end the Renaissance program altogether — but that resolution was quietly removed from the meeting agenda and never resurfaced.

How Renaissance schools measure up

Determining the impact of the turnarounds is challenging in Philadelphia, since two major events have occurred since the program started in 2011 — a revision of standardized tests in 2015, limiting the ability for apples to apples score comparisons, and the educational upheaval of the pandemic.

But looking at results, most of the Renaissance charter schools do not show high rates of proficiency. According to the Chalkbeat analysis, these schools started out well below district and state averages in English Language Arts and math performance — that’s why they were targeted for this intervention.

The analysis, though, shows that none of the schools are performing particularly well today. For instance, a majority of the Renaissance charters saw less than 10% of students score at or above proficiency on math tests in 2023. By some metrics, a few made incremental progress over the years.

Several schools, including Harrity Elementary and Mann Elementary, operated by Mastery, showed spikes in indicators including test scores for the first several years, said Chao, head of the board’s Office of Charter Schools.

But, he added, “Sustained improvement in student achievement, however, has not been as evident or consistent.”

The saga of Memphis Street Academy@JPJones in Frankford is telling. Once a junior high school with a reputation for out-of-control discipline and general disarray, it is now run as a Renaissance charter for 5th through 8th grades by American Paradigm schools. In contrast to its past, it is calm and orderly, with a solid teaching staff and lots of student activities.

But its achievement scores have remained persistently low — math proficiency is at 1%, and the Board of Education has voted not to renew the five-year charter signed in 2017.

American Paradigm has since sued the district in federal court saying the performance standards they agreed to, based on absolute achievement rather than growth in student scores, are unfair. The school can remain open during the appeals process.

Hite, who was superintendent between 2012 and 2022 and presided over the creation of five Renaissance charters, in hindsight questioned the effectiveness of the initiative.

“What I recall is that they saw climate and culture indicators improve, and in some cases saw growth improve, particularly [in a reduction of] children who scored below basic,” Hite said in an interview. “But we really didn’t see marked improvement in achievement.”

Hite attributed this to the myriad factors besides school quality that affect student outcomes, including the impact of poverty, violence, and the lack of essential services.

“This stuff takes time,” he said.

Bluford and Daroff were not the only schools that exited Renaissance. Two other district schools that became Renaissance charters, Olney High and its feeder Stetson Middle, were also taken back by the district due to both lagging performance and financial problems within Aspira, Inc., to which they had been turned over.

Michael Roth, now Olney’s principal, worked in the school under both models. He is not a fan of charter conversion as a school reform strategy.

“I think it’s offensive,” he said. “A lot of these measures were experimenting with communities of color. I’m not saying some good things didn’t come out of it, but my thought is, why don’t we properly fund the public schools and make sure they have the resources they need and do it right without switching back and forth?”

Tangela McClam, Principal of Bluford Charter School, left, greets students on the first day of school.

Renaissance supporters say look beyond test scores

Scott Gordon, the founder and longtime executive director of Mastery Charter, deems the initiative a success, saying that the Renaissance program brought numerous improvements to schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, even if test scores did not dramatically rise. Mastery has run nine Renaissance charters, and essentially built its brand around the program.

Chalkbeat’s analysis showed that Mastery performed marginally higher on average than other Renaissance charters on the 2023 state tests, the PSSA, but still had overall scores below the district average (with one single exception on the English language arts test).

Gordon said the model showed that a different governing structure could bring more stability to neighborhood schools, improve academic outcomes while serving the same kids, and draw parents back into the building.

Before Mastery, he said, ”These were schools in a never-ending negative spiral, lots of transiency, kids with high needs. As the school struggles, parents begin leaving, it struggles more, and it goes downhill.”

‘We needed a turnaround in a turnaround’

Bluford’s history shows that the initiative both fell short of being transformational and also often sowed confusion for families.

Bluford was one of the original Renaissance charter schools. Formerly the William B. Hanna elementary school (it was renamed for astronaut and alum Guion Bluford, the first Black person in space), Bluford was turned over to Universal Companies. Like the other schools in the program, it had long suffered from poor academic performance.

But the desired turnaround never happened; in 2015, the School Reform Commission voted to revoke the charter because it did not meet its academic targets. “I was struck by the notion that we needed a turnaround in a turnaround,” commissioner Feather Houstoun said at the time. But appeals kept it open — even though the Board of Education’s own Renaissance schools policy was supposed to supersede the state’s charter authorization, evaluation, renewal and revocation process.

Then, in 2022, Universal had its falling out with the board of trustees that oversaw it, leading to its tumultuous year and the district’s decision to return it to district control.

“It was very traumatic,” said teacher Tyshea Tucker. “Everything was so sudden.”

When the upheaval occurred, Tucker had been a teaching assistant at Daroff studying for her degree. She moved to Bluford when it was still a charter, and then applied to stay when the district took over and is now a second-grade teacher.

All the disruption was even more unsettling for her students, she said, many of whom have already had to deal with trauma in their lives. The staff turnover, she feared, reinforced feelings that adults weren’t there for them. She said she had to “go the extra mile” to build relationships and trust with them.

For longtime neighborhood stalwarts like Tamara Keene, who sent two sons through Bluford, the changes have been jarring.

Keene said the school functioned well under Universal at first.

But when Universal left in 2022, along with about half the staff, the board running the school “didn’t have a lot of control. … They spent a year just holding the school down.”

The turnover split parents, some of whom wanted the school to remain a charter, while others, like Keene, wanted a traditional public school option. “I’m still upset that there was no neighborhood school that was not a charter,” she said.

This current tension between charters and traditional schools harkens back to why Ackerman launched the Renaissance experiment in the first place. Despite scant evidence that the Renaissance schools delivered the promised transformation, Ackerman had concluded at the end of her time as superintendent that dramatic educational improvement for traditionally underserved students was impossible within the existing structure of large school districts with many power centers, especially teachers unions.

And her ideas for reform are still present today.

Like Ackerman, Parker is advocating for longer school days and a longer school year, tall orders to make happen within the traditional district structure.

But if it does happen, families like Keene’s will be the ones experiencing it firsthand.

Although Keene’s children are grown, she will continue watching the transformation of Bluford from a new perch — three of her grandchildren now attend the school.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Record-setting increase in public school funding proposed by Pennsylvania governor

2024-02-06T19:26:10+00:00

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Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed a 2024-25 budget Tuesday that increases basic education funding by $1.1 billion, which would be the largest single-year increase ever.

Most of that money, $900 million, would be funneled through a so-called adequacy formula that calculates what every district actually requires to educate all their children to high standards, based on students’ needs.

Shapiro’s proposal comes almost exactly one year after Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer’s ruling that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is unconstitutional – meaning it is neither fair nor adequate and depriving many children of their right to a “thorough and efficient” education. Currently, districts that educate high numbers of students in poverty, English language learners, and others with special needs generally spend less than wealthier districts, even though their students require more in order to be prepared for college and careers.

Shapiro said in his Tuesday address that his spending blueprint “will deliver real results for the Commonwealth” by “making historic investments in public education.”

Shapiro’s proposal also hews closely to the recommendation of the Basic Education Funding Commission, which spent a year traveling the state to question educators, advocates, experts, and others about education in their communities. By “acting on the work” of the commission, the budget is “delivering a comprehensive solution on K-12 education in Pennsylvania,” he said.

In a report released last month, the commission determined that the state should spend $5.4 billion more annually to bring all districts to adequate funding, with $5.1 billion of that coming from state as opposed to local coffers. It set out a plan to reach that goal by 2029.

The remaining $200 million in Shapiro’s proposed $1.1 billion increase would be funneled through the formula established by the funding commission, which also takes into account student needs in devising a per-pupil rate for state aid. This would assure that wealthier districts like Lower Merion and Radnor still get a share of state aid to help with inflation and other cost drivers.

Under the proposal, Philadelphia would receive an increase of $203 million in adequacy funding, plus $40 million additional through the standard formula.

It would also get a share of the $50 million increase Shapiro is proposing for special education funding, and a share of a $300 million increase in facilities funding.

Shapiro also proposes to cap cyber charter tuition at $8,000 per student, which could provide significant savings for Philadelphia public schools. Philadelphia now pays $11,502 per cyber charter student.

The budget does not include vouchers, which are backed strongly by Republicans who control the Senate and share power in an almost equally divided General Assembly. The state already has two programs that offer tax credits to corporations that donate to scholarship programs, but Shapiro does not recommend any funding increases for them.

Last year, Shapiro publicly stated his support for creating vouchers in Pennsylvania. But he ultimately vetoed a provision to establish vouchers when he signed the state budget. On Tuesday, Shapiro reiterated his support for vouchers and said he considered them “unfinished business.”

‘The transformation of Pennsylvania’s school funding system’

Advocates who brought the 2014 lawsuit that ultimately led to Jubelirer’s ruling, William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, hailed the budget proposal, which is just a starting point in negotiations before a final budget is adopted by the end of June. They said it meets the mandate of Jubelirer’s ruling.

“If carried out to completion, this would mean the transformation of Pennsylvania’s school funding system,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, executive director of the Public Interest Law Center. “It would mean thousands of more teachers, counselors, librarians – it would truly be historic.”

Deborah Gordon-Klehr, director of the Education Law Center, hailed the governor’s proposal as “critical,” adding that “it’s the start of what needs to be a long term commitment.”

She said her group would be seeking legislation to guarantee future increases to reach the target set by the commission “so districts can plan, leaders can be held accountable, and students can see the benefits.”

The adequacy formula devised by the funding commission looks at what the most successful districts spend per student and determines what every district needs to get all their students to that level, using a weighted formula that takes into account poverty, English language status, and other circumstances. Philadelphia’s “adequacy gap” was determined to be in the range of $1.4 billion, on a current budget of about $4.5 billion, or about $7,100 per student.

Philadelphia has the 35th highest adequacy gap in the state; Reading’s shortfall of $14,000 between what it has and what it needs is the widest.

Shapiro’s proposal “targets the funding specifically for the districts that are farthest from adequacy,” said Urevick-Ackelsberg.

Of the 500 districts in Pennsylvania, about 400 do not meet their adequacy targets as defined by the commission.

The governor’s proposal to reform cyber charter funding is likely to run into political headwinds.

Pennsylvania has one of the largest cyber charter enrollments in the country, and districts pay cyber charters their own per-pupil costs, even though cyber education costs far less to deliver than brick-and-mortar schools.

“Currently, cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania charge school districts between $8,639 and $26,564 per student per year,” Shapiro said. This, he said, “no longer makes sense. The 2024-25 budget establishes a statewide cyber tuition rate of $8,000 per student per year and will better align tuition with the actual costs of providing an online education.”

He said this reform will save school districts an estimated $262 million annually.

Other education highlights of Shapiro’s budget include:

$50 million for school safety and security.
$300 million in “sustainable funding for environmental repair projects” in school buildings.
$10 million for teacher recruitment.
$15 million, an increase of $5 million, for student-teacher stipends.
$100 million for mental health funding in K-12 schools.
$3 million to provide free breakfast for all students year-round.
$96,000 to help free up $62 million in federal child care reimbursements for providers.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia Mayor Parker names chief education officer and deputy

2024-02-06T00:06:13+00:00

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Mayor Cherelle Parker has named former high school principal Debora Carrera as the city’s chief education officer and Sharon Ward, a well-known education advocate, as a deputy in that office.

Parker made the announcement Monday afternoon, along with several other city appointments.

Debora Carrera, Philadelphia's new chief education officer.

Carrera worked for 27 years in the Philadelphia school district as a teacher and then as principal of William McKinley Elementary School and the Kensington High School of Creative and Performing Arts. She was also an assistant superintendent before becoming an official in the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Ward previously held positions in the Pennsylvania Department of Education and as an advisor to the Philadelphia School District. She was a founder of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy center and is a consultant to the Education Law Center.

Carrera and Ward will likely be charged with working on how the city and district can implement Parker’s ideas for year-round school and a longer school day, both expensive propositions that will require buy-in from the district’s unions. Neither could be reached for comment Monday.

The position of chief education officer has been vacant since December 2022, when Otis Hackney left after seven years in the job under former Mayor Jim Kenney. With just a year left on his term, Kenney put education issues under the Office of Children and Families.

Sharon C. Ward, Philadelphia's new deputy chief education officer.

As chief education officer between 2015 and 2022, Hackney oversaw Kenney’s prekindergarten expansion and community schools initiatives and worked with Comcast to make sure that all students had adequate internet access through the ConnectED program. He also started the city’s Catto Scholarships for students to attend Community College of Philadelphia and smoothed the return of the district to local control.

Like Carrera, Hackney was a former Philadelphia principal when appointed. He was widely credited with bringing stability to South Philadelphia High School after repeated clashes between Black and Asian students. At the time of his appointment, he had moved on to become the first Black principal of the high school in Springfield in Montgomery County.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s ‘State of Public Education’ improving but has a long way to go, schools chief says

2024-01-30T21:19:34+00:00

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The “State of Public Education” in Philadelphia is not as strong as it could be, Superintendent Tony Watlington said in a sweeping address Tuesday.

In the first speech of its kind in Philadelphia, Watlington celebrated some incremental successes since he became superintendent in June 2022: Student attendance is up, the four-year graduation rate is up, dropouts are decreasing, and teacher attendance is also improving. But he cautioned that the district is facing many challenges, including a looming budget shortfall of more than $400 million, declining enrollment, low test scores, aging facilities, and a persistent teacher shortage.

With no ability to raise taxes on its own and with federal COVID aid set to run out, Watlington’s ability to appeal to representatives in Harrisburg and City Hall will be crucial to getting the chronically underfunded district more money to address different issues.

And Tuesday’s event — which began with remarks from Mayor Cherelle Parker and was attended by a host of state, federal, and local elected officials — was a public attempt to make the case for adequately funding Philadelphia students.

Watlington, who came to Philadelphia from North Carolina, said in an interview before the address that in his nearly two years leading the district, he has perceived a “crisis of confidence” in a city he described as “hard on itself.”

“All the children are not well, it is no secret,” Watlington said in his speech. Citing modest improvements in several areas, he added: “Is it enough? Absolutely not.”

Speaking at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, Watlington presented data showing the district is improving on some markers from 2021-22 to 2022-23:

Student attendance is up from 57% to 60%.
The teacher attendance rate is up from 77% to 84%.
The four-year graduation rate is up from 71% to 74%.
The number of students who dropped out fell from 3,917 to 3,652.

But state test scores show students are still struggling in the classroom; even with small gains last year, most students are still scoring below proficient in reading and math. In Algebra I and Biology, performance has also declined post-pandemic; just one in five students scored proficient in Algebra I last year.

Watlington said he wants to “establish deep partnerships” with district families, caregivers, and community members, and be more transparent with budgeting.

Watlington’s presentation reiterated much of what he said when he finished out his first full year in office. But now, with Parker in charge, changes to the district may be coming.

Parker has expressed more openness to charter schools, which now educate a third of the city’s students. But the Board of Education has not approved a new charter school in six years, and it and the district’s charter office has been accused of racial bias in disproportionately moving to close charters that have Black leadership.

The first hint of a possible political shift on this issue came at last Thursday’s board meeting, when members reversed their previous decision not to renew the Southwest Leadership Academy charter school.

Parker’s presence at Watlington’s speech could signal she wants to take a more hands-on approach to public K-12 education than her predecessor, Jim Kenney. She has the power to appoint all nine members of the school board, and can remake it from scratch if she wants. Current board members’ terms expire on May 1.

So far, she has given no hints about her intentions, although she spoke well of Board President Reginald Streater.

Philadelphia mayor says ‘crumbles of funding’ are inadequate

Watlington said in his speech he is trying to prove to Parker, and to state and federal lawmakers, that under his leadership the district will be a responsible steward of any new funding. He highlighted decisions to reorganize his office, overhauling math and language arts curriculum, eliminating vacant positions, and shaking up his leadership team in an effort to trim administrative staff and focus more on crucial priorities like dropout prevention, facility improvements, and high-impact tutoring.

Parker pledged to work to bring more school funding to the city. She also called out elected leaders attending Tuesday’s event, including several members of Congress, state legislators like House Speaker Joanna McClinton, and City Council members including Council President Kenyatta Johnson.

Philadelphia’s children are “given crumbles of funding when they really do deserve a whole loaf” Parker said of the state’s current school funding system.

Parker commended Watlington for his five-year strategic plan, known as Accelerate Philly, which the school board adopted last year. But she said it’s the job of policymakers and elected officials to “make sure we have the dollars in order to get it done.”

Still, Parker cautioned that “this is going to be a tough year,” and expressed concern about whether city taxpayers should be expected to shoulder more of the burden for schools. She placed her faith in state education funding reform in the wake of last year’s Commonwealth Court decision that the current system is unconstitutional.

In her remarks at the event, Parker did go out of her way to express her continued support for another of her campaign platforms – year-round school, a potentially budget-busting initiative that would require massive union buy-in. In his speech, Watlington expressed some support for extending the school day and year.

The district’s presentation on Tuesday concluded with a “call to action” by Kathryn Epps Roberson, president and CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia — a source of private philanthropic funding for the district. Epps called Watlington’s five-year blueprint an “audacious approach” to school reform and improvement.

She also announced the Fund’s intent to raise $40 million by 2028 to support Watlington’s plan, including $6 million in year one.

“This has to be a public and private effort,” she said.

That money will provide stipends to people to participate in Parent University, an initiative Watlington intends to revive that helps parents shore up their skills and learn how to better help their children with schoolwork. It will also fund a high-impact tutoring pilot program in up to eight schools, help with teacher recruitment and training, and underwrite swimming programs, among other priorities.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

In reversal, Philly school board votes to renew charter school amid shifting political climate

2024-01-26T03:14:10+00:00

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In a rare move, the Philadelphia Board of Education voted Thursday to reverse its previous decision not to renew a charter school, meaning it can continue operating for another three years — with 19 separate conditions.

By a unanimous vote, the board passed a settlement agreement that renewed until 2027 the charter of Southwest Leadership Academy, a K-8 school with nearly 600 students that had been having academic, operational, and financial problems, according to the board’s Charter Schools Office.

“I expect the school to make progress over the course of the charter term and build on the recent increases in academic achievement we have seen through the most recent data from the 2022-2023 school year,” said Board President Reginald Streater.

Streater noted that the Charter Schools Office recommended that the board vote to extend the school’s charter, although he also said he remained concerned “about the school’s current financial position.”

After the vote, the school’s CEO Leigh Purnell and Principal Christina Green hugged in relief.

Last June, citing operational, financial, and academic problems, the board voted 7-2 not to renew Southwest Leadership Academy’s charter, putting the school’s future in jeopardy. It has continued to educate nearly 600 students as the school’s appeal of the board’s decision has played out.

The board’s latest decision comes amid heightened pressure from lawmakers and advocates who have claimed Black-led charter schools, like Southwest Leadership Academy, face systemic racial bias in the city. An independent report released in October found no “intentional bias” from district leaders against those schools. But it called the rate of closure of Black-led charter schools “concerning” and said a problematic authorizing and evaluation process could lead to the perception of bias.

The decision also hints at a change in the political climate for charter schools under new Mayor Cherelle Parker, who during her campaign repeatedly said she would not tolerate competition between district and charter schools.

“I will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions,” she told Chalkbeat in an interview.

The board hasn’t approved a new charter school since 2018.

Though they don’t outright control it, the mayor and city council hold a lot of sway over the school district. Parker has the ability to appoint all nine members of the school board; that process is set to begin soon. The city also controls local funding for schools since the school board has no independent taxing power.

On Thursday, Peng Chao, the director of the Charter Schools Office, told board members that the school’s trustees and academic team were working hard to straighten out its problems, and said his office would continue to help. He noted that six years ago, Southwest Leadership Academy was one of the highest-performing charters in Philadelphia.

Before the vote, several students urged the board to keep the school open.

“I would not be who I am today” without the education and guidance she got at Southwest Leadership Academy, said Renee Fernandes, who is now a senior at William Penn Charter, a private Quaker high school “I never saw a private school in my future, but SLA made it happen.”

Purnell and other speakers pointed out that the school is a haven for many students from the African diaspora in Philadelphia. Southwest Leadership Academy “is the very first school where I’ve been able to culturally connect with students,” said Arun Arungodade, who said she was a member of that diaspora.

Shirleen Thomas-Moore, who described herself as “guardian and auntie” to a fourth and fifth grader at Southwest Leadership Academy, said they both learned to read in kindergarten. “I am pleased with the education there,” she said.

In advance of the vote, Purnell thanked the board for letting the school continue. In an interview after the vote, she said, “Our proficiency scores are not where we want them to be, however we are able to achieve tremendous growth with our students.”

Charter renewal includes conditions for academics, financial controls

The board identified several serious concerns about Southwest Leadership Academy before members voted last year not to renew its charter.

A 2022 evaluation by the board’s Charter School Office found that the school didn’t meet standards for academics, organizational compliance and viability, or financial health. The evaluation also found numerous problems with enrollment procedures and employee background checks.

A month after the board’s June 2023 vote not to renew the school’s charter, Southwest appealed the board’s ruling to the state Charter Appeals Board. Critics of the board’s move at the time included Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs City Council’s education committee.

The resolution approved by the board on Thursday offers a conditional five-year renewal of the charter. It is retroactive to 2022, so will expire in 2027. With the settlement, the state appeal is rendered moot.

The renewal agreement includes requirements for academic improvement, but the targets include more flexible options if the school can’t meet the most stringent stipulations.

The conditions say that ideally, math, language arts, and science test scores improve enough to be “no more than 5 points below the district average,” or the average for comparable schools based on grade span and demographics.

If the school doesn’t meet that standard, it will be renewed by the board if it meets average growth benchmarks set by the state, or if it achieves “an annual increase in the proficiency rate” in each subject, “year over year.”

According to state data, 24% of students scored proficient or advanced in English Language Arts on the Pennsylvania state test in 2022-23, up from 19% the year before. In math, 10.1% of students scored proficient or advanced, up from 5 % in 2021-22. Its science scores are somewhat better.

The resolution also said that the school must stop its “gender based lottery” process for admitting its students. The school has separate boys’ and girls’ classrooms.

Southwest Leadership Academy must also prove that all teachers and aides dealing with special education students have the proper certification. The school must also hire a consultant to help recruit and onboard new board members and assure that they are properly trained in “financial oversight and governance.” It also specifies that all board members submit all required financial documents to guard against any potential conflicts of interest.

Additionally, the school is under a tight deadline to submit a “financial and internal controls plan” by Jan. 31.

Lisa Haver of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools asked the board for more transparency and consistency in the charter authorization and renewal process.

In 2018, shortly after the city regained control of the district from the state, the newly installed Board of Education reversed the decision of the School Reform Commission to close Richard Allen Charter School for poor performance. Instead, the board gave it a renewal with many conditions. The school is still operating.

Larry Jones, the founder of Richard Allen, is a leader of the African American Charter School Coalition.

At Thursday’s meeting, representatives of the African American Charter School Coalition urged the board to impose a moratorium on closing any charters until the renewal and evaluation process is fixed.

In 2022, the board issued a notice of nonrenewal to Laboratory Charter School, which also has Black leadership, but several months later reversed itself and renewed the charter for five years.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia teachers union president’s retirement comes at critical time for educators, schools

2024-01-19T00:39:44+00:00

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The pending retirement of Jerry Jordan as Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president and the ascension of Arthur Steinberg as his replacement ensures the union will continue to be run by members of a group that’s held power for decades.

It also maintains an unbroken string of male presidents of a union that is at least 70% female.

The change in leadership is occurring at a critical time for the school district and the union, which is the city’s largest union and represents 13,600 teachers, nurses, counselors, librarians, secretaries, food service managers, paraprofessionals and other school workers. At its peak, before the advent of charter schools and an overall decline in Philadelphia’s population, it had more than 20,000 members.

Philadelphia’s new mayor, Cherelle Parker, has said she would like to see year-round schooling, and Superintendent Tony Watlington has indicated his interest in the concept. And a state court has ruled that Pennsylvania’s current method of funding education is unconstitutional — a decision that could result in hundreds of millions of more dollars annually for city schools. How that money is used will chart the futures of hundreds of thousands of children and the staff who work with them.

Jordan announced his retirement, which will be effective June 30, on Tuesday. The PFT’s contract expires at the end of August, and the district would have to negotiate any changes in schedules linked with year-round-schooling with the union. The district has also been coping with significant teacher and staff shortages recently.

“It’s terrible, there are a lot of vacancies” for both teacher and paraprofessional positions, Steinberg said in an interview. “A significant number of schools are understaffed.” And Philadelphia’s teacher salaries, especially for experienced educators, lag behind the compensation offered by neighboring districts.

Steinberg, who was previously a special education teacher at Edison High School before becoming a PFT staffer, is currently the president of American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania. He declined to comment on the union’s stance on Parker’s year-round schooling plan, saying it would be premature. His priorities, he said, “are as they always have been: to engage and listen to the members and take care of their needs.”

Not everyone is thrilled with the hand-off from Jordan to Steinberg, and specifically how Steinberg faced no competition for the presidency. Several teachers associated with the Caucus of Working Educators, which challenged the union leadership in 2016 and 2020, noted in interviews that Jordan took no chances in assuring Steinberg would be the only candidate in contention to succeed him. No one else filed to run because no potential contender besides Steinberg knew of Jordan’s intentions until it was too late, they said.

Jordan sent a letter to his membership announcing his planned retirement just after Tuesday’s filing deadline for the PFT presidential election, which occurs every four years.

His email explained that Steinberg would take over under rules laid out in the union’s constitution. Because he was the only candidate, a vote would be unnecessary, Jordan said.

“This evening, candidates had until 5 p.m. to submit their consent forms and petitions to run” for the presidency and other leadership positions, he wrote. Jordan said that representatives from the American Arbitration Association verified “that only one slate, the Collective Bargaining (CB) Team, submitted their candidacy. I share with you the exciting news and my congratulations to our next president, Arthur Steinberg!”

Arthur Steinberg, who will replace Jerry Jordan as president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, used to be a special education teacher at Edison High School and is currently the president of American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania.

Steinberg is the son of Jack Steinberg, who was among the PFT’s founding leaders, a longtime treasurer, and head of the union’s Health and Welfare Fund. Members of the union’s CB faction have served as PFT presidents for almost all of the past 40 years. Marv Schuman was president from 1983 to 1990, Ted Kirsch from 1990 to 2007, and Jordan has led the union since then.

Ismael Jimenez, a history teacher for most of his career who is now the district’s social studies curriculum specialist, said he had no doubt that other candidates would have entered the contest this year if they knew Jordan was retiring.

“That would have switched up the equation,” said Jimenez, who ran twice on the Working Educators slate in 2016 and 2020.

Kathleen Melville, who led the Working Educators slate in 2020 as the candidate for president, said it is a “shame that PFT members won’t have a chance to choose the next leader of their union.

“I ran for leadership in 2020 because I believe that members should have a say in who leads their union and what their union is fighting for,” said Melville, who is now a City Council staffer.

‘A persistent voice for the needs of teachers’

The Working Educators caucus was founded in 2014 by a group of teachers who wanted the union to be more active on social justice and equity issues affecting city schools — following the lead of other unions. Kelley Collings, a 23-year teacher who was among the founders of the caucus, also said the group has pushed to change the union’s policies to make it “truly democratic.” (Collings said she was speaking for herself and not on behalf of the caucus.)

The caucus decided in November not to put up a slate of candidates this year, saying instead it would focus on creating a strong contract, building-by-building organizing, and reforming the discipline policy for teacher absences. In the 2016 and 2020 PFT leadership elections, the Working Educators slate got around a third of the vote.

Asked about the timing of Jordan’s announcement relative to the filing deadline, Steinberg said there was no attempt to limit the field.

“The executive board adopts election procedures in December and as soon as that process concluded we sent [filing] deadlines to schools,” he said. “They had the same opportunity to run as any of us did … there was no subterfuge.”

Jordan declined to comment.

Jimenez said in deciding not to run a slate, one factor had been that the caucus felt there had been “a good amount of victories” with the last contract.”

Recent contracts negotiated by PFT included raises and some back pay to make up for a five-year period when the union worked without a contract; that protracted stalemate occurred when the district was under state control. During that time, teachers got no raises at all and no credit for accruing additional experience and educational credentials. Being able to get some of that money back and be made whole was an important victory, Jimenez said.

He also noted that PFT’s leadership team, after being challenged by the Working Educators caucus, had started issuing statements on issues including gun violence and LGBTQ+ issues.

At the same time, Jimenez said “the kind of leadership transition that just happened is “a terrible look for any union, especially teachers and those trying to teach children about democratic values.”

Despite their concern about the succession process and criticism of some of the union’s priorities, many teachers as well as some influential education figures in the city had good things to say about Jordan.

“I would say that he has been a persistent voice for the needs of teachers, and that’s his role as the head of the union,” said Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocacy group Children First and a former official in the mayoral and gubernatorial administrations of Ed Rendell.

While noting that the needs of teachers and those of students don’t always align, she said Jordan was always cordial and respectful.

Former superintendent William Hite called Jordan a “consummate professional” who was “committed to creating better conditions for children in the school district.”

Correction, Jan. 19, 2024: This article has been updated to reflect that Ismael Jimenez ran on the Caucus of Working Educators slate in Philadelphia Federation of Teachers elections in 2016 and 2020. A previous version of the article said Jimenez ran twice on the Collective Bargaining slate. This article has also been updated to refer to Jimenez as the district’s director of social studies. A previous version of the article referred to him as the district’s social studies curriculum specialist.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Advocates praise school funding report, promise statewide campaign to back more spending

2024-01-12T22:50:52+00:00

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Education advocates said Friday they were encouraged by the report from the Basic Education Funding Commission, calling it a potential “game changer” for student opportunity in Pennsylvania if the General Assembly and Gov. Josh Shapiro implement its recommendations.

The report, approved on Thursday, recommends increasing school spending, drawing up a plan for what it means to fund students “adequately,” and overhauling charter school funding, among other proposals. The commission’s suggestions act as the first step in the state’s response to a 2023 Commonwealth Court ruling that the way Pennsylvania funds its schools is unconstitutional.

In a call with reporters, the advocates played down the divided vote on the commission, which approved the report by an 8-7 vote largely along party lines. All but one Democrat voted in favor and all Republicans opposed. And the Democratic dissent was from a legislator who felt it didn’t go far enough.

“This provides almost everything we need for a roadmap for success,” said Sharon Ward, senior policy adviser to the Education Law Center, which represented the plaintiffs in Commonwealth Court along with the Public Interest Law Center and the private law firm O’Melveny and Myers LLP.

But she and others also said that they would continue lobbying around the state to build political support for the larger state education investment that the commission is calling for.

Last February, after a four-month trial, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ordered the state’s school funding system to be revised, responding to a lawsuit brought by six districts, several parents, and some advocacy groups. She ruled that the system deprived many students of a “thorough and efficient” education required by the state constitution and violated the federal right to equal protection.

After months of hearings all over the Commonwealth, the commission said Pennsylvania should increase its spending on K-12 education by $5.4 billion over the next seven years to meet the constitutional mandate, with most of that money, $5.1 billion, coming from the state rather than local districts. It also set a method for determining the amount each of the state’s 500 districts — which vary widely in demographics and poverty levels — would need to reach adequacy for their students.

“While not every (commission) member supported this, the minority accepted the court ruling,” said Marc Stier, executive director of the Pennsylvania Policy Center, a Harrisburg think tank, noting that Republican legislators who argued in court to keep the funding status quo did not appeal Jubelirer’s ruling. He noted that the Republicans’ 92-page minority report laid out a series of ways schools could be improved, “which cannot be put into place without new funding.” That report got six yes votes on the commission, six no votes, and three abstentions.

Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocacy group Children First, said “Republicans did not refute that there was an adequacy gap, and they were very clear to say that the solution to that needed to be found in the General Assembly.” She said the advocates “are looking forward to working with members on both sides of the aisle” to come up with a plan and to “rally parents, teachers, concerned citizens in every district, Republican and Democrat, to stand behind (legislators) as they do that.”

“ZIP code should never dictate the level of education students receive,” said Melissa Robbins, of the local Urban League chapter. David Heayn-Menendez, of the Latino advocacy group ACLAMO, described how so many Latino students in the city attend schools without basic amenities like a functioning library and a school nurse.

The commission report “lays a path to invest in our children, support our educators, and be a Commonwealth that genuinely supports the common good for all,” he said. “It is a commitment to bridging the gaps that have hindered our education system for generations.” No family, he said, should be “choosing between the future of their children and where they can afford to live.”

Pennsylvania is currently more reliant on local rather than state funding for its schools, with wide disparities in education spending depending on a district’s wealth. The national average for the state contribution is about 55%, while in Pennsylvania it is just 45%, which means that residents of the poorest districts are often overtaxed locally.

The commission’s recommendations included earmarking nearly $1 billion to ease the burden on high-tax districts.

Philadelphia is one of the districts with a high proportion of students from low-income families and has long argued that it has been shortchanged by the state. Its per-pupil expenditures fall below most of the surrounding suburbs, even though it serves a student population with greater overall needs.

Under the commission’s proposal, it would stand to see its annual state aid, now around $2 billion, increase by some $1.4 billion, or 70%, in seven years.

David Lapp of Research for Action said that such a boost would allow Philadelphia and other historically underfunded districts to give students more access to certified teachers, counselors, rigorous curricula, healthy facilities, and smaller class sizes — benefits that are taken for granted in wealthier areas.

“We believe the Commission’s report is a crucial first step forward ending the systemic underfunding of the School District of Philadelphia,” said Superintendent Tony Watlington in a statement. “We look forward to working with Governor Shapiro and the General Assembly to make its recommendation a reality in the coming months.”

In their own report, Republicans took issue with the commission setting adequacy targets at all, while also disputing the method it used.

“Unfortunately, the Commission could not reach a consensus on a model for measuring adequacy to recommend to the General Assembly. … It is up to the General Assembly to determine the appropriate adequacy model,” the Republican report said.

It added that any additional funding sent to districts “must include an accountability component to ensure those districts invest in programs that focus on high-quality academics.”

In court and in general, Republicans have long disputed the correlation between the amount of spending and education quality. House Republican leader Bryan Cutler issued a statement saying the report “continues the false choice that providing only more state funding will improve Pennsylvania’s public schools.”

He and other Republicans favor more choice for parents, including the creation of more charter schools and vouchers for private schools. They also cautioned that any big increases in education spending could result in higher taxes, especially when federal pandemic aid runs out.

The advocacy groups have said that if the state does not adopt a funding system that meets the constitutional mandate of adequacy and fairness, they will go back to court.

“What’s really going to be important is the acknowledgement that this is not just going to be a report on paper, but a report that informs the governor’s budget proposal,” said Ward. “It is and will be a game changer.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Bipartisan Pennsylvania school funding commission proposes eight changes

2024-01-11T23:21:44+00:00

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The long-awaited report from the state’s Basic Education Funding Commission recommends steady, annual increases in school spending, an overhaul to charter school funding, and a plan to calculate what it means to fund students “adequately.”

But even without any earth-shattering proposals, the report released Thursday did not receive unanimous support from the bipartisan but politically divided commission. And school funding experts are already raising questions about it.

The commission’s report follows months of hearings and hours of testimony from school leaders, education advocates, and others regarding how Pennsylvania should remake its school funding formula. A Commonwealth Court judge ruled the state’s funding formula unconstitutional in 2023 and ordered the state to revamp it. If lawmakers and Gov. Josh Shapiro enact the commission’s recommendations, Philadelphia students could receive significantly more funding — nearly $243 million more in the fiscal 2025 budget, for example, and $1.4 billion more over seven years.

In an 8-7 vote largely along party lines, the commission (which is made of Democratic and GOP legislators, as well as members of Shapiro’s administration) approved a 114-page report that includes eight recommendations. All votes in favor were Democratic lawmakers or from Shapiro’s team, while the Republicans were united in opposition. Sen. Lindsey Williams, a Democrat, voted no because in her view the report’s recommendations don’t go far enough.

Primary among those recommendations is to update estimates of what each district needs so all their students can succeed — the so-called “adequacy” target — by recalculating key aspects of the funding formula to make its annual allocations to districts more fair and predictable.

The commission also calls for making teacher salaries more competitive; adding funding for student supports, including mental health; and examining how the state can bolster support for access to prekindergarten, career and technical education, and funding for libraries.

To make sure that school spending in the state continues to be fair and adequate, it also wants the commission to be reconstituted in 2029 to provide continued monitoring of the funding system.

But overall, the commission’s recommendations regarding state funding fall well below the $6.2 billion over five years of increased education spending that some advocacy groups are calling for. Those groups want a $2.2 billion hike in fiscal 2025, followed by $1 billion increases in each of the following four years.

Instead, the commission determined that there’s a $5.4 billion funding adequacy gap, of which $291 million is “the local responsibility of low tax effort school districts.” The remaining $5.1 billion “rests upon the state” which Pennsylvania would close through a seven-year ramp-up in funding.

For 2023-24, Pennsylvania’s share of K-12 total spending in the Commonwealth is $10 billion.

The commission also acknowledged the widely disparate tax burdens for individual districts. To address this, it proposed an additional $955 million in state money, in the form of “tax equity supplements,” for districts that have been taxing themselves at high rates.

“I believe the report not only meets our obligation as a commission … but also meets constitutional muster as directed by the Commonwealth Court,” said state Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat and a majority chair of the commission.

But he cautioned, “really, this is the end of the beginning. There’s still a whole lot of work to do.”

Shapiro said in a Thursday statement he “look[s] forward to addressing these points when I deliver my budget to the Legislature in a few weeks, and to continue working with leaders in both parties in order to deliver a thorough and efficient public education for students across our Commonwealth.”

In a Thursday press conference after the report’s release, advocates who were among plaintiffs in the 2014 school funding lawsuit that was the subject of the Commonwealth Court judge’s ruling last year said it represented a step in the right direction. In particular, they highlighted the commission’s proposed adequacy targets that take into account the actual needs of Pennsylvania students, district by district.

“This is a big first step … the timeline is long, it’s not perfect, and there are unaddressed issues. But the vision it lays out is a transformative one,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg of the Public Interest Law Center, which represented the plaintiffs along with the Education Law Center.

Recommendations focus on teacher workforce, poverty data, charters

The commission’s recommendations won’t go into effect without corresponding legislation approved by the state’s General Assembly and the governor. Its recommendations are:

Simplify and “reduce the volatility” in the state’s basic education funding formula by using three-year averages of U.S. Census Bureau data on poverty and median household income. The state should then add at least an additional $200 million to this updated formula each year.
Calculate adequacy targets — or how much each district should be spending on their student population, based on their needs. The commission recommended using Pennsylvania’s state performance standards to determine which districts are “successful” and then use those districts’ spending level as a target for all school districts.
Invest more state money in school facilities, especially in districts like Philadelphia.
Reexamine the way charter schools are funded in the state and “modernize” the calculation of cyber charter school tuition.
Invest in the teacher workforce.
Invest in student supports like mental health services and the “community schools” model.
Bring back the Basic Education Funding Commission in 2029.
“Consider other important education issues,” including access to pre-K, transportation, school safety, and “explore dedicated funding for every school district to have at least one school librarian.”

While saying that the state “should be investing in competitive teacher salaries across the Commonwealth,” the report cites a few actions already taken, including a teacher pipeline program and provides stipends and other incentives. But it doesn’t lay out a blueprint or funding source for helping high-poverty, low-spending districts raise their salaries, which generally fall below those offered by high-wealth districts.

The charter school recommendations are likely to be politically controversial. The commission wants to restore a charter school reimbursement line item in the state budget to help districts cope with the “stranded costs” of charters. When Gov. Tom Corbett ended the practice in 2011, Philadelphia, which has half that charters in the state, was receiving $110 million through that provision.

The commission also wants to change the charter school funding formula so that it uses the same three tiers of supplemental funding for students with disabilities that traditional districts receive, depending on the severity of their disability. Right now, charters receive the highest tier of funding for all students under current law.

‘You have to use good empirical evidence’

Though the final report reflects a compromise, experts and education advocates are already raising eyebrows at some of the commission’s suggestions.

Bruce Baker, a school finance professor and national school funding expert at The University of Miami, took issue with the assigned weights the commission recommends using to calculate how much it would cost to educate each student.

Research has found students with disabilities, English language learners, and students from impoverished backgrounds all require more funding than their peers to help them achieve a desired level of performance.

Baker said the commission should have required that those weights be updated because the current ones are part of a formula that has been deemed unconstitutional.

“You can’t correct the constitutional deprivation without specific consideration to the additional costs of providing children of all backgrounds, in all settings, equal opportunity to achieve the outcomes,” Baker said. “You have to use good empirical evidence in order to correctly calibrate the weights.”

Meanwhile, Nathan Benefield, senior vice president of the conservative Commonwealth Foundation, called the report “deeply disappointing” in a statement Thursday.

Benefield previously told Chalkbeat the state could find more money by phasing out so-called “hold harmless” aid rather than injecting billions of dollars that may not be sustainable if the state’s budget surplus runs out. “Hold harmless” was a policy enacted to guarantee that no school district in the state would receive less funding than it had the previous year, even if it lost students.

But in its report, the commission said abandoning “hold harmless” would be “counterproductive.”

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, called the report “a critical step in the right direction” primarily because it recommends additional state spending on facilities improvements and because of the significant increases it brings to the city’s schools.

Clarification: This story has been updated to better explain Pennsylvania’s share of total K-12 spending in 2023-24.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

This Philadelphia teacher wants students to find themselves through theater

2024-01-10T22:19:20+00:00

Last month, Sally Wojcik, who teaches theater and creative writing at Benjamin Rush Arts Academy, was named by the Pennsylvania Department of Education as one of 12 finalists for state Teacher of the Year. Rush has just over 600 students who come mostly from its Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood, but as a criteria-based school, it also draws from all over the city. Some students commute up to two hours a day.

Students can choose from among various majors, including media arts, graphic arts, fine arts, theater, dance, and instrumental and vocal music. And once they choose their concentration, they take classes in that area every day and stay in that major for all four years. That means Wojcik is able to work with the same cohort of students for their entire high school careers and can plan a curriculum with that particular group in mind. “I was given full flexibility to design a curriculum that I thought was best for students,” said Wojcik, who chooses most of the plays her class will focus on, including some that may be controversial.

Rush has been her only teaching job, and she established its theater program there in 2009. She said she “was very lucky” when the director of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, who knew her from her work with the education outreach program of the Arden Theater, recommended her as a perfect fit for Rush, which was in the process of converting from a middle school to an arts-focused high school.

A summa cum laude graduate of Albright College, Wojcik has a master’s degree in English education (Pennsylvania does not offer teacher certification in theater) from Temple University, and also spent a semester at the prestigious National Theater Institute in Waterford, Connecticut. She spoke to Chalkbeat senior writer Dale Mezzacappa about how she approaches her “dream job” and why theater experience is important for high school students.

Why did you become a teacher?

I was a “theater kid” my whole life. That was always the thing that brought me the most joy and fulfillment when I was a high school student. And then I pursued it in college and when I finished college, I apprenticed at the Arden Theater Company in Philadelphia trying to figure out how I fit into the theater profession. I worked in Arden’s education department and realized that I really loved helping young people find their voice and figure out what kind of artists they wanted to be.

Tell me about your own experience in school and how that affects how you work today.

I was really lucky. I grew up in Western Massachusetts, and my high school had a longstanding relationship with Shakespeare & Company, which has an amazing program where they would pair their resident artists with schools, and would come to work with us on our own Shakespeare productions. I remember, as a student, being made to feel very much like a valued and important person, and I just loved being a part of a group that had this collective goal to tell a compelling story. All throughout high school I had these amazing teachers, one theater teacher in particular, who was also the journalism teacher, who inspired me to value words and language.

How do you teach theater? It can’t be just kids sitting in a classroom.

My approach is very holistic. Everybody knows what it means to be an actor because that’s what we are used to seeing, but my program purposely focuses also on directing, design, and playwriting. We actually do spend a bunch of time in the classroom sometimes because each of my units is tied to what I call an anchor text. We read, analyze, discuss, pull apart a text … then we break off so a student might do a scene study or create an original piece of playwriting based on inspiration within that play, or they might take on designing an aspect of that play.

What plays have you studied recently? And how do you choose them?

There are 15 to 16 plays over the course of four years. My goal is to make sure that every student at least once sees themselves represented in the plays I bring in. So it’s really important that they come from playwrights with diverse backgrounds that highlight diverse characters. We start at the very beginning … so there are a couple of Greeks, moving all the way up through contemporary plays. I try to bring in plays that have different kinds of conflicts, different kinds of themes, different kinds of structures or use of language. Every play has an engine, something that makes the play go, and it’s really important to bring in different kinds of engines so every student can get excited at some point.

What plays, specifically?

The ninth grade set curriculum is Antigone, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Glass Menagerie, three big canonical works. In 10th grade, it’s Medea and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, and I’m in the process of reworking what I want the third text to be. And in 11th grade, it’s How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel, BFE by Julia Cho, Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage, The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute, and then Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. The 12th grade is always whatever they chose as their senior play, then A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Stop Kiss by Diana Son, and 26 Miles by Philadelphia writer Quiara Alegria Hudes.

What kind of plays do the 12th graders choose?

We just finished a production of Elsewhere by Don Zolidis, which is a play that follows four teenagers into a kind of shared dream landscape where they have to navigate some childhood issues to realize what they want to become as adults. Last year, they did a murder mystery, and the year before that they did Tinkerbell, which is an adaptation of the Peter Pan story. Sometimes, I have veto power, but mostly, they’re chosen by students.

Rush focuses on the arts, but in other schools, arts tend to be the first thing to go when the budget gets tight. Do you think all students should be exposed to theater?

I think it is every student’s right to have access to high-quality arts education in the same way they have the right to a high-quality core curriculum. The thing I love about theater is that it’s about stories, and stories are the most fundamental way for humans to connect. Allowing students to explore other people’s stories gives them a pathway to explore and explain their own.

Is there a particular moment or production that you remember as being pivotal for you? Something that made you think, this is why I do this?

Well, lots of students have expressed to me that theater is the thing they come to school for. But there was a moment, I think, when my students changed me. It was maybe seven years ago, the senior production was Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, which deals with two female teachers who run a boarding school and had been accused by a student of being involved in a romantic relationship. The student was mad and wanted to get back at them, but what she didn’t know was that one of them really did have deep feelings for the other. And the student actors playing the teachers were just both so good. I was sitting in the audience when I thought, they are both, at age 17 or 18, better actors than I ever was. And it was this beautiful moment where I felt like they had surpassed my own skill level, and I was learning from them. My program is designed for students to become really independent of me. I provide all the scaffolding and the structure, so, then, they can do it on their own.

What is the best advice you ever got as a teacher?

When I first started working in Philadelphia, I took a workshop with Young Playwrights, and there was a speaker who said that our job is to help students find their voices, and not our voice through them. And that has been something that has always resonated in the back of my head. I am always looking for ways to center students in the work that they are creating, and to help them learn to trust themselves and their stories rather than looking to me for validation of their stories.

Have you ever had a parent or administrator try to censor what you were teaching?

It’s funny because I’m always waiting for that call. I’ve had parents ask questions, good questions, but I’ve never had a parent say their kid can’t read that, or can’t be a part of it. The play How I Learned to Drive [about a sexually abusive relationship between a teen and a trusted adult], every year I have students come to me afterward and say that the play changed their life, sometimes because they’ve been through something similar, and having the opportunity to process that through somebody else’s perspective has freed them. And I feel very backed up by the School District of Philadelphia. I feel really grateful for the progressiveness of the district I work in.

Did you ever aspire to be an actor?

No, this is actually my dream job. I was not ever very in love with the lifestyle of a professional artist [moving] from gig to gig. Part of what I love about being a theater teacher is that I get to really tuck in with the students and work with them over a long period of time. I love teenagers; I love this point of personal development when they are figuring out who and how they want to be. Teaching, for me, wasn’t a default. It was an active choice.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania should hike education spending by at least $2 billion, groups say

2024-01-04T23:05:48+00:00

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Education advocates want the state to hike education spending by $2 billion in the upcoming budget, saying that is the minimum necessary to start fixing a funding system that a Commonwealth Court judge ruled last year is unconstitutional.

In addition, Pennsylvania needs to invest additional capital funds to help districts update school facilities and expand access to preschool, according to a statement from the Education Law Center and the Public Interest Law Center, which represented the plaintiffs at the four-month trial. The proposal is also supported by PA Schools Work, a statewide coalition of groups that advocate for fair school funding.

The demands come a week before the Basic Education Funding Commission — a bipartisan group of legislators and state officials — is scheduled to release its report based on hearings it held across the state in response to Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer’s ruling, and as the state’s annual budget process gears up.

The groups held a press conference Thursday to outline their desires for education spending. If Gov. Josh Shapiro and state lawmakers fall short, “we are prepared to go back to court to uphold the rights of those communities,” said Deborah Gordon-Klehr, executive director of the Education Law Center.

After a $2 billion education funding increase in the 2024-25 budget, the groups say an additional $1 billion should be added in each of the next four years, which they said will allow the state to close a $6.2 billion “adequacy gap” by 2028-29. Taking decisive action now is necessary “so that children currently in school will see the benefits,” they said.

When lawmakers approved the current state budget, they enacted an increase in basic education spending of $567 million, which combined with other aid increases brought total K-12 spending to $10 billion.

In February 2023, in her ruling on a lawsuit that several plaintiff districts and others filed in 2014, Jubelirer said the state contribution to school funding — meant to offset wealth disparities among districts — is both inadequate in the overall amount of money allocated and inequitable in how it is distributed. She concluded that as a result many students are deprived of their constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient” system of education.

At the trial, educators, experts and students described the impact of inadequate funding: large classes, insufficient counselors, outdated equipment, a lack of libraries, and teacher shortages due in part to inadequate pay. The defendants — the governor and legislature — eventually decided not to appeal Jubelirer’s ruling, and instead set up the commission to explore how to comply.

In a November letter to the funding commission, the group said that the General Assembly must determine “how much funding is needed to provide each child a constitutionally adequate, comprehensive, contemporary and effective education,” as well as determine the needs of each of the state’s 500 districts.

Experts testified during the trial that Philadelphia’s shortfall is in excess of $7,000 per student. According to the groups’ data, Philadelphia has a total “adequacy shortfall” of nearly $1.6 billion. Under their plan, the district would get an increase in state funding for 2024-25 of $500 million, as well as $250 million the next year. That additional money could go a long way toward helping new Mayor Cherelle Parker’s ambitions to implement year-round school and a longer school day.

They also noted that Shapiro, when he was attorney general, filed an amicus brief for the funding lawsuit that supported the plaintiffs’ claim of inadequate funding.

“Every child in our Commonwealth should have access to a high-quality education and safe learning environment regardless of their zip code,” he wrote in the 2022 brief. “Many Pennsylvania schools are not able to provide the level of education required by the Constitution—not for lack of trying, but for lack of funding … It is past time for the General Assembly to step up, comply with its constitutional obligations, and give our public schools the funding they need to educate our children.”

The advocates also released polling data from last year showing that most people think the current system is unfair, and that people did not oppose raising more state revenue to fund state school aid increases, as long as the burden fell on wealthier taxpayers.

In Pennsylvania, however, the state income tax, which raises most of the money that helps underwrite schools, is a flat tax — the same rate regardless of income. Courts have ruled that imposing a graduated tax, which would have higher rates for those making higher incomes, violates the state’s “uniformity” clause.

Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, said during the press conference that according to the polling, citizens “know what is going on, they know about inequity,” and say officials “should do more to ensure the state is sufficiently funding schools.”

Noting that this is an election year and Pennsylvania is a swing state, she said while that sentiment is strongest among self-described Democrats, polling showed that 52% of Republicans also agreed with that statement.

“There is really a large amount of consensus on what is broken about this system,” said Public Interest Law Center attorney Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, who argued the case before Jubelirer, adding that state officials need to change their mindset about education funding.

“It’s no longer a matter of political convenience,” he said at the press conference, “but a matter of what students are constitutionally entitled to.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

North Philadelphia hails opening of T.M. Peirce, its first new public school building in 70 years

2023-12-21T20:12:57+00:00

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It was, Kendra Brooks said, a long fight.

She and other activists had advocated for years for a new school in their North Philadelphia neighborhood to replace the old T.M. Peirce Elementary building, which was built in 1909. But their pleas went unheeded — until a building engineer discovered flaking asbestos, causing community outcry.

Similar conditions at other schools have led to prolonged building shutdowns recently. In T.M. Peirce’s case, the district determined that the old building was so full of hazards like lead and mold that it had to be demolished. The Board of Education voted in September 2021 to replace it.

And on Wednesday, officials including outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney, Board of Education members, and Superintendent Tony Watlington celebrated the opening of a modern, $44 million school in one of the city’s most challenged neighborhoods, where about a third of residents live below the poverty line.

Peirce teachers and students will start using the new building in January, right after the holiday break. They have been located so far this school year in the nearby Pratt Elementary School, which closed in 2013 but has been retrofitted to serve as “swing space” while other schools undergo renovation or construction.

In fact, the new T.M. Peirce Elementary is the first new school built in North Philadelphia in 70 years, Watlington pointed out. (As of last year, the average public school building in the city was over 70 years old.)

“This school building says something about what we value for our students,” he said Wednesday.

Zamyrah Wicks, 8, left, and Ayaan Cole, 8, at the new T.M. Peirce Elementary School on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023, in Philadelphia. Officials hailed the new school building as a big step forward for North Philadelphia.

The building at 22nd and West Cambria Street can accommodate 625 students in grades K-6, and features furniture and rooms designed for collaborative work, as well as an auditorium and cafeteria with all the most modern amenities.

The message to the students, Kenney and other officials said, was that they matter as much as those in affluent areas “like Lower Merion and Radnor.”

City Councilmember Cindy Bass grew up in the neighborhood, and described as a student moving from school to school as one after another closed. Now, she said, this state-of-the-art school “is the standard” for education. T.M. Peirce Principal Anthony Gordon called it “a historical moment in North Philadelphia.”

Kenney used the ceremony to tout the $1.5 billion increase in city funding for schools during his tenure. Board of Education President Reginald Streater called the new school a “down payment” that would help future generations.

And State Sen. Sharif Street called the investment a matter of educational equity, citing the recent Commonwealth Court ruling that the school funding system in Pennsylvania is unconstitutional and inequitable for low-income areas like the community around Peirce. .

“Our young people are worth it. They deserve this building,” said.

Meanwhile, architect Kevin Blackney, whose firm designed the building, said that the school was designed by the community. “You don’t know how rewarding that is,” he said.

Members of the Dobbins High School marching band serenaded the crowd at the festive ceremony.

Among those in attendance was Joan Monahan, 88, who graduated sixth grade from Peirce in 1946 after serving as the leader of the student body, she said. Her daughter designed the child-friendly furniture at the new school.

Brooks worked with Sylvia Simms, Quibila Divine, and Shakeda Gaines as part of a formidable contingent of North Philadelphia women to get the new T.M. Peirce built. Their fight rippled across the city’s politics and civic life.

In 2017, Brooks rode the campaign, as well as other battles on behalf of children in the neighborhood, to a seat on the City Council, where she still serves.

Simms’ advocacy got her an appointment to the School Reform Commission, which ran the district when it was under state control until 2017, where she continued to fight for a new school. Divine now works to help homeless citizens through the Urban Affairs Coalition, and Gaines is a deputy chief of staff in Brooks’ council office.

Speakers at Wednesday’s ceremony acknowledged their presence and their role. “We never gave up,” said Simms after the ceremony.

Students filled up the first two rows of seats in the auditorium after the ceremonial ribbon cutting in their spiffy navy blue uniforms with a logo on the chest that read: “T.M. Peirce, 21st Century Learning.”

“This is a first class, state-of-the-art facility just for you,” Brooks told them. “Take advantage of it.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in the city. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney discusses his pre-K legacy: ‘We had all the parents’

2023-12-06T11:04:00+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2023 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. To keep up with early childhood education and Philadelphia’s public schools, sign up for our free newsletter here.

When Mayor Jim Kenney is feeling frustrated, he said, he has a guaranteed pick-me-up: He goes to visit students in a local prekindergarten.

“When I get really down, and depressed, and disgusted, and lots of other adjectives, I go schedule a pre-K visit,” Kenney told Chalkbeat in a candid interview conducted during his final weeks in office. “It’s like my salvation.”

Along with overseeing the school district’s return to local control after 17 years under state authority, Kenney regards the establishment of PHLpreK, which allows thousands of 3- and 4-year-olds in the city to attend prekindergarten free of charge, as one of the major legacies of his two terms in office.

“I believe the only way out of poverty and into a successful life is education,” he said, by way of explaining his commitment to the issue. Providing structured programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, he said, “sets the tone for the rest of their educational experience.”

As policymakers consider how to overhaul the state’s school funding system to make it fairer for districts like Philadelphia’s, Kenney also pointed out that the city increased its contribution to the school district by $1.5 billion during his tenure.

This year, more than 5,000 children are enrolled in PHLpreK, according to a report from Kenney’s office. Since its inception in 2017, more than 17,000 children have passed through the program and over 500 new teachers have been hired to work in PHLpreK classrooms, the report said.

Making free, high-quality prekindergarten more accessible helped parents and caregivers of young children hold down jobs, Kenney said, which in turn reduced poverty and led to more stable families – in itself an important factor in promoting school readiness.

While there isn’t research on PHLpreK’s impact that tracks students who had access to early childhood education versus those who didn’t, Kenney said third grade reading scores went up 3 percentage points last year in district schools. Those third graders were the first class of children who had access to PHLpreK.

To be sure, that increase is modest. The district set a goal for 62% of third graders to score proficient on the state exam by 2026. But in the 2022-23 school year, only 31.2% of third graders scored proficient or above on their state exams.

Beyond the numbers, Kenney cites anecdotal evidence that PHLpreK is having an impact. He loves to tell the story of visiting a kindergarten on the first day of school. “It was a disaster,” he said, with children bawling and clinging to their mothers — except for two kids sitting placidly in their seats, hands folded in front of them.

“I said to them, ‘Did you go to pre-K?’ They did. They knew exactly what to do,” Kenney recalled. “There was no learning curve.”

To get free pre-K done, Kenney fought off the soda industry, which spent millions trying to kill the sweetened beverage tax he proposed to fund the program. (The City Council approved the 1.5 cents-per-ounce tax on those beverages in a 13-4 vote in 2016.)

“They hired every lobbyist in the universe,” he said. “But we had all the parents. And ladies with babies strapped to their chests can be a powerful force.”

Kenney said he voted against the tax twice during his time on the council in 2010 and 2011 when then-Mayor Michael Nutter brought it to the table. Nutter had emphasized the health benefits of reducing soda consumption, which didn’t resonate with the council members at the time.

What changed Kenney’s mind? If he wanted free pre-K, he would need to establish a sustainable funding source.

“Once we got sworn in. We’re sitting in my office … and I said, well, how are we going to pay for all this stuff?” Kenney said.

Having a dedicated purpose for the tax revenue was enough to convince the council members to back the tax.

But in its first few years, hampered by an ongoing lawsuit against the soda tax and diminished state revenues during the pandemic, the program was slow to roll out and expand. A city controller’s audit in 2017 found some “missteps” with the program’s implementation, including over-billing and under-enrolling.

But Kenney said he never considered giving up on the effort.

“Head down, win or lose,” Kenney said. “I don’t know what we would have done if we had lost in court. But we didn’t.”

The state Supreme Court upheld the beverage tax in a 4-2 vote in 2018. Kenney said he hopes the program will continue to expand after he leaves.

It’s unclear what the future will hold for the program when Kenney vacates his position. A spokesperson for mayor-elect Cherelle Parker declined to comment on the program..

Kenney said he hasn’t had the expansion discussion with Parker’s team yet. But he thinks it’s “politically powerful enough” that “if somebody tries to take it away, I don’t think that they would get a good reception.”

In his waning days as mayor, Kenney has been thinking about what he’ll do next. He said he intends to set off on an ocean cruise the day after Parker is inaugurated. After that, he’s not sure. But it won’t be public life.

“I’m done with it. It’s time for people to move on sometimes,” Kenney said.

He said one idea he’s mulling is starting a nonprofit that would raise money to expose city kids to more live arts and culture programs, he said.

As a high school freshman at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, Kenney said he and his classmates were taken on a field trip to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and its legendary founder, Judith Jamison, perform at the Walnut Street Theater.

“I went from hating it to thinking, ‘This is beautiful. I’ve never seen anyone move like that. I’ve never seen anything like this,’” Kenney said. “I honestly believe that kids in the city, who see nothing but chaos and hurt, [deserve] an opportunity to do that, to see that there’s beautiful things in the world.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia teachers say they are passionate about their jobs but feel underpaid and overworked

2023-11-30T21:31:41+00:00

Philadelphia teachers feel supported by their school leadership, their students, and their colleagues, but nevertheless feel overwhelmed by their workload and the demands made on them.

And they think their own school is doing well, but they think the district as a whole is going in the wrong direction. They say they are passionate about their job, but think they are underpaid and overworked.

Those were among the key results of a survey of 734 district and charter school teachers conducted on behalf of Elevate 215, a nonprofit organization once called the Philadelphia School Partnership, which was a proponent of charter school expansion. There are more than 8,200 teachers in district schools and another several thousand in charters.

Asked to pick their top three concerns, teachers cited their workload (46%), unrealistic expectations around student achievement (41%), and inadequate salary or benefits (39%).

Based on responses to survey questions, teachers in charter schools are somewhat more satisfied with their jobs than those in district schools. For instance, 79% of charter school teachers said they were satisfied with the “vision and priorities established at my school,” compared to 64% of district teachers. And just 33% of district teachers expressed satisfaction with the condition of their facilities and level of resources, compared to 71% of charter teachers.

There were also key differences in attitude among veteran teachers versus their newer colleagues and between white teachers and those of other races, especially regarding whether they plan to stay in teaching over the long haul.

In one interesting finding, just 41% of teachers who have been in the district at least 16 years feel the district offers the possibility for a “rewarding career.” A higher proportion of those with five or fewer years’ experience, 52%, agreed with that statement.

In the survey, charter teachers, which according to the survey skew younger and have less experience, expressed higher levels of satisfaction with their salaries and working conditions.

Charter teachers also said by higher margins, 68% versus 41%, that they felt their “input matters” regarding school policies and practices.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said that the survey offered “no big surprises,” rather reflecting “concerns that I and my staff have been hearing from our members,” top among them being teacher salaries that are not keeping up with inflation. He said many PFT members leave for higher salaried jobs in suburban districts.

“Teachers indicated that they really like what they do, but want to be respected for what they do as well. We’ve been hearing that for a number of years,” he said.

He also said he wasn’t too surprised by the finding that charter school teachers, who are not unionized and tend to make less money, expressed somewhat higher satisfaction with their salaries. Many of them are new and in their first jobs, he said. “We were all excited when we got our first jobs,” he said.

Most teachers in Philadelphia are white and female, although based on the survey responses, there seems to be an uptick in male teachers and teachers of other races. For instance, 71% of the teachers surveyed with five or fewer years of experience are female, compared to 81% of those with 6-10 years and 82% of those with 11 years or more. Also, 49% of those in teaching for five years or fewer were white, compared to 67% of those with 6-10 years’ experience and 69% of those with more than that.

Teachers of color are also more likely to live in Philadelphia – 70% of Black teachers and 81% of Hispanic teachers, compared to 54% of those who are white. Teachers of color are also less likely to be fully certified, with 29% of Black teachers and 39% of Hispanic teachers having an emergency certification, compared to 6% of whites.

The survey was conducted between Sept. 27 and Oct. 9, with respondents recruited via email invitation. The margin of error is 3.6%.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Kevin Bethel leaves top school safety job in Philadelphia to be city police commissioner

2023-11-22T18:51:03+00:00

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker has named Kevin Bethel, the School District of Philadelphia’s current chief of school safety, as her new police commissioner.

Bethel has long been a well-respected fixture in Philadelphia law enforcement and school safety circles. During his tenure in the school district, Bethel focused on reforming the juvenile justice system, dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, and promoting “trauma-informed policing.”

As a deputy police commissioner and then the district’s safety director, he also developed a national reputation for his work emphasizing prevention over punishment as an approach to improving student behavior and discipline both in and out of school settings.

In his four years leading school safety for the district, “I believe we have made the schools safer,” Bethel said at his appointment announcement at City Hall on Wednesday. “It’s unacceptable that some students feel unsafe going to and from school.”

This is Parker’s first mayoral staffing announcement, though she doesn’t officially take office until January. She said that she chose Bethel from among three candidates chosen by a search committee headed by former police commissioner Charles Ramsay.

Deputy Chief of School Safety Craig Johnson will serve as interim chief for the district while a search is conducted for Bethel’s replacement, according to the district.

“Chief Bethel is a class act, and I always felt very confident knowing that he was overseeing all efforts to create safe learning environments for our students to imagine and realize any future they desire,” Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said in a statement Wednesday.

The Board of Education issued a joint statement calling Bethel’s appointment “well deserved” and that his departure would be a “significant loss” for the district.

Bethel’s school safety legacy in Philadelphia schools

A John Bartram High School graduate, Bethel’s oft-repeated motto during his time in the police department and school district has been: “I didn’t become a cop to lock up children.”

While on the police force in 2013, Bethel said he was “alarmed” by how many students were being arrested in the city under a “zero tolerance” policy that saw police called on students as young as 10 years old.

“I can’t lock up a 10-year-old child who comes to school with scissors,” he said.

He described his dismay at a school in Kensington that put bulletproof blankets on the windows due to nearby shootings.

“I lived it when kids have been shot in front of our schools,” he also recalled. “I never thought I would take a job where kids would be killed at the doorstep of a school.”

With buy-in from district officials and others, Bethel created a diversion program for students with no prior delinquency record who committed low-level offenses like fighting or possessing a pocket knife. That program was praised at the time for substantially decreasing the number of students arrested in school from nearly 1,600 in 2013-14 to 251 in 2018-19.

Bethel has also worked to improve the district’s weapons detection process — a pain point that’s drawn public fury.

In 2019, outraged protesters shut down a Philadelphia Board of Education meeting after members voted to make metal detectors mandatory in every district high school. In the years after, random wand screenings, X-ray machines, and other detection systems have been used in high schools and some middle schools.

Some parents and community members have been critical of the practices, which they said can make students feel criminalized in their own schools.

When he announced new school safety measures last August, Bethel said the district would be introducing a new “minimally invasive gun detection system” in 14 middle schools. Those detectors were chosen because district officials were looking for technology “that did not add to the trauma of our young people,” Bethel said at the time.

To be sure, the city still struggles with youth incarceration issues. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in June that the city’s juvenile detention center reached its highest population levels ever, with 230 young people in custody. The Inquirer discovered overcrowding resulted in dozens of young people forced to sleep in offices, gyms, or on the floors of “filthy” cells.

As commissioner, Bethel said Wednesday he would work to make police officers a vital part of communities, not just enforcers of the law.

“I’m proud to be a cop,” he said. “We’re not your enemy. We’re here to serve, and I ask you to give us that opportunity to do that. … Raise your voice when it needs to be raised, but let’s be part of the community, let’s work with you.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Talk, not fists: Philadelphia students with discipline issues learn how to defuse conflict

2023-11-20T21:18:40+00:00

Luis Rios used to have one way to react when he felt he was being dissed: with his fists.

Luis, 15, aspires to be an architect and eventually work in his father’s construction firm. He was a straight A student at Philadelphia’s Hopkinson Elementary School, where he was good at math and loved to draw. He enrolled at Bodine High School for International Affairs, a special admission school that he and his father, Nelson, hoped would keep him away from trouble.

It wasn’t to be.

He felt out of place at Bodine, and his home life was in turmoil. During his first year at the school, he got into fights. He was barred from participating in sports due to his disciplinary infractions and sagging grades. This only made him angrier, setting off a vicious cycle. Eventually, after several incidents and the appropriate due process proceedings, he was sent for sophomore year to Achieve Academy East, a “transition” school for students with discipline infractions, where they can work on controlling their anger and learning how to solve problems without resorting to violence.

Last week, Luis was one of 27 students at the school who received certifications for completing a six-week program run by Temple University on conflict resolution for youth. In the program, which began in 2022, the students learn de-escalation strategies, primarily through intensive discussion and role-playing.

The school, which is privately managed by Specialized Education Services, keeps students for 45-day placements, after which they transition back to other schools.

“The Temple program helped me control my emotions, to defuse the situation,” Luis said.

The biggest thing he learned? “How to keep your mouth shut,” he said. “You can’t be mad when things don’t go your way.”

When he went to get his certificate during a ceremony at Achieve, Luis — a talented baseball and football player and boxer — was so excited that he executed a full flip on his way to the stage. And Luis did so well in the program that he qualified to be a youth conflict specialist intern and work with other young people, said clinical director Samantha Petroski.

Luis’s cohort is the fourth to complete the program, she said, which by spring will be in seven district schools. Since its inception, 225 students have graduated from the program, said Tricia Jones, who runs it for Temple.

“We come in and find them so open and ready to talk about things that matter, to take on challenges, how they want to do things differently,” Jones said at the ceremony where Rios and others got their certificates. “There are a lot of places to spend their time, and it’s special they choose to do this,” she said.

Jones said in a later interview that the program helps students learn skills that empower them “to move forward in life and achieve their goals.”

‘Think about other people’s feelings’

Nylaah Booker, 14 was sent to Achieve after she was caught at Finletter Elementary School with “contraband,” which means either alcohol or drugs, on her person. She said she agreed to hold it for someone else. She also had, by her own admission, “a little temper problem.”

“I was a good student,” she said. “I got myself into a situation.”

Conflict can escalate quickly for students — a joking comment that someone takes seriously can devolve into cussing, pushing, and even worse. A fight can eventually lead to gunfire, “or we can talk about it and hug it out,” Nylaah said.

And that possibility of violence isn’t just an abstraction for Nylaah: She lost her brother to gun violence. Then her mother had a heart attack not long after.

“There was a lot of stuff I was angry at,” she said. She said she has “bad anxiety” and has trouble just talking to people and making friends.

Now, she said, “I don’t react to petty things.” She learned skills during the Temple program that kept her away from “being angry all the time.”

Having completed the conflict resolution program, she plans to complete her school year at Franklin Learning Center and, like Luis, will also become a mentor to other students – a paid job. Nylaah is eager to share what she’s learned.

“A key is to think about other people’s feelings, not just your own, she said. “It helped me mature more, it helped me definitely see things differently.”

Both Nylaah and Luis have been at Achieve since the start of the school year. At Achieve, in addition to learning how to deal with conflict and his emotions, Luis is also learning to lean into his talents.

“I like to draw, for me personally, art is a way for me to calm down so I can use art to express my feelings,” he said.

Even now, Luis said he really doesn’t regret anything he did in the past, but vows to do better in the future.

“His lack of focus in school was in reference to everything happening at home,” Nelson Rios said. His parents are divorced, and Rios’ business had difficulties that forced the family out of their home. His children went from “having everything” to living on the edge.

He also understands his son’s anger and his journey. “I’ve been to jail,” Nelson Rios said.

But, in Luis’s world, controlling your anger could mean life or death, he said, and he’s grateful his son is on a better path.

“I grew up in the boxing world,” Nelson said, who runs a boxing program for youth and has taught Luis to box since he was little. “But now we live in a day and age when you can’t put your hands up because you’re afraid the other person will pull out a gun.”

His message now: “It doesn’t make you less of a man to avoid arguments.”

Luis will be going to Excel Central, an “accelerated” high school for students who are over-age and under-credited. Because of his rocky year at Bodine, Luis fell behind on accumulating credits.

“They will help him catch up, and he can graduate from there or go to a regular district school,” said Jennifer Green, the school’s executive director.

He will also be able to play sports for a regular district high school if he does well.

Luis said he wants to stay to graduate at Excel Central and then go to Florida State University.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” he said. “I want to go to college.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly’s premier high school requires 8th grade algebra for admission. Many kids can’t take it.

2023-11-13T17:14:31+00:00

Every year, hundreds of students in some of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods can’t apply to the city’s most prestigious high school for a simple reason: They can’t take eighth grade algebra at their local public school.

The advanced math course is only offered in 50 of 195 K-8 and middle schools in the district that have eighth grades. A review by Chalkbeat of the schools where algebra is offered, and the schools that recently began offering it, shows a pattern:

In general, the lower the median household income in the school’s surrounding neighborhood, the less likely that algebra is available to eighth graders.

Students who attend schools where algebra is not offered are automatically shut out of applying to Masterman in high school, the district’s most selective school, because the course is a prerequisite for admission. The requirement has been in place for at least 20 years, according to district spokesperson Marissa Orbanek.

The fact that algebra is a barrier to entry at one of Philadelphia’s premier schools highlights challenges with the district’s efforts to revamp admissions in the name of equity and to overhaul its math curriculum.

Philadelphia’s approach to the course underscores a national debate about the importance of eighth grade algebra. Some say that early algebra can set students on a path to completing calculus in high school, often a prerequisite for those seeking to be STEM majors in college. But others say such an approach can exacerbate inequality without giving most students an understanding of practical math they need to succeed in life.

In 2014, San Francisco prohibited eighth grade algebra because different student groups had vastly different outcomes. But now there’s a movement afoot in the city to change that. Cambridge, Massachusetts schools recently stopped offering eighth grade algebra. The debate has also raged in New York City where a mandate to expand and standardize the way algebra is taught has received polarizing feedback from teachers.

Janine Remillard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education who is an expert on math curriculum, said research shows that the outcomes for students who take algebra in eighth instead of ninth grade are a “mixed bag.” That aside, she said, the eighth grade requirement means that admission “is really about what school you went to” before Masterman.

“It’s enormously problematic that Masterman is using eighth grade algebra as criterion in a district where equity issues are so much at play,” Remillard said.

Current decisions about where to offer algebra in eighth grade are based on analysis of sixth and seventh grade student math performance, Orbanek said, as well as input from principals and central office staff.

“Equity of access, even surrounding Algebra I, still needs to be worked on,” said Jeannine Payne, who has been principal of Masterman since 2021.

Payne, who formerly led two North Philadelphia elementary schools that rarely sent students to Masterman, said when taking the job that she wanted to create more opportunities at the magnet school.

Making eighth grade algebra more widely available is part of Superintendent Tony Watlington’s plans for a $70 million curriculum overhaul that began this school year with math. But the lack of access to algebra illustrates that a huge investment in new materials alone does not necessarily address serious concerns about inequity, and that current practices can deny students opportunities that extend beyond just admission to Masterman, said Remillard.

Orbanek said a team is reviewing how and where the district currently offers the course. The district did not make anyone on that team available for an interview.

There is a district program in which eighth graders at several schools jointly take the same algebra class. But that effort, which is called Cross School Learning and began last school year, still leaves many students without access to the course in eighth grade. The program started with three schools and now includes 16.

At the October Board of Education meeting, Watlington shared state test score data showing declines in algebra proficiency from 2018-19 to 2022-23 of 6.6 percentage points among district students, and an increase in below basic scores of 8.3 percentage points, even as PSSA scores for grades 3-8 improved between 2021-2 and 2022-3. On this year’s state math exams overall, just 20.4% of students scored proficient or better, an improvement on 2022 but slightly below pre-COVID achievement.

“If kids are not prepared, why offer [8th grade algebra]?,” Remillard said. “That’s a problematic approach as well.”

Which students can get into Masterman?

Getting into Masterman is already very challenging, especially for those seeking to begin in ninth grade rather than in fifth grade, the earliest students can enroll. Historically, no more than roughly 10% of students have been admitted to Masterman just for high school. But that percentage is changing.

For decades, Masterman’s enrollment has seldom reflected that of the district as a whole — it is predominantly white and Asian, while the district is made up of mostly Black and Latino students. That disparity sparked protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd.

Two years ago, in an effort to broaden access for two dozen criteria-based schools, the district overhauled its admissions system, including for Masterman. In place of a process that gave most of the power to individual principals to choose from among qualified students, it established a citywide lottery.

The lottery gave automatic admission to students from historically underrepresented ZIP codes, most in North and West Philadelphia, to their top choice school — if they qualified based on their grades, test scores, and other potential factors.

But just five of the 28 schools that have an eighth grade in the targeted ZIP codes — which are mostly in North Philadelphia — offer algebra in eighth grade, according to information from the district.

Two of the schools in the priority ZIP codes that do offer the course in eighth grade, Carver High School of Engineering and Science, which includes grades 7-12, and Conwell Middle Magnet, are not neighborhood schools and have their own admissions requirements. In Carver’s case, most of the eighth graders stay there for high school.

“Until you put algebra in all those schools, having it as a requirement for entry to any high school is inequitable,” said one district official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Even if your plan is to put algebra everywhere in eighth grade, we don’t have it yet. How is it just, how can you say you’re creating more equity and favoring some ZIP codes, if students are coming from schools located there that t don’t offer it?”

Since the district switched to a lottery to determine final admission to the district’s most selective schools, the percentage of students entering Masterman in ninth grade has increased to about 30% in the current school year because, unlike in the past several years, eligible Masterman eighth graders were no longer automatically offered a spot in ninth grade.

But the district announced it will go back to automatic admission for eighth graders into the ninth grade starting in 2024-25, which could reduce the percentage again.

Expansion of eighth grade algebra uses hybrid classes

Citywide, student success in algebra classes has also varied significantly between the eighth and ninth grade in a way that suggests preparedness for algebra doesn’t necessarily improve as students get older. Last year, nearly 15% of the 8,300 students who took algebra in ninth grade didn’t pass the course, while only seven of the nearly 1,400 students who took it in eighth grade didn’t pass, according to data the district provided to Chalkbeat.

The district is trying at least one approach to increase access. In its Cross School Learning program, selected eighth grade students from several schools take algebra classes jointly.

The hybrid online and in-person program started in the 2022-23 school year at J.S. Jenks, Lingelbach, and Shawmont elementary schools. This year, it expanded to 13 more schools, which are among the 50 that the district lists as making eighth grade algebra available.

There are currently five teachers who give lessons in three schools each. The teachers travel from school to school, providing in-person instruction in one while the other two schools are virtual.

The decision where to expand the Cross Schools Learning program was based on an analysis of sixth and seventh grade student math performance, said Orbanek, the spokesperson, as well as input from principals and teachers. Students in algebra also receive regular eighth grade math instruction so they can be prepared for state math tests.

“Cross Schools Learning has been vital for our school this year,” Jenks Principal Corinne Scioli said in a video promoting Cross School Learning. “So many of our eighth grade students are not having the opportunity to apply and be considered for some of our most competitive high schools in the city.”

Correction: Nov. 17, 2023: Decisions about whether to offer algebra in eighth grade are made with input from principals and central office staff. Due to incorrect information provided by the school district, a previous version of this article said union leaders were involved in the decisionmaking.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

See how your Philadelphia school did on the latest state tests in English and math

2023-11-08T21:51:41+00:00

Philadelphia students’ state test scores are slowly recovering back to pre-pandemic levels, but most students still aren’t proficient in English language arts, math, and science, while longstanding performance gaps between student groups persist, according to new state test scores.

And the city’s students are still scoring far below their peers in the rest of the state on the tests, which were administered last spring. The scores, released on Wednesday, essentially confirm preliminary data shared with the Philadelphia Board of Education in early September showing that Philadelphia students made small gains from last year, but that most are still not proficient. The scores also indicate that Philadelphia has far to go to meet the school board’s own long-term academic targets.

Scores released Wednesday for the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, data for grades 3-8 show major disparities between white and Asian students and their Black and Hispanic peers in Philadelphia district and charter schools. Those gaps are most pronounced in math: Only 9.3% of Black students scored proficient and above on the math tests, while 44% of their white counterparts scored proficient or above. Some 11% of Hispanic students scored proficient or better in math while nearly 53% of Asian students scored the same.

Just 15% of economically disadvantaged students — who make up more than two-thirds of all city students — scored proficient or better in math.

Overall for the 2022-23 school year, 34.2% of Philadelphia students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or better in English, 20.4% of students in those grades scored proficient or above in math, and 41% of students in grades 4 and 8 scored proficient or better in science.

In 2021-22, the proficiency rates were 34.7% in English, 16.2% in math, and 37.1% in science — though the district’s science scores from that year do not include charter school students.

Philadelphia’s scores do show that students are gradually catching up to where they were before the COVID pandemic.

In 2019, 21.6% of students in Philadelphia scored proficient or better in math, while in English, 35.7% of students were proficient or better.

In late 2020, as part of a multi-year “goals and guardrails” plan, the district and school board set a goal that by 2026, 52% of students in traditional district schools, in grades 3-8 would achieve proficiency on the state math exam, and 65% of students would achieve proficiency on the state English exam.

Statewide, students scoring proficient or above in English increased slightly from 54.1% in 2021-22 to 54.5% in 2022-23. Over the same period, proficiency scores in math increased from 35.7% to 38.3%, and science scores increased from 54.4% to 58.9%. (Students did not take the state tests in 2020, while state officials say 2021 scores are not truly comparable to pre-COVID results.)

“This year’s assessment results underscore what we have said before — that with each passing year, participation and achievement will continue to improve,” Secretary of Education Khalid Mumin said in a statement Wednesday. “Pennsylvania’s results are well on their way to returning to pre-pandemic rates and we look forward to helping our students exceed those levels in the years ahead.”

But just as a much higher share of white and Asian students were proficient on state exams than Black and Hispanic students, there is a similar disparity when it comes to the lowest scores.

In English, 13.9% of white students in grades 3-8 scored below basic, compared to 29.4% of Black students, 33.4% of Hispanic students, and 9.6% of Asians, 14.1% of those who identify as multi-ethnic, and 27.7% of economically disadvantaged students.

In math, such differences are also stark. Overall, 57% of students in grades 3-8 scored below basic. That included 32.6% of white students, 69% of Black students, 66% of Hispanics, 22% of Asians, 45.4% of multi-ethnic students, and 45.4% of those who are economically disadvantaged.

District officials and board members said they were heartened by the increases from last year — however small — but said there’s more work the district can do.

Tonya Wolford, the district’s chief of evaluation, research, and accountability, told board members in September it is important to keep in mind that students “likely are not going from below basic to proficient in one year.” She said Philadelphia students will need more time, resources, and support to make the jump.

To emphasize the importance of students achieving proficiency in reading by third grade, the district also set a goal for 62% of third graders to score proficient on the state exam by 2026. Yet in 2022-23, only 31.2% of third graders scored proficient or above on the PSSA.

On Keystone exams — another state standardized assessment for high school students in literature, biology, and algebra — Philadelphia students also lag behind peers statewide. Just 25.1% of city students are proficient or better in algebra, compared to 34.2% of students statewide.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Cherelle Parker will be Philadelphia’s 100th mayor. Here’s what she wants to change about education.

2023-11-08T11:30:00+00:00

There was never much doubt that Cherelle Parker would become the city’s 100th mayor and the first woman ever to lead the nation’s sixth largest city. On Tuesday night, she defeated Republican David Oh, winning more than 73% of the vote.

Like mayors before her, she will lead a city with an underfunded school district beset by concentrated poverty — conditions that limit schools’ ability to make major inroads on the traditional measures of student achievement such as proficiency on state tests and graduation rates.

But unlike previous mayors, Parker — who started her career as a teacher — will take office when a major contributor to those conditions is on the verge of significant change.

That’s because the state is working to comply with a Commonwealth Court judge’s order from February to revamp a state school funding system that has resulted in wide gaps in spending between high- and low-income districts, and has historically shortchanged Philadelphia.

Although the city’s public school district was not a plaintiff in the case that led to the judge’s order, Philadelphia schools could benefit greatly from any changes to the state funding formula, and increases in overall education funding, that Pennsylvania lawmakers ultimately adopt.

What will also help define Parker’s tenure as mayor is how she will use her power to appoint all nine members of the Philadelphia Board of Education — she can rebuild it from scratch, if she wants — and what will happen regarding the one far-reaching education proposal she shared during the mayoral campaign: a year-round schedule for schools.

Parker pushes for more Philadelphia school funding

Parker grew up on Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane, the daughter of a teenage mother. She was raised by her grandparents and attended Philadelphia public schools, graduating from Girls High.

When she voted Tuesday morning, she brought along her high school English teacher, Jeanette Jimenez, who encouraged her to write about her life after her grandmother died.

“I wouldn’t be here without you,” she said.

She was the first in her family to go to college. After attending Lincoln University, she briefly taught English and English as a second language in Pleasantville, New Jersey, before interning for former City Council member Marion Tasco and setting off on a political career.

She will work as mayor to launch all young people on a path of self-sufficiency, she said at her victory speech at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 headquarters Tuesday night.

As a member of the City Council and as a state legislator, Parker leveraged methods to collect more revenue for schools, including an initiative that went after delinquent property taxpayers in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker celebrates with supporters on Nov. 7, 2023.

The mayor of Philadelphia has no direct authority over the School District of Philadelphia. But with the power to appoint all nine members of the Board of Education (subject to City Council approval), Parker can help shape education policy on key issues. These include spending priorities, charter schools, how to deal with the district’s aging buildings, and negotiations with unions for the district’s educators and other staff.

Through the school board, she can also influence where (and whether) to close schools and where to build new ones, and how to enhance student safety with respect to everything from environmental hazards such as loose asbestos to gun violence that has plagued the city.

During the campaign, Parker did not tip her hand on any intentions to keep or replace the current board members, saying she would not discuss any personnel issues before the election.

Parker favors keeping schools open longer

Parker’s signature education proposal in the mayoral race was to institute year-round schooling. She said what she had in mind would not involve more days of traditional classroom seat time for students, but more breaks spread throughout the year and a shorter summer vacation, coupled with increased access for students to enrichment activities.

Parker also advocated for a school day that starts earlier and ends later.

In making both these proposals, she cited the hardship that school schedules pose for many parents, rather than touting the additional time as an educational improvement strategy.

“Not all of the young people in the school district of Philadelphia are in the Hamptons in the summer, or at the Vineyard.” she said in her victory speech. “Maybe you thought they were there. But they are not.”

She added that “for those who are being raised, particularly in circumstances like mine, particularly when they’re being raised by someone other than their biological parents, they can benefit from creative year round scheduling. They could benefit from going to school in the morning and having it open until 6:30 in the evening.”

She said after the traditional school day is over, students could learn coding, financial literacy, and other subjects. “I’m getting ready to tell you the big one for me is homework help and tutoring,” said the mayor-elect, who is the mother of a young son. “Have you seen the math today?”

As far as paying for any such change, she has said she favors devoting a higher proportion of the city’s property tax revenue to the district — 58% instead of 55%. Parker said that change would bring $50 million in additional revenue for schools even before any statewide funding reform.

Parker is a strong union supporter, and many of the city’s labor leaders endorsed her in the Democratic primary, although the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers supported rival Helen Gym. PFT president Jerry Jordan did not attend Parker’s victory party Tuesday night, unlike many other union heads, but issued a statement saying members “celebrate and honor this momentous and historic occasion… (Parker’s election) shows little girls, especially Black girls, what they can achieve.”

On social media, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten also congratulated Parker for making history as the first woman to lead the nation’s sixth largest city.

Parker will for sure need union buy-in for her plan to move to a year-round school schedule and keep school buildings open longer.

Cherelle Parker holds her hand up to honor Delta Sigma Theta sorority after winning the mayoral election and becoming Philadelphia’s 100th mayor on Nov. 7, 2023.

Parker skirts divisions over charter schools

One area where Parker as a candidate took a measured approach was charter schools.

Nearly one-third of Philadelphia’s public school students attend charters, making the city home to one of the largest charter sectors in the country. The school board must approve charter school applications, and has essentially imposed a moratorium on new charters since 2018.

During the campaign, Parker did not directly answer a question from Chalkbeat about whether she would like Philadelphia to have more charter schools.

“I want quality seats, and I don’t care where they are,” she said, adding: “I will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions.” She forcefully repeated that in her victory speech Tuesday.

“If anybody is interested in talking to me about public education, and you’re trying to pitch traditional publics against charters, don’t do it,” she said.

Parker has also avoided wading into a controversy over whether the Board of Education has discriminated against Black-led charter schools.

A report issued by a law firm last month found problems with the charter monitoring system that has resulted in a larger proportion of Black-led charters being closed. But the report, two years in the making, found no “intentional” racial discrimination.

Parker did say that as mayor she would “insist” that the state legislature reinstate a budget provision that sent millions of dollars to school districts to compensate them for “stranded costs” linked to charters and cyber charter schools that occur when students leave district schools in patterns that don’t allow for neat downsizing.

That provision was eliminated in 2011 by state lawmakers under the administration of former Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican; half the total amount came to Philadelphia. Losing that reimbursement was among the factors that fueled resistance in Philadelphia to expanding the charter sector, including near the end of the period when the district was under state control from 2001 to 2017.

Parker’s main goal now, which she said is attainable through government and private collaboration: “We want all of our children in a 21st century, modern school building with the highest academic achievement.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia City Council to hold hearing on bias against Black-led charters

2023-11-02T21:27:22+00:00

City Council plans to hold a hearing in December on whether the district has discriminated against Black-led charter schools.

On Thursday, Council approved a resolution, unanimously and without discussion, introduced by Council member Isaiah Thomas declaring that “Black led and founded institutions have been held to standards that are inconsistent and changed regularly, causing a lack of transparency in the School District’s process of reviewing, managing, and closing non-district led schools.” The hearing is scheduled for Dec. 6.

In a report released last month, the law firm Ballard Spahr found what it considered a flawed and problematic charter school authorizing and renewal process that leaves the district open to charges of bias — but uncovered no evidence of deliberate discrimination against Black-led charters. The report was two years in the making and covered the period between 2010 and 2021.

At the same time, the law firm recommended changes, including more transparency in the charter process and anti-bias training for Board of Education members.

The report was commissioned by the Board of Education in response to years of allegations of racial bias from the African American Charter School Coalition, which represents 17 of 21 Black-led charter schools.

Investigators found that during that period eight of the 13 schools whose charters were revoked by the district were Black-led, even though only about 1 in 5 city charters were founded and continuously led by Black individuals or organizations. (The report also noted that this year the Board of Education voted not to renew the charter of another Black-led institution, Southwest Leadership Academy.)

At the time, coalition officials issued a statement saying that the report backed up its charges of discrimination and “shows that the public school charter authorization process needs to be completely overhauled.”

In Pennsylvania, unlike in some other states, only the host district can authorize charter schools, creating an inherent conflict of interest.

Philadelphia has about 65,000 students in 82 charters, educating nearly 1 in 3 children who attend publicly run schools, and making it one of the largest charter sectors in any major city.

The report said that district officials were aware as far back as 2017 that there were “differential” results in the charter authorizing process, but took no action.

The nine-member school board, appointed by the mayor, has no taxing power of its own, relying on City Council to allocate city funds to the district, most of it through property taxes.

Max Weisman, Thomas’s communications director, said in an interview that there is “anecdotal evidence” pointing to a “different set of standards and a different set of processes that Black-led and white-led institutions go through.” He said that constant personnel turnover in the district’s Charter Schools Office exacerbates the problem, and that white-led institutions have more wherewithal to hire consultants and others to contest a proposed charter non-renewal or revocation.

He said witnesses at the hearing would include district officials as well as charter operators who have been making the allegations.

“It is important that we have oversight over our charter school system, so we can ensure that our public dollars are being spent the right way,” said Thomas in a statement announcing his intent to introduce the resolution. “The answer, though, does not lay in unfairly investigating Black-led institutions.”

Thomas, who sits on the council’s education committee, is a volunteer coach at Sankofa Freedom Academy, one of the city’s oldest charter schools. “I’ve seen myself how beneficial this model is,” Thomas said in a statement. “Black-led institutions are vital entities in the city because they open up students to broader perspectives, leadership and learning styles, and curriculums that not only improve tangible results but also make for a more enjoyable learning experience.”

The district’s Charter Schools Office issues annual reviews on each charter school as well as renewal reports every five years. Those reports evaluate the schools in three areas: academics, operations, and financial health. It gives each charter a rating of either “meets standard,” “approaches standard,” or “does not meet standard” on dozens of metrics. It does not make a formal recommendation to the board on whether to renew a charter or not.

Before approving its own budget and taxes, City Council holds annual hearings on school spending, grilling district officials and board of education members about various policies and making known their own priorities and preferences.

The issue of possible bias against Black-led charters has not come up in the mayoral election that will take place next week between Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, and David Oh, a Republican. Parker has recommended increasing the district’s share of the property tax from 55% to 58% as a way to generate more revenue for the schools. Oh has said he would like to elect five of the nine school board members so that they feel more connected to the community – although that would complicate the issue of taxing authority.

But overall, aside from Parker’s proposal for year-round school, which she has not explained in detail, education policy has not been a big issue in the race.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia mayoral election 2023: How Cherelle Parker answered 10 important education questions

2023-10-26T20:27:58+00:00

If Philadelphia voters cast their ballots in line with their party registration this November, Democrat Cherelle Parker is all but guaranteed to become the city’s 100th mayor. She will also be the first woman, and the first Black woman, to hold the office.

Parker is a former City Council member and state representative who has a degree in education from Lincoln University and worked briefly as an English teacher in Pleasantville, NJ. She is running against Republican David Oh, an attorney who also used to be on the council.

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 7, and the last day to vote early in person is Tuesday, Oct. 31.

The next mayor will have the responsibility of appointing the city Board of Education’s nine members, who in turn appoint and evaluate the superintendent, and monitor the district’s progress related to student achievement.

Parker’s campaign has already begun shaping education conversations in the city. Her pledge for “year-round school” was quickly picked up by Superintendent Tony Watlington, who incorporated a pilot program into his five-year strategic plan for the district.

Inspired by reader submissions, Chalkbeat asked both candidates to weigh in on the city’s most pressing education issues: school funding, safety, infrastructure, school board appointments, charter schools, and more. You can find Oh’s detailed Q and A here.

Here, Parker clarifies that for her, year-round school doesn’t mean more seat time in traditional classrooms, but vacation breaks spread throughout the calendar year and shortened during the summer, along with more enrichment activities for students. She also reiterates that she would favor putting more city funds into schools by increasing the district’s share of the city property tax, its largest source of local money.

She did not rule out creating more charter schools: “I want quality seats and I don’t care where they are,” she said, adding that she “will not allow anyone to act as if district-run and charter schools are warring factions.” Unlike Oh, she does not favor electing members of the school board.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Year-round school has been the centerpiece of your education platform. Tell us more how you envision that working.

When people heard me describe access to year-round school, I was not referring to our children sitting in a classroom at a desk, like we do during a traditional school day. But rather, it will … ensure that everyone has access to not just our traditional school curriculum, but academic enrichment programs, tutoring, homework help after school, and access to any workforce development and life skills opportunities that we could offer during out-of-school time.

Year-round education also references being innovative with scheduling. It doesn’t mean you don’t ever get time off. It could be two weeks here, two weeks here, three weeks here. All of our children … aren’t in the Hamptons or the shore all summer long. So for those children for whom those kinds of familial opportunities aren’t a part of their real lives, how do we structure our traditional school year in a way that makes good economic sense and is worth the educational investment for them?

Do you have any more specifics about how this would work and have you talked to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ union about this?

The way I design things, they won’t be designed without the PFT, without our administrators, without our parents, without the external stakeholders, and subject matter experts all at the table figuring out, how do we make this work? … That has not been figured out, but that’s the purpose of putting out the concept. Stakeholders come together and we figure out a way to make it work. And that’s how I go about doing things.

Maybe some other people would love to be able to offer a plan and very specifically say, “This is how it’s going to work and this is what you’re going to do in a Parker administration.” That’s a recipe for disaster. This is a concept that I have in my mind. If I am the mayor, we are going to have year-round educational opportunities for our children. What does it specifically look like when it’s baked and done? I don’t have the specifics for you right now.

There is a basic foundation to public education, that we should in no way shape or form attempt to usurp. But I will tell you that it is in no way sufficient for everything that our children should be learning today.

The most direct power the mayor has over education in Philadelphia is by appointing the school board. Do you intend to replace any of the Board of Education members?

I am not going to make any comments or personnel decisions while I’m on the campaign trail. … I will be looking for people with a deep commitment to our city, the children of our city, and [who] share my vision for public education in this city.

Your opponent David Oh has talked about shifting to a partially elected school board. Is that something you would support or do you think the current model is working?

I will not and do not support an elected school board because if you elect a school board that comes with taxing authority … I trust the [city] council with the taxing authority for the city of Philadelphia. They are our legislative branch.

Who do you think would have access to the resources to run a citywide campaign to get elected to a school board? It would be those who are boosted by very special interests.

What is your position on charter schools? The Board of Education has not approved a new charter school since 2018, do you think that there should be more charter schools in Philadelphia?

I want quality, modern 21st education for all of our children [regardless of] their race, class, socioeconomic status, or zip code. I want quality seats and I don’t care where they are … Some people are not going to like it, but I’m going to unify educational institutions in the city of Philadelphia to work together to help our young people.

Under a Parker administration, I will not allow anyone to pit traditional publics versus traditional charters to act as if those two are warring factions. They are not. They are two types of schools that are both public that educate children in the school district of Philadelphia

I want to see our traditional publics, our traditional charters or parochial schools, and even the private schools — I want to see the leadership all coming together to say this is what we’re doing. Is there a way as educational leaders … that we can add value to each other’s delivery of education? Can we leverage working together, and any supports or services that could benefit young people? Can we share or steal an idea?

I’m always looking to see what other cities and states and countries and nations are doing relative to public education … we haven’t thought big enough and broad enough because everybody’s so accustomed and comfortable working in silos, my mind doesn’t work that way.

Do you support Councilman Thomas’s proposal for a school building authority that would help the school district deal with flaking asbestos and other issues relating to safety and modernization of its buildings?

Let’s think about using apprentices and pre apprentices in the building trades and students in our school district to help be a part of that process. Do we do it via School Building Authority, an accelerated process within our current structure? I’m not sure. I’m not wedded to any way, I’m actually still right now reviewing what that means.

I’m more concerned with getting it done. We have to get together at the table, agree to what the plan will be. And then we have to be unified in our advocacy and not trying to pick winners and losers with the ultimate goal being focused on our children and doing right by the people who work in those buildings.

How do you expect to pay for some of the big policy ideas you’ve put forward?

I would be open to exploring increasing the school district’s portion of our property taxes from 55%, potentially to 58%. And that would add an additional $50 million in additional revenue.

That couldn’t be done alone. You have to have an intergovernmental strategy that’s state, local, and federal. You also need the philanthropic community, you need the business community. We cannot try to address these issues in silos that we’ve got to bring people together to say this is the plan, this is what we need from you and you and you and how are we going to work together in order to make it happen?

Our district is historically underfunded, we get it. The court case [ruling Pennsylvania’s school funding system unconstitutional] is extremely important, and potentially increasing our school district’s portion of our property taxes, but we also have to be demonstrating that we’re trying to do things differently here. People are not going to talk about providing additional support and funding to the school district until they see us trying to do something different [in the city.].

Gun violence is also a major issue affecting students, educators, and school communities. What are your proposals for improving school safety?

I welcome everyone to take a look at my comprehensive neighborhood safety community policing plan … we have to make public health and public safety the number one priority here in the city of Philadelphia, and we should do it with three primary buckets in mind, prevention, intervention and enforcement.

We cannot talk about [education] without talking about trauma, mental and behavioral health support. We can’t talk about public education without the need for nurses and counselors and therapy for our children. A holistic approach to delivering public education helps us with public safety.

How does policing fit into that?

We are going to have community policing in every neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia. The only time we see law enforcement won’t be because it’s a crisis and someone called 911. They will be a part of the very fabric of our neighborhoods, and that, of course, does mean in and around our schools and buildings.

How can anyone shout we should be defunding the police when we should be focused on a holistic approach that does include community policing? … [We should] have officers who are not there as warriors but as guardians, working in partnership with our public safety office in the school district, with SEPTA and with other institutions so that we can have a holistic, comprehensive approach

I don’t apologize to anybody about making that a priority, because every child deserves to feel safe in school, and we should do everything that we possibly can to ensure it.

School was a lifeline for a person who grew up in poverty like me. … Every school should be a community school.

What’s your plan to address the teacher shortage and grow the teacher pipeline?

We’ve got to market it to them.

Philadelphia hasn’t done a good job in trying to package supports and services that we have available for example, with home ownership. We should be creative and incentivizing this … first we’re gonna make [Philadelphia] the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation with economic opportunity for all and because it’s safe, we want you to have access to home ownership in a safe and a clean area with a thriving economy, thriving arts, culture, creative economy.

We’re going to see shortages across the board if we don’t find a way to use non-traditional strategies to market and encourage people to become residents of our great city.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia mayoral election 2023: How David Oh answered 10 important education questions

2023-10-26T20:27:53+00:00

Though the voter registration rolls are against him, Republican mayoral candidate David Oh thinks he sees a path to victory in Philadelphia, and that path starts with the city’s schools.

Voters are “not coming out because of the pomp and ceremony. They’re not coming out because of the noise, they’re coming out because they want a change,” Oh said in a recent interview at his campaign office in Northeast Philadelphia. “People want to believe there is a better future for them. And schools are where it can happen.”

Oh, a former City Council member, is running against the heavily favored Democrat Cherelle Parker, who also served on council and was a state representative. In Philadelphia, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans seven to one.

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 7, and the last day to vote early in person is Tuesday, Oct. 31.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Oh said he favors holding elections for five of the nine members of the Philadelphia Board of Education while the mayor would appoint the remaining four. That would in effect cede the mayor’s primary influence over education in Philadelphia, which is to appoint all members of the board that governs the district.

Oh did not go into detail into how such a hybrid board would work with respect to issues like taxing power. Now, the appointed school board relies on the City Council to allot local tax dollars to the schools. Parker said she opposes an elected board because she wants the council to keep taxing power.

But Oh said that having elected members would make the board more responsive to community concerns. He proposed combining the 10 current councilmanic districts (districts that are aligned with those represented on the City Council) into five, and electing one from each district.

He said he would also seek to promote “equity in resources and facilities” and beef up vocational education. On charter schools, he said: “I am not for or against. I am for good public schools.”

An attorney, Oh was born and raised in Southwest Philadelphia, where he still lives, and represented on the council from 2012 until he resigned to run for mayor earlier this year.

He reiterated that the major issue facing the next mayor is crime — in the city and in the schools. He contends that reducing crime will have a beneficial effect on education by attracting more people to teach in the city and reducing student trauma, among other things.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are your proposals for improving school safety?

[Students] have every legitimate reason why they cannot focus and why they are afraid. They’ve been traumatized by all this gun violence. They have to see we care. The way I show them we care is I have uniformed officers, school police — no weapon, but looking sharp, being attentive and being accountable. I say ‘when you’re in our custody, you’re in our care’ for people who we arrest. When you’re in our schools, you’re in our care.

I think a lot of our problems come from the fact that people feel neglected. They feel like nobody cares about them, they feel like they have no future.

I think, although well intended, to not provide police, to not provide discipline, to not provide that shows you don’t care when kids are getting killed, shot, and hurt.

People want policing, but they want police reform. They want good policing. They don’t want police brutality. They don’t want ‘stop and frisk,’ I’m against the return of stop and frisk.

How would you address the teacher shortage?

We’re losing teachers to public safety issues, and they’re telling us “we’re getting out of here, because it’s dangerous for us to go to work … this is not what we signed up for and you don’t seem to care.”

The low pay with no visible steps — the more experience you have in Philadelphia, what do you get? What is your future there? And so a lot of teachers look at Philadelphia as their public service time … we lose too many good teachers, and they really want to be here. They want to be a part of the community.

If I wanted to deal with teachers, I would look at recruitment. I would create a more predictable system of how you get paid, and how the pay increases every certain number of years. And it would incentivize staying in Philadelphia longer.

You’ve said you would support an elected school board. How would that work? What would you do when you first take office, before you could change from an appointed to elected board?

I would appoint nine new [members] … start from scratch.

I have really pushed five elected school board members … we can have five councilmanic districts where the people elect a representative … regionally, but not the same as the council districts.

That would give people a level of responsiveness and accountability that they really feel is missing in the school district. … In other words, I would rather have the community tied in with the schools and have some level of tailoring language, culture, educational options, things like that. And recognition of religious issues that are important to their community.

What would your education priorities be as mayor?

Safety in the school, which is a big problem. Number two, it would be equity in resources and facilities ... and I would return the standards of academics, vocational career training, and then I’d try to create a VET program like they do in Germany, Switzerland — vocational educational training.

If someone wants to get certified in a good vocation, there’s a program that I would try to work out with [lawmakers in] Harrisburg, where you do ninth and 10th grade in business theory, academics, all that related to what your career is. Then in 11th and 12th grade, you do part-time [at a] workplace.

What changes would you make to the way the school district is organized?

I’m not really a fan of the way schools are run now with a superintendent in charge of everything … I think it has to be a little more horizontal. There should be a chief innovation officer for technology. One that doesn’t get fired or demoted by the superintendent.

I don’t think the school board should be in the school administration building at all … you have to let the administrators administrate. Let the teachers teach, let the principals be the principals, let the facilities [workers] do the facility, the police do the police and the board looks at the overall but without any interest, without any conflicts.

A Commonwealth Court judge recently ruled the way Pennsylvania funds its schools is unconstitutional and many school districts, including Philadelphia, are underfunded. What would you change about the system?

The city is very wasteful. And nobody likes to hear that, or they already know it.

The poorest neighborhoods in Philadelphia are overtaxed. They have a lot of anxiety, they have a lot of problems, they have a lot of violence and all kinds of things. It’s illegal and it’s unfair.

I would … audit the [property tax] assessment process… we have to create fairness in taxation. … Otherwise, we’re going to drive all our poor folks out of the neighborhood with their kids who go to schools.

I believe the city should contribute more money from the money it has..the taxes have to be accurate, if they are higher, no problem. If they’re lower, whatever they are, they have to be accurate.

The current system is abusive to the poor, the vulnerable, and the low income and that is resulting in a lot of other problems that are very expensive.

That is having a devastating effect on our city. A lot of the problems we face are from people who feel targeted by a bullying, hateful government that doesn’t care about them … they could see it in schools and the libraries and places like that. I would correct that property tax.

How would you deal with the school infrastructure issues like damaged asbestos?

I think there is purposeful inefficiency [in school construction and upkeep]. … In this city, since the colonial days, schools have been a place of political payback.

I would look at serious rightsizing of the district based on the fact that we probably need to build new buildings.

We need to look at the buildings that have asbestos and actually clean them for real and not just coat them. We don’t need to remediate them. We have to remove it.

Do you think there should be more charter schools in Philadelphia?

No, I don’t. I’m not for or against the charter schools … I’m for good public schools. But we’ve had horrible public schools and no response. And therefore there were charter schools.

I think we have enough charter schools.

I would look at the mayor as someone who’s responsible for education for every child … whether it’s at a charter school, a neighborhood public school, a magnet school, a private school, at religious school, or whatever it is, it’s a school … [and it] is the mayor’s responsibility. One of the biggest jobs a mayor can do is to raise the money to put into education.

Would you support private school vouchers?

I think I’m for them.

If [private school families] are going to pay their taxes and send your kids to another school and pay for that, that helps us … it helps us to have them pay their taxes and have open seats … I would like to give them a tax break, to encourage them to do that so I can get the benefits of their tax dollars and those open seats.

If we had more people paying taxes, and paying for their own tuition, we’d have more money, more room in schools. So in that sense, I’m for it.

How would you improve trust between the school district and the communities it serves?

Our issue is how do we deliver a good quality education, a meaningful education in a way that shows the children in our care in our worst neighborhoods, that they have hope for the future? … As a mayor, I have to answer that question.

I think the problem with this whole situation is that the public does not trust the schools anymore … it’s all a scam to them.

You’re going to have to show them a visible difference from almost day one. The neighborhood looks different, the school’s different, the library hours have changed, the whole delivery of services is different.

You have to build credibility. We have such pessimistic people in this city. And it’s one of our biggest problems. Many of them don’t believe school matters, quite frankly, they just see school as a place to send kids and just occupy their time there.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

One of Philadelphia’s oldest charter schools will close next year

2023-10-10T23:10:05+00:00

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The Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, one of Philadelphia’s oldest and largest charters, plans to close at the end of the school year with the retirement of its founder, Veronica Joyner.

Joyner, who announced the school’s closure in a Monday letter to parents, said in an interview Tuesday that at nearly 74 years old, she felt she could no longer put in the 12-hour days necessary to keep the school operating, and that she had not identified a successor she thought could continue her legacy.

“For 25 years I’ve been looking for someone to take on” the leadership of the school, she said, “but I haven’t seen anybody with the care and compassion I have for children and parents.”

The school’s closure at the end of the 2023-24 school year means its roughly 900 students will have to scramble to find new schools next year. The district’s school selection process for the fall of 2024 is underway, but ends in two weeks.

The first through twelfth grade school, which opened in 1999, says it offers “an alternative style and setting for children experiencing learning difficulties.” But the school district’s office that oversees charters has questioned its performance in recent years, and the Board of Education recently gave it a short leash. It has also drawn criticism for its admissions practices.

Additionally, Mathematics, Civics and Sciences is losing its home next year. Joyner said that Parents United for Public Schools, the nonprofit organization that Joyner leads, plans to sell the school’s building, which is located in the rapidly developing area around Broad and Spring Garden streets.

In an evaluation published this year, the Charter Schools Office reported that the school did not meet standards for academics or operations, and that it approached the standard for financial health and sustainability. After that review, the Board of Education offered a one-year renewal for its charter instead for five years, which is what charter schools that are meeting standards typically receive.

Joyner said she found the decision to extend the charter for just one year “insulting.”

In her Monday letter to parents, Joyner painted a picture of the school that differs from the Charter Schools Office’s findings this year.

Unlike this year’s official evaluation, Joyner said that the school had received “the highest grade of Meets Standards in all three review areas” of academics, finances, and operations.

Joyner said in her letter that Mathematics, Civics and Science had “the highest graduation rate within the Philadelphia school system over the past nine years and the highest college matriculation rate as well.” Official district statistics for the 2021-22 school year did say that Mathematics, Civics and Science was the only charter — along with four district-run schools — with a 100% graduation rate.

The school has provoked controversy for reasons beyond its academic record. In a 2019 lawsuit, the Education Law Center alleged that the charter school illegally denied admission to a student based on her disability. At the time, Joyner said the allegation was based on a “misunderstanding.”

Peng Chao, head of the district’s Charter Schools Office, said the district “just became aware” that the school will close next year.

“Our focus is to put together a plan to ensure students and families are supported through this transition … and have available to them all the information about their school options,” Chao said.

Last week, the Ballard Spahr law firm issued a report commissioned by the school board that found Philadelphia district leadership did not deliberately discriminate against Black leaders of charter schools when making key decisions about their fate. However, the report did say the closure rate of Black-led charter schools is “concerning” and could feed perceptions of bias.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Report finds no intentional bias by Philly against Black-led charter schools

2023-10-06T21:09:51+00:00

Philadelphia district leadership never deliberately discriminated against Black-led charter schools in decisions relating to authorizing, expanding, and closing the independently managed, publicly funded schools, according to a report released Friday.

At the same time, the law firm Ballard Spahr concluded in its 132-page report that what it considered a problematic authorizing process could lead to worries about bias. It called the rate of closure of Black-led charter schools “concerning” and said complaints from charter leaders interviewed “raised issues that corroborated systemic reasons” that could explain the perception.

Based on the firm’s review, “Black-led charter schools have been subject to nonrenewal proceedings and/or closure actions in greater numbers than their peers.”

The board commissioned the investigation two years ago after allegations of racial bias from the African American Charter Schools Coalition, which represents 17 of 21 Black-led charter schools. It was conducted pro bono by Ballard Spahr, with a data analysis by the Center for Urban and Racial Equity at a cost to the district of $55,000.

“The investigation has not revealed any evidence of intentional [sic], overt racially discriminatory acts by any [School Reform Commissioner], Board of Education member, or [Charter Schools Office] employee against a charter leader,” the report said.

But the charter coalition said in a statement that the report actually backs up its claims of discrimination.

“Our limited review of the document substantiates our assertions that the charter renewal process is flawed and broken — contrary to the Philadelphia Board of Education’s assertions. What we’ve learned thus far is that the report, coupled with the data initially presented by our organization related to disparate outcomes for Black operated schools, shows that the public charter school authorization process needs to be completely overhauled.”

The report itself said that “not all the charter leaders interviewed alleged intentional discrimination,” but some “opined that the charter authorizing system suffered from systemic bias and other flaws.”

Board of Education President Reginald Streater said in an interview that board members are “pleased, not a happy pleased, but pleased [that] the investigation has not revealed any evidence of intentional or overt racially discriminatory acts by the board or charter office against any charter leader,” and that there is “no finding that any charter closure was done improperly.”

The investigation found that district leaders themselves became concerned about this issue as early as 2017, but that there is no “evidence that the district took meaningful steps to address or investigate… Nor did the district otherwise characterize the matter as one of urgent concern.” It did not focus on the issue until the Black charter coalition raised it, the report said.

The report recommends that district leaders petition the state to revise how charters are authorized. Currently, under state law, charters are authorized by the host district, which creates an inherent conflict of interest. In other states, universities and other entities can establish charters. Pennsylvania’s charter school law has not been meaningfully amended since 1997.

Investigators also recommend that the district split its charter support operation from its charter evaluation function, also as a way to minimize any potential conflict. Now, both are done by the Charter Schools Office.

It also says that the charter renewal process should be more transparent, with more opportunities for public input. It suggests the district do a periodic “equity audit” of its charter authorizing and renewal practices — looking at such factors as staff diversity, anti-bias and racial training for employees, and communication with stakeholders.

And while not finding intentional acts of discrimination on their part, the report recommends that Board of Education members undergo anti-bias training.

The charter coalition’s response also cited the inherent conflict of interest in how charters are authorized in the Commonwealth and said it doubts the district’s ability “to act in good faith with any remediation processes.” The statement said coalition leaders will have a more detailed response to the report once they have reviewed it in its entirety.

From 2010 to 2021, the period covered by the report, the district governing body — either the state-dominated School Reform Commission, or the Board of Education, which resumed control of the district in 2018 — voted not to renew or to revoke the charters of 13 schools, eight of which were Black-led. (It noted that the district in June 2023 voted not to renew Southwest Leadership Academy Charter, another Black-led charter.)

A Black-led charter is defined as one that has a Black founder, board, and current leader, said Lawrence Jones, who was a founder of Richard Allen Preparatory Charter School. Those charters that may currently have Black leadership, but were not founded by African Americans and focused on educating Black children, are not part of the coalition, he said.

Jones and other Black charter leaders met with Streater Friday to go over the report. In an interview after that meeting, Jones questioned the finding that there was no intentional bias. “We want to dig into what the report shows,” he said. (His school, which opened in 2001, was recommended for nonrenewal in 2018 but has not been closed.)

The investigators said that the issues around this are myriad and complex. Some charters, like Walter D. Palmer Leadership Academy, which was founded in 2000 and closed in 2014 due to poor test scores and financial problems, were established by known or legendary Black leaders in the city. Several of the closed charters specifically promised African-centered education, including Wakisha (closed in 2014), Khepera (closed in 2019), and Imani Education Circle (closed in 2016).

Others, like Bluford and Daroff, were former district schools turned over to Black-run charter management organizations. Both these West Philadelphia elementary schools were long operated by Universal Companies, founded by music entrepreneur Kenny Gamble. But after a series of internal problems that led to the schools’ boards breaking the relationship with Universal, Bluford returned to district control this year and Daroff closed entirely.

Streater noted that in some of the cases of charter revocation, the decision was upheld by the state-run Charter Appeals Board or by court decision, bolstering the argument that the votes to revoke their charters were justified and not the result of bias.

At the same time, he said there is room for the district leadership to review its practices around charter evaluation, renewal, and closure.

“The board is looking forward to…continuing the evolution of charter practices in Philadelphia” that will maintain and increase “quality seats and a student-centered approach to education.”

There are now 82 charter schools in Philadelphia, which educate about 65,000 students, or more than a third of those who attend publicly funded schools. Proportionally, it is among the largest charter sectors in any big city.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Annual Philadelphia teacher shuffle known as ‘leveling’ inspires protest

2023-10-04T20:14:16+00:00

It’s October, time for the dreaded practice of “leveling” Philadelphia schools.

Just when students and teachers are settling into their classes for the year, the district takes stock: It determines whether its teacher assignments, based on preregistration and estimates, are in line with the number of students who actually showed up, in each grade and school. For many schools — especially those with elementary and middle grades — there is a mismatch, triggering a musical chairs game of teacher reassignments and transfers.

Some schools gain a teacher or two or even more, but others lose. And for those schools, the result is unwelcome and sometimes traumatic.

One of them is Henry H. Houston Elementary School in Mount Airy, where the administration planned for two fifth grade classes. The school community was excited, because teaching in one of those classrooms was Lya Rodgers, who grew up in the neighborhood and was returning after several years abroad. She specifically sought to teach at Houston.

But only 31 fifth-grade students are enrolled now, below the maximum for a single class allowed under the contract with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The maximum is 30 students for kindergarten through third and 33 for fourth through eighth.

So Houston’s two fifth grade classes of 15 and 16 students — closer to the norm in many suburban districts — will be combined into one, and Rodgers will be going elsewhere, starting Oct. 10. She was given five schools to choose from.

She “got just five days’ notice,” said parent Emily Pugliese. “She’s leaving Friday.”

In all, 59 schools lost teachers this year under leveling, according to figures released by the district, and 88 teachers moved.

Another 45 schools were absolved from any impact, with 93 teachers able to stay despite fewer students showing up in their schools than expected; many of those are criteria-based or magnet schools. And at an additional 50 schools, 66 teacher positions were added because of higher enrollment figures.

At Houston, dozens of parents and other neighborhood residents upset about the loss of Rodgers — and the practice of leveling — gathered after school Wednesday in front of the building to protest.

They held up signs and chanted slogans including “All year, teachers stay here; “Lose leveling, not teachers,” and “Keep Ms Lya.”

“I really want my teacher to stay,” said fifth grader Sarina Hayes. “I feel like she’s my mom. And she’s really funny.”

Parent Christina Jackson, who has fifth grade twins, called leveling “a disruptive process.”

“It feels like teachers are treated like pawns,” Jackson said. “It’s all about numbers, not relationships built with students. It doesn’t seem the district is caring about the real health of our kids.”

It’s “reckless,” she said, to do all this moving “based on a couple of kids over or under a number.” She said if it goes through, she will consider homeschooling.

“My daughter will not do well in a class with way more kids,” she said.

Mary Hoeffel has a daughter in fifth grade at Houston and one in second grade.

Her fifth grader “loves, loves” Rodgers, Hoeffel said Tuesday. “Her homework is so engaging, she loves class discussions, the book they’re reading, and it’s been great from Day 1. And then she found out yesterday that Rodgers would be gone next week.”

For her part, Rodgers left school as usual with other teachers directly to the parking lot via the back door and didn’t answer an email seeking comment.

Leveling is a longstanding practice growing out of the need to make sure schools are adequately and appropriately staffed, but also driven by concerns around equity in teacher distribution and by the need for cost-efficiency in the perennially cash-strapped district.

No one questions the need to add teachers in schools where more students show up than planned for, but taking teachers away after the year begins has long prompted complaints that it destabilizes schools. On occasion, superintendents have suspended the practice of moving teachers out of underenrolled schools.

The process governing which teachers are reassigned when a school must give up a teacher has also been controversial, as it is primarily based on seniority rather than a principal’s best judgment.

This year, though, the district is also facing a teacher shortage. When the school year started, there were close to 400 vacancies. District spokeswoman Marissa Orbanek said that the “fill rate” is still at 96%, meaning that most of those vacancies still exist.

Orbanek acknowledged the importance of consistent access to qualified teachers. “We will continue to refine our processes, including seeking to more accurately project student enrollment at each school and grade level prior to the start of the school year so that mid-year staffing adjustments can be avoided as much as possible,” Orbanek said in a statement.

She said that staff reassignments are continuing through Thursday, so the numbers may change. Superintendent Tony Watlington will provide more information “within the next day or so,” Orbanek said.

Several Houston parents signed on to an anguished letter to Watlington, begging him to reconsider.

“If the School District of Philadelphia is dedicated to trauma-informed practices, why does it continue to engage in the trauma-inducing practice of leveling?” the letter says, calling on district officials to review the practice and “to halt this harm to this wonderful, growing, neighborhood school.”

Houston, which has about 400 students, is in a progressive, politically active, racially integrated part of the city. In recent years, it has made progress in attracting more parents, white and Black, to send their children there instead of to private or charter schools.

The school has as high a proportion of white students now as when it was given extra amenities as part of the district’s voluntary desegregation program, which was in effect from the early 1980s until 2011. The school also has many students whose families applied to attend from outside the neighborhood.

Houston also had started a “differentiation initiative,” in which one grade teacher concentrated on English language arts and social studies, while the other focused on math and science. That project will also be derailed by Rodgers’ reassignment.

Rodgers happened to be the teacher at the school who was lowest in building seniority, so she was the person who needed to move. But sometimes, the teacher who is reassigned is not in the underenrolled grade, which results in more internal shuffling within the school as teachers are moved around to compensate.

The Houston parents’ letter notes that this year’s fourth grade has close to 50 students, so next year’s fifth grade will almost certainly require two teachers.

At the protest, parent Ari Jackson (no relation to Christina) said she had two children at Houston, a fifth grader and a seventh grader, who has been there since kindergarten.

“This is disrupting for a lot of kids,” she said. “And it goes without saying that it’s better to have 15 rather than 30-plus students in a class. There’s more individualization. That’s self- explanatory.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Roxborough High remembers Nicolas Elizalde, killed one year ago

2023-09-27T21:47:01+00:00

On a strip of ragged grass adjoining the front steps of Roxborough High School, students planted crocuses.

The bulbs, assistant principal Julian Saavedra explained to them, are perennials, meaning they die out but come back every year, bursting out in vibrant colors on patches of ground still waking up from the cold of winter.

The planting happened Wednesday, on the first anniversary of one of the most devastating events in the history of Roxborough High: a brutal shooting mere steps from the school that took the life of 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde as he walked home from a football scrimmage at the field nearby.

Nicolas was actually a student at nearby Saul High School of Agricultural Science, which shares a football team with Roxborough.

To cope and remember, the 600-student school observed a Day of Peace on the anniversary, seeking to bring additional support to a community that is still traumatized. To start the day, students held a moment of silence. Over the past year, they helped paint a mural on the wall of the school closest to where the shooting occurred. The mural depicts, among other symbols, a football helmet filled with flowers and a large rendering of Nicolas’ jersey number, 62.

“We’re getting through it as a team,” said assistant football coach Marc Skinner. “We stand by each other, we talk to each other. … We put our focus on the field and the game and making sure we do the right thing, and not be a part of any situation that would have us in this type of tragedy again.”

Since the incident, Roxborough has partnered with organizations including Healing Hurt People to work with students and others affected. Police in the 14th District have stepped up patrols. The school has more security guards and many programs addressing students’ emotional needs.

But the pain is still raw.

“We continue to support our children with trauma-informed best practices. We share resources with our teachers, and all of our staff,” said Principal Kristin Williams-Smalley. “And we all have a schoolwide social emotional learning program that we have implemented. … It’s an ongoing issue that our children are dealing with.”

Roxborough High principal Kristin Williams-Smalley speaks to reporters

She said that Roxborough lost another student to gun violence in May.

During the last school year, 199 city students were shot, and 33 of those died, district officials said. Less than three weeks into this school year, five students have been shot, and one died. Philadelphia’s efforts to restrict gun ownership have been blocked by the courts and a state law that bars municipalities from enacting their own gun control measures.

Shortly before the shooting, Mayor Jim Kenney had signed a law that restricted gun possession at public spaces in the city, including parks, recreation centers, and pools, but it was overturned in a court challenge.

When Nicolas was killed, four other teens were wounded by the bullets flying out of an SUV that had been lying in wait near Roxborough High.

Police don’t believe Nicolas was the intended target. One of the shooters jumped out of the car and chased another, older boy down the street, firing at close range before his gun jammed.

Police have arrested four suspects in the killing and are still seeking a fifth person they believe was the main shooter.

This week, Nicolas’ mother, Meredith Elizalde, called on state lawmakers to enact gun reform. Nicolas was her only child, and he died in her arms.

“I want them to get on the front lines and fight for gun sense, because if you’re not, you’re just part of the problem,” Meredith Elizalde said.

Asked about the chances of gun reform, Williams-Smalley sounded weary.

“I’m tired to go to funerals. I’m tired of visiting my colleagues at their schools when something happens to be a support for them. We are all, my colleagues across the city, we are all tired of the violence that is pervasive.”

As the students dispersed after planting the crocuses, Saavedra called after them.

“We’ll water them later on,” he said.

A mural on one wall of Roxborough High in memory of Nicolas Elizalde features Nicolas’ football jersey number, 62.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Aspira to repay Philadelphia district roughly $3.5 million to settle charter enrollment dispute

2023-09-22T14:26:52+00:00

A leading community development organization that runs two charter schools will repay the Philadelphia school district more than $3.5 million, according to a settlement approved Thursday by the Board of Education

The payment from Aspira, Inc., ends a yearslong legal dispute between the district and Aspira over whether the district can be required to pay charters for students that exceed their agreed-upon enrollment caps. Antonio Pantoja Charter School and Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School both enrolled more students than they had been authorized to for several years between 2016 and 2021 — when they did not have active charter agreements with the district.

In addition, Aspira has agreed to withdraw its application to open two new charter schools in the city, one a K-8 and one a high school. It also agreed not to file a new application to open a K-8 school for five years, but can reapply as early next year to open a new high school.

This is the latest chapter in Aspira’s turbulent history of running charters in the district. Several years ago, the organization had to relinquish charters for two formerly district schools it ran. The schools, Olney High and Stetson Middle School, are now back under district control.

De Hostos and Pantoja, both K-8 schools, have separate boards of trustees, but both are operated by Aspira. The resolution says that de Hostos, which is on North Second Street and enrolls 510 students, will repay the school district $3,163,986 in installments over five years. Pantoja, which is in Kensington and enrolls 700 students, will repay $371,537, also over a five-year period.

It is unclear whether these repayments represent the full amount under dispute or a compromise.

As part of the agreement, both schools have new charters through 2028, with predetermined enrollment ceilings that they signed last week, Peng Chao, head of the district’s charter school office, said in an interview.

The board’s vote on the settlement was 8-1, with Lisa Salley voting no. Calls to Aspira’s office asking for comment were not returned. Aspira Executive Director Alfredo Calderon could not be reached for comment.

Chao did not make a presentation at the meeting explaining the resolution that included the settlement. No board members asked questions or commented on the resolution before voting on it. And no one from Aspira came to speak during the meeting’s public comment period. Board members didn’t respond when Lisa Haver, co-founder of the advocacy group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, asked for a fuller explanation of the resolution.

According to an explanation provided by the Board of Education in its meeting materials, the disagreement centers on the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years “regarding the number of students permitted to be enrolled under the Hostos Charter and the Pantoja Charter, respectively.”

De Hostos has been in operation since 1998 and its charter was renewed in 2003, 2008 and 2013. Pantoja opened in 2008 and its charter was renewed in 2013. Both their charters expired, and they refused to sign charter renewal agreements in 2018. Under Pennsylvania’s charter school law, schools can continue operating without an active charter.

During the dispute over enrollment, Aspira and the boards of both schools appealed to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, arguing that the district should give them additional funds for the students above their caps. The agency initially sided with the charters, even though the district “filed multiple objections” and demands for hearings, which led to the negotiations that resulted in this settlement.

As part of the settlement, Pantoja and de Hostos have also agreed to withdraw from a lawsuit now in Commonwealth Court brought by several charter schools over whether the district is paying them the proper amount. The district disputes the way charters account for federal aid, some grant funds, and prekindergarten expenses, saying these practices result in overpayments to them.

Other Philadelphia charter schools still involved in that lawsuit include Esperanza Charter High School and two cyber charters.

Aspira is also withdrawing its applications to open two new charter schools: Aspira Bilingual College and Career Preparatory Academy and Aspira Dr. Ricardo E. Alegria Preparatory Charter School. It will also end any legal appeals related to enrollment at de Hostos and Pantoja that are still pending.

Aspira proposed Alegria as another K-8 school — which the group said would eventually enroll 1,000 students — and the Bilingual College and Career Preparatory Academy as a 1,200-student high school. Aspira agreed not to file another K-8 charter application for five years, but could propose another high school as early as next year.

According to their academic evaluations, based on test scores and other factors, Pantoja and de Hostos perform comparably to — if not slightly better than — district schools.

In 2017, Aspira was forced to surrender the charters for Olney High School and Stetson Middle School. These were formerly district schools ceded to charter organizations in 2011 under the Renaissance school turnaround initiative.

But the School Reform Commission, which then governed the district, cited myriad financial and organizational flaws with how the schools were run. It also determined that Aspira had used state and local per-pupil subsidies to guarantee a $15 million loan to Aspira Community Enterprises, Inc., which had acquired the former Cardinal Dougherty High School building.

At Thursday’s meeting, the board also voted to extend the charters for five years of two schools run by KIPP — KIPP DuBois and KIPP North Philadelphia.

The vote was 8-1, with Salley again the lone vote in opposition. Board member Chau Wing Lam, who voted in favor of extending the two KIPP charters, said that while the academic performance at the schools are “disappointing,” she noted that the decision is based on incomplete information, namely the absence of testing during 2020 and 2021.

The last new charter school approved to operate in the city was Hebrew Public in 2018, when the state controlled the district. Since resuming control of the district that same year, the school board has not approved any new charter schools.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Remembering Constance Clayton, Philadelphia’s trailblazing former superintendent

2023-09-19T17:16:25+00:00

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Constance Clayton’s legacy as Philadelphia schools’ first Black and first female superintendent is deep and still being felt today. In an era when few Black women held positions of power, Clayton took a school district mired in patronage, labor strife, and division, and put the focus back on providing all students with a quality education.

Clayton, a Philadelphia native and the district’s last homegrown superintendent, died on Monday at the age of 89. She ran the district, then the nation’s fifth largest, from 1982 to 1993, during an era when the average tenure for urban school leaders was three years

Her career and achievements were an inspiration to many – women and Black women in particular. As news of her death spread, tributes came in from city and state leaders, educators, friends, and former adversaries.

“She is an icon,” said Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, which represents principals.

City Council member Katherine Gilmore Richardson said in a statement that Clayton “was an inspiration to young girls everywhere. It was her commitment to education that in part inspired me to become a teacher.”

Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker, poised to become the city’s first female mayor, said in a statement: “It was with Philly in her blood that she raised the expectations for Black and Brown students and students from low and moderate income communities. She set out to prove that race and socio-economic status would not define the chance of a students’ success. Her name is synonymous with leadership that is the model for the generations that came behind her.”

Former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said Clayton literally led the city into a new era as “the first superintendent who challenged the rest of us in the city” to believe that the public school system could educate children as well as any private school.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said he met with her frequently for advice and that she had called his office as recently as last Friday to set up a lunch so she could advise him on what to do in his second year leading the district.

“On the last Christmas holiday, she was the first person I talked to,” said Watlington. “And that says something about her and the extent to which she wanted to make sure she stayed engaged.”

In her nearly 12 years as superintendent, Clayton brought labor peace after a decade of almost constant strikes, stabilized the district’s budget, and spearheaded a popular standardized curriculum, declaring that it would benefit the many city students who moved frequently from school to school.

Regal in bearing and no-nonsense in her leadership style, Clayton did not suffer fools gladly and would shut out people she perceived as critical of her leadership. But while she alienated some, she left no doubt among anyone that her concern was for the city’s children.

Veteran district educator Karen Kolsky remembers clearly that Clayton’s mantra was “Every school’s a good school,” a simple statement that set a tone for eager young teachers who could be intimidated by the district’s size and diversity.

“I remember that like I know my name,” said Kolsky, who retired recently after 38 years in the district. “That spoke volumes to me as a new teacher. I remember it so vividly because she really meant it.

“She has such presence. She was the School District of Philadelphia.”

Hailed as “best” recent superintendent

Clayton also brought a desperately needed stability to a system often in turmoil. Before her tenure, district-union relations were toxic. Through the 1970s and early ‘80s, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers went on strike almost yearly, striking for 20 days in 1980 and 50 days in 1981.

But during Clayton’s 11-year tenure, while union-district relations were hardly cordial, there were no strikes.

Though they were on opposite sides of the negotiating table, Jerry Jordan, now the president of the PFT, described Clayton as a “mentor, a teacher, a friend” and, in his opinion, the best recent superintendent the district has had.

“She gave me advice on a number of occasions,” he said. “She helped to teach me how to do my job working for the union.”

Jordan said teachers loved her standardized curriculum. “Long after Dr. Clayton left, I would visit schools and classrooms and teachers would show me they were still using [it]” because it told them “what they needed to teach, not the how. They liked having the freedom to be creative.”

As to her manner and style of leadership, Jordan said with a chuckle, “She wasn’t a pushover, but she was respectful. She mentored so many people in the school district, and all she wanted to know was that you were concerned and cared about kids.”

Former mayor and City Council member Michael Nutter agrees with Jordan that Clayton “was the greatest Philadelphia school superintendent in modern history.

“She cared passionately about children,” Nutter said. “She always asked the question, ‘is this in the best interest of our children? You just had to appreciate that.”

While “some people adored her and some had different feelings,” Nutter added, Clayton managed to avoid teacher strikes “and set a national standard” for school leadership.

Board of Education president Reginald Streater, who graduated from Germantown High in the early 2000s, said he “was a direct beneficiary” of the work Clayton did to improve the district, especially in helping to create smaller themed academies in the neighborhood high schools. The best way to honor her memory, he said, is to work toward “ensuring that all students are given access to the lifelong tools that we all know they need to navigate this world and toward their dreams.”

Longtime education advocate, policy analyst, and frequent district critic Debra Weiner described Clayton’s superintendency “as a golden age. What preceded her was teacher strikes every two years, a gigantic exodus of kids from the district, constant deficits, and no standard curriculum.”

But Clayton prioritized working with a less politicized Board of Education “to bring more transparency” to decision-making, said Weiner, who was one of the victims of Clayton’s legendary cold shoulder after she made one remark the superintendent didn’t like.

“Sure, she had a thin skin,” Weiner said. “But you have to remember, she was a Black woman. Black women never got anywhere at that time. She went to an all-Black school (Dunbar elementary) herself. She came from a single parent family. When she went to Girls High, it was full of the white elite. I can talk about how she was thin-skinned, but also say, where were the Black women in power in the 80s? They didn’t exist. So it’s very easy to understand why she had those kinds of shortcomings.”

The record shows, Weiner said, that “between what she inherited and what she bequeathed, there was a big change. It was key in giving the school district a lot of credibility that it had lacked as long as anyone could remember.“

Clayton “came in after a series of strikes and budget crises, and she appointed a very capable team,” said Christopher McGinley, a former Board of Education member who started as a teacher when Clayton was superintendent and went on to become a superintendent himself in two suburban districts. “They had a work ethic second to none.”

Most notably, Clayton did not play the political patronage game with local politicians, which inspired anger on the part of some, and admiration from others.

As far as hiring, “my position and questions became ‘what are their competencies, what are their qualifications, what are their experiences, what do they know about children,’” she told scholar Camika Royal in a 2011 interview for her dissertation. “Well, as I said to you before, it became Don’t ask Connie Clayton for anything, because she will not give it to you. I wanted it that way. I was very clear about why it should be that way. We were not a feeding trough for people. The School District is for children.”

Constance Elaine Clayton was born in 1933 (she would never confirm her age while in public life). Raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in Philadelphia, she attended Dunbar Elementary School and Girls High, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a doctorate in education. She subsequently was given many honorary degrees.

Clayton began her career as a fourth grade teacher at the Harrison Elementary School in North Philadelphia in 1955. She quickly rose through the ranks, and in the 1960s, wrote a social studies curriculum for elementary grades and also established an African American studies program for all age levels – efforts that eventually contributed to Philadelphia becoming the first school district in the nation to mandate, in 2006, that all students take an African American history course in order to graduate.

Clayton was also a visionary in recognizing early on the importance of preschool to children’s brain development. As associate superintendent for Early Childhood Education, her last position before being named to lead the district, she expanded the district’s role in pre-K through a variety of programs that still exist.

She championed the arts and promoted the teaching of culturally-relevant curriculum in general “that children could see themselves in,” said Howard Stevenson, who holds the Constance E. Clayton chair at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

“She was not afraid of new ideas,” he said.

Superintendent took on mandate to desegregate city schools

On the day she was installed as school superintendent in October 1982 – hired by a less politically beholden school board appointed by former Mayor Bill Green in an effort to get past the patronage and divisions that dominated the district before then – Clayton made her intentions clear. At the time, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Black educators had distinct affinity groups that kept tabs on the distribution of leadership positions and school assignments.

“I hope all of us will commit ourselves to the proposition that all children can learn, all children can achieve, and all children deserve to be educated to the maximum of their abilities,” Clayton said.

At the time, the district was struggling to deal with an order from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, dating back to 1970, to desegregate its schools. There were many all-white schools, especially in the Northeast, reflecting neighborhood demographics but also district decisions regarding how school district catchment areas were drawn. The PHRC wanted mandatory busing but, mindful of the kind of violence and upheaval school desegregation caused in cities like Boston, Clayton – like her white predecessors – rejected that option.

Unlike them, she and her chief of staff, law professor Ralph Smith, came up with a voluntary desegregation plan that resulted in the busing of thousands of children, more than 14,000 at its peak and mostly Black, to predominantly white schools, primarily in the Northeast. The program also provided incentives, such as free after-school programs, to schools in integrated communities where the school enrollment was predominantly Black, to attract more white students to them.

“I did not accept the job of superintendent to preside over a segregated school system. And I will not do so,” she wrote in a 1983 letter to the school board reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

While the voluntary plan did increase enrollment diversity at many schools, over time, the busing waned, and the focus shifted to providing more resources to schools that were predominantly low-income and Black. The PHRC case was settled in 2009.

Once in talks to become chancellor of the New York City school system, Clayton withdrew her name, writing in a 1987 telegram to the then-president of the New York Board of Education published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “I have an unfinished agenda in Philadelphia … Now is not the time to leave.”

But the year 1988 for her had both triumph and missteps: The PFT signed a landmark contract, preserving labor peace and including some important reforms. But in a presentation to the school board in August – in the context of explaining her priorities in managing a budget crunch – she said: “There are those among us who will always choose in favor of the historically privileged. That is a luxury that the school district, this city and our society, can ill afford. When compelled to choose we should and we must choose in favor of those children most at risk and most in need even if they are not the loudest or the most well connected.”

She also closed five day care centers in the Northeast to spare some in poorer neighborhoods.

Soon, she faced calls for her resignation, mostly from residents and officeholders from the Northeast, a largely white but working-class community, where many were offended at the notion of who she considered “privileged.”

She persevered, although the last years of her tenure were marked by struggles to keep the district’s budget balanced, stubbornly flat achievement scores, the birth of the charter movement, and the increasingly volatile politics around education and power struggles on the school board. Her resignation in 1993 was unexpected and abrupt.

She told Royal in 2010: “I’d been there 11 years. And I did, I took early retirement. You know, you get to a point where you question whether you’re still effective. It was time.”

After her retirement she took an interest in artificial intelligence and its potential role in children’s education, said Stevenson of Penn GSE. She also became a patron of the arts.

“She was one of the largest holders of Black art in the city,” and also challenged the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as a board member there, “to include folks of color as leaders,” he said. She founded the museum’s African American Collections Committee.

She was also a philanthropist, he said, often giving money for scholarships and other purposes, but not wanting it publicized.

In retirement, Clayton also opened an antiques and notions store in Chestnut Hill with one of her former district colleagues, Lee Scott. She lived for decades in a sprawling stone house in Mount Airy with her mother, who died in 2004.

“She didn’t achieve everything she wanted to achieve, but she began the first wave of people taking education seriously and understanding kids of all ages and backgrounds can learn,” said Rendell. “We were all lucky to have her in Philadelphia.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. She was the Philadelphia Inquirer education writer during much of Constance Clayton’s superintendency. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania’s school funding commission starts work on a new funding formula

2023-09-14T22:27:42+00:00

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On the heat-soaked steps of the Philadelphia School District building Thursday, education advocates, teachers, and elected officials sought help for city students forced to learn in underfunded schools.

“Children are in crisis,” said Maritza Guridy, deputy director of parent power and outreach at the National Parents Union. They’re “struggling to survive.”

Behind those speaking, 12 legislators and staff entered the front doors preparing to sit for a three-hour hearing of the state’s Basic Education Funding Commission. The newly formed group is tasked with overhauling one of the most inequitable education funding systems in the nation after a court ruled the current system is unconstitutional.

The 15-member commission launched a series of hearings across the state this week to get feedback on how much to invest in education and how to distribute the aid.

“We need to listen to everyone and we may like what we hear, we may not like what we hear,” Sen. Kristin Philipps-Hill, a Republican from York, said in her opening remarks, adding that lawmakers must work in a bipartisan fashion to make sure student needs are met.

Pennsylvania is embarking on this long overdue — and constitutionally mandated — effort to overhaul the school funding formula because the current one is “shortchanging” students across the state, including those in Philadelphia, school board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez said to the group rallying outside the hearing.

Generations of underfunding means students in the city — who are predominantly Black, brown, and from low-income families — have had larger class sizes, less qualified and experienced teachers, older and often unsafe buildings, and fewer extracurricular opportunities compared to students in wealthier Pennsylvania districts.

Outside on Thursday, Philadelphians decried how long it’s taken to get here and the toll it’s exacted on students.

“Aren’t we tired of just talking about it?” Fix-Lopez asked. “I’m ready for change.”

The commission will deliver a report to Gov. Josh Shapiro by the end of November and produce a new formula in time for next spring’s budget negotiations. If lawmakers’ proposed formula doesn’t measure up, the state could find itself back in court, said Michael Churchill of the Public Interest Law Center, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs in the funding lawsuit.

Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington, now in his second year in office, has crafted an ambitious five-year strategic plan for the district but has said he lacks the funding to carry it out.

“The Pennsylvania public school funding system has inadequately and inequitably funded low-wealth school districts for decades,” Watlington told the commission. “The funding system systematically harmed the very districts that need the most resources … those districts who serve students with the greatest needs.”

What the commission will do

Beyond trying to create a formula that is more fair, the commission must deal with the question of adequacy, or how much the state should be contributing to education so all students get a quality education. Pennsylvania now ranks 45th among states in the proportion of state versus local funding, providing only 38% of the total, compared to a national average of 47%.

A new formula and more money for Philadelphia schools will mean the difference between cutting programs and expanding access to things like high-dosage tutoring, algebra courses, and extracurriculars.

But it’s going to be costly. Penn State professor Matthew Kelly told the commission during an earlier hearing on Tuesday the state needs to spend an extra $6.2 billion each year to adequately fund education for all students. Philadelphia falls short by nearly $8,000 per student, Kelly found.

And that estimate doesn’t include facilities costs to manage environmental hazards like asbestos and broken or inadequate air conditioning. Watlington told the commission that the district was forced to close more than 80 buildings early each day during the first week of school because they lack no air conditioning. To fully modernize and repair the district’s infrastructure would cost $7.9 billion, he said, citing a 2017 study.

The Basic Education Funding Commission is tasked with overhauling one of the most inequitable education funding systems in the nation.

How Philly measures up

Philadelphia is not the lowest funded among Pennsylvania’s 500 districts. In fact, it is in the top half, ranking 232nd in per student revenue.

Other districts, large and small, have even larger “adequacy” gaps, including Allentown, Reading, Panther Valley, and Shenandoah. Kelly found that 412 of the state’s 500 districts fall short of what’s necessary to provide all students with a quality education.

“There is a cross section of districts that are dramatically underfunded,” Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, senior attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, said in an interview.

And while, statewide, there are more white students in underfunded districts, “kids of color are dramatically concentrated in them,” he said.

At the hearing, Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and Ashley Cocca, a counselor at Bache-Martin elementary school, talked about the trauma that many students face.

“Gun violence, drug presence, poverty levels, housing inadequacies, domestic violence, underemployment, tragic loss….inconsistent continuity of care,” Cocca said, choking up. Jordan said Philadelphia students need as much, if not more, than counterparts in wealthier areas.

A bipartisan solution will be needed

Many of the state’s poorest districts are rural, and largely white, and educate the constituents of many Republican lawmakers who have resisted the plea for billions more in state money for education. In some of these districts, tax rates are sky high, but they can’t raise enough funds because property values are low and taxable industries are scant.

Over the years, Republicans have protested that there is no correlation between money and achievement, and argued at their funding trial that the state’s obligation ended with assuring that the most basic needs were met – essentially, providing buildings, classrooms, and teachers.

Sen. David Argall, at the commission’s hearing on Tuesday, said the state legislature has voted for “significant spending increases” in the past, but said “we haven’t seen the results that many had hoped for.”

Kelly told Argall, “the research is clear and unambiguous” on this front: “Increased spending does increase outcomes” for students.

In resisting the lawsuit, Republicans also argued that legislators, not judges, are charged with determining fair and adequate funding levels for schools.

But, in a February ruling that followed four months of testimony, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer firmly rejected that reasoning, saying in a 786-page opinion that the current system so severely shortchanges many students that she was compelled to intervene.

Republican legislative leaders decided not to appeal her decision, instead initiating a process to overhaul the funding system.

How school funding currently works

The biggest component of state school aid comes through the basic education line item in the budget, which is now $7.8 billion. In an effort to direct a higher proportion to the neediest districts in lieu of a formula overhaul, the legislature set aside millions in so-called “level up” funding directed toward the 100 poorest districts; this year, the amount is $100 million. That funding is still held up in a lingering legislative standoff.

The current formula — most recently reworked in 2016 — weights such factors as the number of students in low-income households, poverty concentration, the prevalence of students with disabilities and English learners, and a district’s local wealth and taxing capacity.

But the formula has not significantly reduced disparities in spending among districts because legislators at the time also introduced a “hold harmless” clause that guarantees that no district gets less than it did before, even if its enrollment drops. Lawmakers decided to apply the new formula only to a new aid, not to all aid.

This meant most of the funding is distributed based on student demographics from many years ago

While Jubelirer ruled the current formula to be unconstitutional, she did not prescribe a solution.

This is where the new education funding commission comes in.

After the listening tour, the commission will present a series of recommendations to Shapiro, who will then work to reach a deal with lawmakers on a new formula, likely to be enacted through the state budget process.

But that will take months, and some say Philadelphia students can’t wait much longer.

“We must fix it immediately,” State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat representing Philadelphia, said. “We have waited too long, generations have suffered.”

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect the status of the distribution of “level up” funding and Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg’s role with the Public Interest Law Center.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Back to school in Philadelphia has students and teachers feeling excited — and the heat

2023-09-05T16:54:39+00:00

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First grade teacher Holly Lau crouched down so she could speak with her new student Jahlil Porter at his level.

“It’s our first day, too,” she said reassuringly to Porter, who was sporting a colorful backpack but looked a bit lost after showing up to his first day of school Tuesday at Bluford Elementary School. It was something of a fresh start for Bluford as well — it was a charter school last year but has returned to district control.

Lau was generous with her hugs, and then led her students into the building between a line of cameras and dignitaries including Mayor Jim Kenney, Superintendent Tony Watlington, and state Sen. Vincent Hughes marking the first day of school for Philadelphia’s more than 113,000 public school students.

If Jahlil was jittery, so was his mom. “I’m a little nervous,” said Yvette Williams. “I just hope everything goes well for our kids.”

More than 500 students at Bluford avoided the disruptions to the start of the school year caused by extreme heat. Students at 74 other schools in the city without air conditioning or in need of electrical system upgrades weren’t so lucky.

The first day of school at Bluford Elementary School on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

With temperatures projected to soar above 90 degrees this week, the district informed families over the weekend that those schools would operate on an early dismissal schedule Tuesday and Wednesday, and that “any decisions about Thursday or Friday will be communicated by 12 p.m. on the day before.”

The news underscored the challenges Philadelphia schools face when it comes to infrastructure, following a year when several schools closed due to fears about asbestos.

After his first year leading the district, Superintendent Tony Watlington has big plans for year two, even as he wrestles with such long-standing challenges. He’s hoping to put his five-year strategic plan into action. A new math curriculum is hitting classrooms. And the district is planning a new “two-way communication system” to give parents more access to district staff.

In addition, the district has tweaked its much-maligned lottery admissions process for selective schools. And its new safety plan aims to keep students safe from the ongoing gun violence in the city.

On Tuesday, Watlington projected optimism.

“Every year teachers, students … get a chance to have a fresh start no matter what happened in the last year,” he said. “If you had a good year you can make it even better. If you made some mistakes last year we can improve on them.”

Watlington added that “the same is true with superintendents I’m told.”

Bluford Principal Tangela McClam, a graduate of the Philadelphia district, had good news Tuesday for parents gathered in front of the school wondering about dismissal times. The school day would end at 3:09 p.m., she said, not at noon.

Like Watlington, she expressed high hopes for the future of Philadelphia public schools.

“I am delighted to be able to lead a school that is returning [to the district]” McClam said. “We’re calling … for all of our community members, parents, families, and friends to help us as we launch successful citizens and prepare them for the next generation in Philadelphia.”

Tangela McClam, left, the principal of Bluford Elementary School, stands next to other school administrators and elected officials while students enter the building on the first day of school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 5, 2023.

Asbestos, heat, and teacher vacancies remain concerns

Still, Philadelphia has a long way to go toward becoming “the fastest improving large urban district in the country,” which Watlington has said is his overarching goal. One hurdle will simply be ensuring students have safe school buildings to learn in.

The district will, in all likelihood, continue to uncover flaking asbestos this year, Watlington said. Although the district is still crafting its “master swing space plan” to ensure displaced students are able to learn in-person, disruptions should be expected.

Though some students at Frankford High School and all students at Universal Vare Charter School will be learning in other buildings this year as the district remediates damaged asbestos, the district has made progress with other schools that had been closed at the end of the previous school year.

In an effort to lessen the extreme heat affecting school buildings, the district has invested $285.7 million to “improve electrical and HVAC systems” in 23 schools and installed over 800 window air conditioning units and over 1,400 hydration stations, according to a statement from Oz Hill, the district’s chief operating officer.

Teacher and school staff vacancies are also persisting into the new school year.

According to the district, staffing is at 95.3% this year, meaning there are still more than 400 vacancies among the 9,000 positions for teachers and counselors. Last year, the school year started with about 200 vacancies.

District spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said last year the district had 225 yellow bus drivers; this year, she said, 210 have been hired so far. About 33,000 students are transported to school on yellow buses, she said, a number that includes district, charter, and private school students.

Under state law, the district must provide or pay for transportation for all students who live more than a mile and a half from the school they attend. The younger ones and those in special education require yellow buses; older students get free SEPTA passes.

A test for one Philadelphia school

This year will be pivotal to Bluford’s success as it transitions from its status as a Renaissance charter school back to district control.

In 2021, the Board of Education voted not to renew the charters of Bluford and nearby Daroff, which had been run by Universal Companies as part of a decade-old strategy of turning over existing district schools to charter operators in the hope of improving them.

Daroff has closed altogether. But the district is promising to engineer a turnaround at Bluford, which under Universal had fallen short of academic goals and had financial problems.

“I’m hoping for a good school year,” said Sharady McDuffie, the parent of two fourth graders at Bluford.

McClam said that the school is expecting 505 students, although only 95 had been signed up when she arrived to take over the school in the summer. She held various outreach events and said that so far about 400 are officially enrolled.

On Tuesday, McClam gathered unregistered students into the auditorium to fill out paperwork and get them cleared for class.

The school was named for astronaut Guion Bluford, the first Black person to travel to space and who attended the school when it was called the Hanna School. Keeping the school’s namesake in mind, McClam said the motto this year will be “launching successful citizens.”

A student holds onto a guardian’s hand during the first day of school events, at Bluford Charter School, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 2023.

Meanwhile, at a “meet and greet” event last week at Ellwood Elementary School — one of the 74 schools on a revised heat schedule this week — dozens of students and their parents showed up to meet their teachers and collect goodies such as backpacks, water bottles, and pencils.

Ellwood, built in the 1950s, isn’t as up to date as it could be when it comes to infrastructure. But it has gotten new windows and doors. The school is installing air conditioning, but it’s not yet operational. And parents and students are still holding out hope for a strong school year.

Assistant Principal Edward Davies said that the focus for Ellwood this year is “maintaining what we have and making gains.” It was easy to find excited students around him.

Eris Brown, 7, is entering second grade. Her favorite subject, for now, is art. But she has big ambitions. “I hope to learn everything,” she said.

Berlyn Stanford, 6, is entering first grade and likes school because “I get to play with toys. I can meet new friends and I like gym class.”

Kiyon Harris, 8, who is entering second grade, spent a long time talking to physical education teacher David DiEva about his plans for the year, hands on hips and ideas flowing. He said he’s looking forward to “a lot of math, and reading, and I like activities and sports,” he said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia updates test score and grade standards for many selective admissions schools

2023-08-31T22:52:40+00:00

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Philadelphia posted its revised selective schools admissions process Thursday for the 2024-25 school year that’s meant to improve a controversial lottery system and provide more access to students from all areas of the city.

One of the biggest changes involves state test scores. Instead of using a student’s most recent state test scores in English language arts and math to determine eligibility for the top seven highly selective schools, the district will consider a student’s best score from a two-year period. And for all but the top seven schools and programs, a student can score as low as the 50th percentile on one of those two exams and still be eligible for admission.

Attendance requirements have also been relaxed at 15 of the 22 selective schools and programs. Starting for admissions in the 2024-25 academic year, students need to have a minimum attendance record of at least 90% of school days, which means 18 or fewer unexcused absences. But at the top seven schools, the attendance cutoff remains nine or fewer unexcused absences, or 95% attendance.

Through lowering the test-score cutoffs and other changes, including holding sessions around the city where families can get assistance in applying, the district is seeking to provide more access to the most selective schools to qualified students from historically underrepresented ZIP codes, which are mostly in lower-income areas of North and West Philadelphia.

The changes follow significant backlash earlier this year to the lottery system for selective admissions schools that the district adopted in 2021 and went into effect for the 2022-23 school year. Hundreds of spots at some criteria-based schools went unfilled, at least initially, because students who did not get into any of their preferred selective schools through the lottery did not have alternatives under that process. A survey of students, staff, and others concerning the new system found that just one in five liked it.

The lottery system did increase Black and Hispanic enrollment in the city’s top public schools in the last school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

The district announced changes to the lottery system in early August, although the information released by the district Thursday updates its website and provides more details about them. Preferences for students from underrepresented neighborhoods will continue, while the district is also working to improve access to magnet schools for English language learners and students with disabilities.

Under the revised system, Central and Masterman high schools continue to have the most stringent requirements. In order to be accepted, students must have all As and Bs, scores in the 80th percentile or above in English language arts and math on the state standardized tests commonly known as the PSSA, and 95% attendance.

As recently as 2020, the test-score cutoff for Central, Masterman, and Academy @Palumbo was the 88th percentile. But in the wake of the pandemic, the district lowered that threshold for Central and Masterman to the 80th percentile. It is keeping that lower benchmark.

For the next tier of five schools, which includes Palumbo, the requirements for 95% attendance and all As and Bs remain. But the PSSA cutoff has been reduced to the 65th percentile. Besides Palumbo, those schools are:

Carver High School of Engineering and Science.
Parkway Center City Middle College.
The aerospace program at Northeast High.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) magnet program at Northeast High.

In the next tier, students need to score at or above the 50th percentile on the PSSA and are allowed one C. They must also have 90% attendance. The schools in this tier are:

Science Leadership Academy (SLA).
SLA-Beeber.
Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP).
Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA).
Bodine High School of International Affairs.
The IB program at George Washington High School.

In another tier, the requirements are identical, except students are allowed A, B, and two C grades. Schools in this tier include Girls High, Franklin Learning Center, and Hill-Freedman.

And in the final tier, students are allowed A, B, and C grades. Schools in this tier include Motivation High, Parkway West, and Saul High School of Agricultural Science.

The full list of selective schools and their admissions standards is here.

Pre-algebra, space at certain schools remain concerns

The changes mean different things at different schools.

At CAPA, for instance, the test scores cutoff was the 80th percentile before the pandemic. Before the revised lottery system, SLA and SLA-Beeber, which take a project-based approach to learning, had not imposed a test-score cutoff; they required only proficiency on the PSSAs as well as a project presentation. SLA and SLA-Beeber will continue to require projects; GAMP and CAPA require auditions and will continue to do so.

Masterman will maintain its requirement that its students take pre-algebra before entering the ninth grade. But that course is offered in only 35 schools with eighth grades, far from all the district’s K-8 and middle schools, and is less common in schools serving low-income areas.

The district says it is working on expanding access to pre-algebra.

Under the updated process, students who otherwise qualify but have no luck in the lottery process and are waitlisted at all their five schools of choice can still receive offers from other selective schools not on their list that have spaces available.

Before the lottery system, principals at the selective schools could pick and choose from among all qualified applicants. They often chose those with the best test scores, especially at Masterman, making its effective cutoff score much higher than 88%. Concern about an underrepresentation of Black and Latino students at Masterman and Central especially was a major reason for moving to a lottery system.

The district previously announced that starting in 2024-25, students in selective middle schools that also have high schools — Carver, Masterman, GAMP, Hill Freedman and SLA-Beeber — will not require eighth graders to reapply. If they qualify based on grades and test scores, they will be offered admission.

This policy could have a particularly big impact on Masterman, where the high school grades are about half the size of those in the middle school.

The school selection process for students in pre-K through 11th grade opens on Friday, Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. and will close on Oct. 27 at 11:59 p.m, according to the district. The district will be staffing “Application Assistance Labs” at schools across the city for families to ask questions and get help with applications.

District spokespeople said they are also in the process of setting up a dedicated school selection call center by Sept. 8 that will allow families to call in with questions about the process.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia families rejoice at school’s new playground amid fears for children’s safety

2023-08-17T22:24:53+00:00

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When Duane Watts was a student at Edward Steel Elementary School in Philadelphia’s Nicetown neighborhood more than 40 years ago, he remembers running excitedly out of his classroom for recess and being confronted with concrete.

No swings, no slides, no monkey bars to climb on. “We would play tag, but nothing was actually present and given to us to play with,” he said.

But that’s no longer true for the children attending Steel, a pre-K-8 school of more than 300 students. On Thursday morning, school officials and nonprofit leaders cut the ribbon on a new $45,000 playground in Steel’s side yard.

Built over the summer with donated funds, the playground gives children more room to play at a time when policies like the city curfew and restrictions on unaccompanied minors at businesses, as well as gun violence that has affected Nicetown and other Philadelphia neighborhoods, have made it harder for children to congregate and spend productive time together in public spaces.

Teachers and counselors at Steel who fought for the playground by writing grants and building partnerships and community support for it looked on in tears at the ribbon cutting. At least a dozen parents brought their children to be the first to test out the new equipment.

“This is a huge deal for us,” said Nicole Wyglendowski, a special education teacher for K-3 students who helped with the effort. Younger children especially need playgrounds with inviting activities to help them to learn to get along with each other and “just have fun,” she said.

Counselor Maria Lajara, who helped write the grant proposal for the playground with fellow counselor Klarissa Hudson, pointed out most Steel students “don’t really have a nearby city playground that is safe to play in. They want to play, and they didn’t have anything to play with. This is a great asset for them, they deserve that.”

A study in 2019 found that only one third of Philadelphia’s schools had playgrounds, and most of those were in more affluent areas. Advocates have made the case that quality playtime is vital to children’s physical and emotional health, and the lack of playgrounds in some areas of the city has become part of the broader debate about the need for educational equity.

District spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said the situation has improved since then. Of 149 district schools with elementary-age students in the city, 79 have fully equipped playgrounds and 70 don’t, although 11 of those have play equipment in various stages of planning or construction.

The cost of the playground was underwritten by The Block Cares, a two-year-old nonprofit organization with a mission to uplift children; the Robert Half Company, a recruiting firm; and some private donations. The Block Cares is affiliated with The Block Church, a non-denominational Christian congregation founded in 2014.

Maria Little, director at The Block Cares, said her organization has a “mission to empower urban youth and kids to experience a limitless future.” When the organization began working in the Nicetown area, it connected with Steel Elementary and became especially interested in supporting teachers and students as they returned to in-person learning from the pandemic.

Parent Samantha Dowd, who has five children at Steel, had just heard that morning about the playground and the dedication ceremony.

“I was shocked,” she said. “This is really nice. To see something like this is important, especially at a time when so many tragedies are happening,” referring to the gun violence that is plaguing the city.

She was grateful her kids now have a safe space to play. As she spoke, her son Isaac Carter was already on the monkey bars, and her daughters were enjoying the swings. “It’s fun,” Isaac said.

Najalene Bey’s daughter, third grader Amina Ray, made a beeline for the swings as soon as she could. Bey said she had attended Steel herself. When she was a student, they would play sidewalk games like hopscotch, foursquare and jump rope during recess. But surveying the new playground, she said, “I wish we had this.”

Grandmother Darlena Green, watching the children, observed: “They’re not gonna go home now.”

Orbanek said that the district partners with outside organizations for funding what she called “schoolyard transformations.” They include the Eagles Annual Playground Build project and the Trust for Public Land (although not The Block Cares). Grants are provided by the William Penn Foundation, earmarked funds through state legislators, and neighborhood groups connected to schools. (Chalkbeat receives funding from the William Penn Foundation.) The Steel project falls into the latter category.

She noted that the district’s strategic plan includes providing safe, welcoming spaces for students, and that building more playgrounds fits into this.

“We have a vision for our schoolyards to be much more than paved asphalt parking lots,” said Oz Hill, the district’s chief of operations, in a statement. “We strive to provide a dynamic space for playful learning with green space, active recreation, quiet areas, and space to refocus and unwind and creatively engage in learning and socializing through play.”

Watts, who remembers the schoolyard’s concrete during his days as a Steel student, is now the school’s academic teacher leader. After graduating from Dobbins Area Vocational Technical High School and attending college, he went on to a career in finance before switching to education.

He has family members who still live in Nicetown, and he said the neighborhood’s public park is not safe.

“Yeah, this is significant,” he said. “To see this now as a new playground in the area and have it attached to the school that I attended, and the community having access to it, it’s just indescribable.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia school district welcomes more than 700 new teachers and counselors

2023-08-14T22:19:07+00:00

The Philadelphia school district welcomed more than 700 new teachers and counselors on Monday to a weeklong orientation that started with a pep talk from Superintendent Tony Watlington, who reminded them that the most important factor in a child’s academic success is consistent access to effective and well-supported teachers.

“We want you to believe in children,” he said.

Board of Education President Reginald Streater, a graduate of Germantown High School and father of two district students, also spoke to the group, telling them: “You are the ingredient we need to make sure we educate the whole child.”

Both Watlington and Streater thanked the new hires for choosing Philadelphia, where teacher salaries lag behind most of the surrounding suburbs, and working conditions can be more difficult. Most of the district’s students come from impoverished backgrounds, and many of the school buildings are in disrepair, or potentially dangerous.

The weeklong orientation is taking place at School of the Future, a technologically advanced school building constructed in 2006 with the help of Microsoft.

The new recruits vary in age and backgrounds, with many still working on their full certification as they embark on a new career in teaching. Some are seasoned teachers who have worked in other districts or charter schools, while others are fresh out of college. They will attend sessions ranging from information on benefits to discussing racism and equity.

The first day of classes is Sept. 5.

Here are brief portraits of four new district teachers:

Kia Boggs-Pinkney

Kia Boggs-Pinkney (left) talks to Meredith Mehra, deputy chief of the district’s Office of Teaching and Learning, at the orientation.

Boggs-Pinkney was a special education assistant at Muñoz-Marin Elementary in Kensington, when both Principal Amanda Jones and Elaine Rosario, the school’s special education compliance manager, kept telling her she should become a teacher.

“I thought they were in cahoots, but they weren’t,” Boggs-Pinkney said.

Jones would stick her head into Boggs-Pinkney’s classroom every time she walked by, and try to get her attention. “Teach!” Teach!” she’d call out.

Boggs-Pinkney, who has two grown sons and a management degree from South Carolina State University, is heeding the advice this year at age 57.

Initially, Boggs-Pinkney told her fans that she wanted to work on school discipline as a climate manager. But seeing how she interacted with students in her classroom, others in the school kept pushing her towards teaching. “Do it for a year, see if you like it, and go from there,” they advised.

She will be working at Muñoz-Marin, in the same classroom where she was the special education assistant, and with many of the same students. She already knows four of the five first graders with multiple disabilities whom she will be teaching.

This is a second career for Boggs-Pinkney. She worked in human resources for many years, and started at the district in 2010 as a special services assistant while raising her two sons. In 2013, she became a special education assistant, first at Hopkinson Elementary School and then at Muñoz-Marin, where she transferred in 2021.

“I heard good things about the school,” she said, especially how school leaders “encourage staff to do different things.”

Meredith Mehra, deputy chief of the district’s Office of Teaching and Learning who was helping to run the orientation, was principal of the KIPP charter school when Boggs-Pinkney’s son was a student there. She also recognized Boggs-Pinkney’s special qualities.

“I love it,” Mehra said of Boggs-Pinkney becoming a teacher. “I remember who she was as a parent, when she was ready to be involved in any and all conversations about her kiddo. Any school community would be so fortunate to have her as a teacher.”

Boggs-Pinkney is working on completing her certification through an online program, and she is still thinking about what will change for her when she is in charge of the classroom, rather than just serving as an assistant. For sure, she said, “It will be a little different.”

Simeon Fryer

Simeon Fryer will be teaching health and physical education at Benjamin Franklin High School.

Simeon Fryer, 25 and just out of college, will be a health and physical education teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School.

Standing at about 6 feet, 6 inches, he will also be assistant basketball coach.

A small forward and graduate of Upper Dublin High School, Fryer was recruited to play at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, a Division I school. While on a team organized through the Amateur Athletic Union, he was mentored by Ron Sizer, a teacher at Franklin and a coach in the program.

Sizer is thrilled that his onetime mentee will now be his colleague.

“I’m super proud of Simeon,” Sizer said in an interview. “He was a good player, and we were able to build a great relationship.” While Fryer was in college, he and Sizer kept in touch. “I’d watch his games on my phone,” Sizer said, including NCAA games during March Madness.

What he admired about Fryer was his “resilience,” how he beat health challenges and other circumstances to get better as a player and a student.

“The resiliency this young man has is what young kids need,” Sizer said. “A lot of kids give up. To have somebody who overcame obstacles and made it, kids need to see that.”

Fryer is modest about all that. While he had a shot at playing pro ball overseas, he chose to come back to Philadelphia. People kept telling him he was “good with kids.” Besides, he said, “I have a son, and I was tired of being away from him.”

Sizer, for his part, is hoping to retire from coaching after this school year and turn Franklin’s basketball team over to his protégé, so he can concentrate more on his job teaching precision machine tool technology in the school’s career and technical education program.

Besides his talents and resiliency, Fryer “is fun,” Sizer said. “And he’s younger. He can relate to these kids. They probably listen to the same music. I look forward to watching him grow not only as a teacher and a coach, but also as a man and a father. That’s really cool to me.”

Fanta Mshindi

Fanta Mshindi taught in charter schools for 18 years, but now is moving to the district to take a position at Girls High School.

“I was offered a dance teaching post, and that’s my passion,” she said.

Mshindi is a graduate of the district; she studied dance at the High School of Creative and Performing Arts. In 18 years working at Harambee and then Sankofa charter schools, she taught English intervention — meaning she helped students behind in their reading skills to catch up — as well as African studies. She also worked with young Black women in a “sisterhood rites of passage” program.

“I am so excited to teach dance,” she said.

Frank Machos, the district’s director of arts education, said that this year the district has 22 additional positions compared with last school year in music, art, dance and theater. That’s on top of 10 positions added in 2021-22, all part of an effort to rebuild programs that were decimated after the severe state budget cuts that started in 2011.

With the district now in a better financial position, “Things are looking up” for arts programs, he said.

Peter Nelson

Peter Nelson, an engineer, will be teaching math to middle schoolers at Benjamin Franklin K-8 School starting next month.

Peter Nelson, 28, has a degree in engineering, and will be teaching math to seventh and eighth graders at Benjamin Franklin K-8 School in Northeast Philadelphia.

A native of Kennett Square, he has lived in Philadelphia for 12 years, starting with when he enrolled at Temple University, “and I wanted to teach here,” he said. After graduating, he worked for several years as a mechanical engineer.

While Nelson is also still taking courses toward getting his full certification, he has a lot of experience, having taught in prisons and juvenile detention centers, and working with young people affected by HIV. Plus, he said, “I know a lot about math.”

He applied to the district in May, and went on a few interviews at schools over the past few months, without success. But as the school year approached, things picked up. “In late July, I started to get attention,” he said. He hit it off with Franklin principal Roslynn Sample-Greene and he was offered the position at Franklin elementary a week ago.

Teaching, he said, “is what I want to do.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Report: Pennsylvania’s low-income, Black, and Hispanic students have least experienced teachers

2023-08-07T22:11:49+00:00

Black or Hispanic students and those from low income families are the least likely to receive the most experienced, qualified teachers in Pennsylvania, a new study from Pennsylvania State University shows.

Using Pennsylvania Department of Education data from the 2020-21 school year, researcher Ed Fuller found that schools with the greatest percentage of students eligible for the federal free and reduced-price meals “had substantially greater percentages of novice teachers, teachers assigned out-of-field, and teachers on emergency permits than schools with the lowest percentages of students eligible for the…program.”

Fuller, a professor of education who works with Penn State’s Center for Education Research & Policy Analysis, said the pattern holds for elementary, middle, and high school levels, although the upper grades have the highest percentage of teachers lacking full qualifications. The shortages are most acute in urban areas, he found.

Schools in districts that are relatively underfunded, including Philadelphia, had higher percentages of “novice” teachers with under three years of experience, teachers who were teaching a subject in which they were not certified, and teachers who were working with emergency credentials.

“Overall, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that students most in need of well-qualified teachers are the least likely to be enrolled in schools that provide qualified teachers,” the report said. According to Fuller’s data, Black students were twice as likely to be enrolled in schools that lacked fully qualified teachers than white students.

“Regardless of the measure you use, the teacher qualifications of those teaching in Philadelphia county are lower than any other county in the Commonwealth,” Fuller said in an interview.

While that is “no fault of the teachers” who are hired to work in the city, he said, “that’s what struck me the most.”

Much of this is due to the high number of charter schools in the city, which educate about 70,000 students, compared to about 119,000 in district-run schools. Under the state law that established them, charter schools can have as many as 25% of their teachers be uncertified.

Fuller’s data shows that nearly 28% of teachers in charter elementary schools in Philadelphia have less than three years experience, while 41% are teaching out of their field, and 11% are not fully certified. That compares to 13% of novice teachers in district schools, 11% teaching out-of-field, and 5% who aren’t fully certified.

Another part of the issue is that the number of teachers graduating from teacher certification programs in Pennsylvania is at an all-time low, with just 4,000 graduating this year, Fuller noted. That compares to 16,000 a decade ago, in 2011-12.

Historically, he said, a quarter of those coming out of teacher prep programs in Pennsylvania each year would end up teaching in Philadelphia.

“The differences in teacher quality — exacerbated by the current shortage of teachers — all but guarantees the vast gap in achievement and other outcomes between students of color and white students as well as between students participating in [free and reduced meals] and their more affluent peers,” the report said.

Fuller attributed much of this difference to spending disparities among districts in Pennsylvania, whose education funding system was ruled unconstitutional by Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer in February. She ordered the state to fix the system.

But while the budget passed by the legislature and signed last month by Gov. Josh Shapiro has a historic boost in education funding, it did not overhaul the system in a way that would come close to meeting Jubelirer’s mandate.

Teacher salaries in Philadelphia range from around $50,000 for new teachers with a bachelor’s degree to about $100,000 for those with 11 years experience or who have reached the status of senior career teacher.

District spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said that its Philadelphia schools are expecting 650 new teachers and counselors at its new hire orientation next week.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia revises selective admissions process after uproar from students, educators

2023-08-04T21:18:25+00:00

Middle schoolers at five of Philadelphia’s selective admissions schools will no longer have to reapply to their schools for ninth grade, while preferences for students from historically underrepresented neighborhoods at those schools will continue but with updated data, the school district announced this week

Under the wide-ranging changes to selective school admissions, the district will also place a greater priority on ensuring students with disabilities and English language learners have access to magnet schools, based on mandates stemming from a 1994 court decision known as LeGare.

However, the district has decided to maintain a requirement that students reach certain test score cutoffs as a prerequisite for admission to 22 selective schools, despite a recommendation from a consulting firm. But those cutoff scores could change for at least some schools under the district’s revised admissions system.

The changes, which will go into effect for the 2024-25 school year, follow months of widespread confusion, discontent, and protests in the district about the new lottery-based system Philadelphia adopted in 2021. Students, educators, and others who criticized the process said it was hurting the long-term viability of several selective schools and would lead to the forced transfer of teachers and layoffs, among other concerns.

In early April, a dozen of these schools had hundreds of open seats just a week before the deadline for students to pick their schools next year. At the same time, many students who applied to selective schools didn’t get into any of them.

In June, the consulting firm Accenture told the district that among students, educators, and others who were surveyed about the new system, only about one in five said they liked it.

Accenture also concluded that the process was confusing, not well communicated, and potentially excluded promising students from the candidate pool.

The application process for the 2024-25 school year runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 27.

Changes to selective admissions unpopular among students, staff

Two years ago, Philadelphia overhauled its admissions process for the city’s 22 selective (also known as “criteria-based”) schools to create a lottery-based system, with the goal of providing more equity and opportunities, especially for Black and brown students from relatively low-income neighborhoods who have typically lacked access to these schools.

The changes reduced the power of principals to influence the makeup of their incoming classes through factors like interviews, and officials hoped the system would reduce conscious and unconscious bias.

This new system resulted in higher Black and Latino enrollment at some of the selective schools, according to a Chalkbeat analysis from last year. But the new process has made only a small dent in the demographics at Central and Masterman, the city’s most selective schools, which continued to have much higher proportions of white and Asian students and lower proportions of Black and Latino students, than the district as a whole.

But last year, a group of parents filed a lawsuit in federal court to overturn the new admissions process. They called it a “blatantly unconstitutional race-based system.” The outcome of that suit is pending.

Under the revised system the district announced Thursday, the selective admissions process will continue to include preferences for students who come from historically underrepresented ZIP codes, mostly in North and West Philadelphia. However, the ZIP codes that will get preferences are still being determined based on the newest data, according to district spokesperson Marissa Orbanek.

But the lottery resulted in hundreds of qualified students receiving admission to none of their choices and reduced enrollment at many schools severely enough that they lost teachers and other staff.

Under the current system, students entering ninth grade list five schools of interest not ranked by preference. They are entered into lotteries for each school for which they qualified — a process that resulted in some students getting into all five of the most sought-after schools, while others got into none.

For applying this fall to enter in the 2024-25 year, there will be a second stage for students who received no offers through the lottery. If they were waitlisted at all schools to which they applied, they will be offered admission to schools where seats are still available and there is no waitlist, according to a letter sent to families by Superintendent Tony Watlington.

In the first two years of the lottery system that began in 2021, students who were accepted into earlier grades at five highly selective schools that start in middle school — Masterman, Carver Engineering and Science, Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP), Hill Freedman, and Science Leadership Academy @ Beeber — had to reapply for the ninth grade, a requirement that caused consternation among many parents. Now, all who meet admissions requirements can stay at those schools.

That change, however, means the district will also reduce the size of the middle school at Masterman, where the lower grades enroll more students than the high school.

Orbanek said that all the criteria for the 22 most selective schools are being jointly worked out between central office administrators and individual schools. The precise test scores minimums for each school are still under development.

Accenture also found that the cutoff score requirement on the state exam — the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA — created issues with filling enrollment at 12 of the selective schools, including Girls High and SLA @ Beeber. Those 12 schools received fewer eligible applications than the lottery cap, leading to a 100% acceptance rate, but some of them were still unable to fill all available seats.

“The requirements for admission to these schools, particularly the PSSA percentile, may have been set too high to maximize the number of offers received,” the consultant’s report said.

Accenture’s survey results found that more than 44% of principal respondents were “strongly dissatisfied or dissatisfied” with the PSSA as a criterion for admissions, compared to more than 26.2% who felt that way about the attendance requirement, and 24.6% for grades requirements. Accenture recommended that district leaders “collaborate with school leaders” to ensure each school has appropriate admissions criteria.

Accenture’s data analysis showed that over 90% of applicants to ninth grade in 2022 “did not meet the PSSA requirement.” About half didn’t meet the grade requirements and a third failed to qualify based on attendance.

Before the lottery system, principals were able to interview and otherwise vet applicants who looked promising, but did not technically qualify based on test scores and, sometimes, one of the other criteria. A teacher at one school, who did not want to be identified due to not being authorized to speak, said that a study of students admitted who met the technical requirements compared to those who didn’t showed similar outcomes regarding graduation and experiences after high school.

Regarding access for students with disabilities and English learners to selective schools, the district’s changes to the admissions process include “improving the impartial review process” for such students at the high school level and “creating a process for an individualized review” for those applying to middle schools.

Margie Wakelin, senior attorney at the Education Law Center, which advocates for students with disabilities, noted in a statement that before the 2021 lottery system, only .5% of students at Central High had individualized education plans. Under the 2021 system, that increased to 1.3% for the 2022-23 school year, she said.

“We support efforts to examine the current LeGare process to determine if it is working for students with disabilities and English learners. Data indicates that this is not currently the case,” she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

How Philadelphia is rolling out its first big curriculum shift in 7 years to teachers and schools

2023-07-24T18:57:29+00:00

Anna Spencer is about to begin her first full year teaching middle school math in September, starting her career just as Philadelphia invests tens of millions of dollars in brand new curricular materials.

She was one of 450 teachers who gave up two hours of their summer for a voluntary training on the new math resources. District officials say the $20 million curriculum from Imagine Learning will promote deeper understanding by students, instead of merely emphasizing process and procedure. And Spencer left the training energized.

“Students will be learning through problem solving rather than being told what to do,” she said.

The Philadelphia school district is planning to spend $70 million of pandemic aid on new textbooks, lesson materials, and other instructional resources that will start rolling out next school year, beginning with math. But how well teachers will be prepared to use them, and the impact they will have on classrooms, are issues still up for debate.

At its May meeting, in addition to the $20 million for Imagine Learning, the Board of Education voted to spend $20 million for an English language arts program called StudySync from McGraw Hill. The board also approved $5 million on new materials for English language learners and $5 million for new special education materials (A resolution to spend up to $20 million on science materials was withdrawn but is expected to be taken up later, bringing the total potential expenditure to $70 million.)

Anyone at the meeting hoping to learn more about the new instructional materials would have left disappointed, however. No district official gave any presentation about the new resources. And no board members asked questions about the resources before voting to approve them. The process underscored ongoing concerns about the district’s transparency.

In a letter to families and a subsequent press release, Superintendent Tony Watlington called the spending on new curricular materials a “historic investment” in the city’s children.

But some teacher preparation experts questioned whether there will be adequate professional development or teacher training to help new teachers and veterans get up to speed. (The English language arts materials will be phased in for the 2024-25 school year.)

“It’s really essential that the investment in teacher learning is deep” and involves something more than an optional webinar or a two-hour workshop, said Patrick Sexton, executive director of teacher education programs at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Many of Penn’s graduates go on to teach in Philadelphia schools.

The district invited feedback about updating curriculum during March and April and received some 3,000 responses, according to district spokesperson Marissa Orbanek. But that hasn’t stopped questions about the curriculum’s suitability, and whether teachers will be limited in their ability to help students in the same class who are at different levels of proficiency.

Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the school district’s chief of curriculum and instruction, told Chalkbeat that the new materials represent “a significant shift from what we were doing in the past” and “will require a significant change for our teachers,”

“This is not an approach where the teacher stands in front of the classroom and … says ‘do step one, step two, step three,’” she said.

While district leaders worked with teachers and others to create an updated “academic framework” in core subjects in 2020, it hasn’t bought new materials since 2016, Francis-Thompson said. That framework lays out expectations for each grade level and lays out best practices.

More continuity for Philadelphia students across grades

Since 2016, in many subject areas, schools were able to choose between two or more different sets of curriculum resources. But now, through Watlington’s strategic plan known as Accelerate Philly, district officials are hoping to achieve more instructional continuity.

For all grade levels, “there will be one resource across the board,” Francis-Thompson said.

However helpful the voluntary professional development sessions are for teachers like Spencer who participated in them over two weeks in July, the 450 teachers who took part in them represent just a fraction of those who will be teaching with the new materials.

Officials stressed that such sessions are not the sum total of training and support that will be offered.

Sexton, from Penn, said that he considered the district’s initial voluntary training “a good first step,” and agreed that Imagine Math is “aligned with what we teach our [teachers-in-training] to do,”which is “going for deeper understanding. It’s looking not just for answers, but the thinking behind the answers,” he said. He also said the “culturally responsive” component of the math materials will help build support with parents.

Still, he said, it is important to consider “how are we looking at veteran teachers as learners, not as just implementers of curriculum,” Sexton said.

That’s where teachers like Eileen Wager come in. She’s been teaching for 13 years and is the “math lead” at Duckrey Elementary School in North Philadelphia. As such, she will be responsible for ongoing training for teachers at her school with the new materials.

She agreed with district officials that the new curriculum materials are focused on the students rather than the teacher. She noted a big change involves dividing students into groups so they can collaborate on problem-solving. In that model, the teacher works with one group while the others work independently.

Many teachers use this strategy now, but not all teachers are at ease with it, she said, even though “we’ve learned that having students split into small groups for hands-on activities is effective. I’m hoping this curriculum will be helpful in the long run in getting teachers comfortable with that.”

“Our math scores, as a country and as a district, have been in the toilet for years,” Wager added. “What we’ve been doing hasn’t worked. We need to be open to this new thing.”

According to the latest Philadelphia “district scorecard,” only 17% of students met the math proficiency standard on state testing in 2021-22, down from 22% in 2018-19.

Helping students reach a deeper understanding

Spencer, who will be teaching seventh grade at Bregy Elementary School in Southwest Philadelphia, said the two-hour training was helpful. Like Wager, she supports the use of small groups as part of the new math curriculum.

“I think it will be really really beneficial for students to have meaningful, deep understanding of content, versus rote memory or mimicking what the teacher is doing,” she said.

At the training session, teachers reflected on their own math experiences, discussed what they want their students to remember, and talked about the new curriculum’s philosophy and goals. Then they got a look at the new materials.

Spencer had two main questions during the training. Would the curriculum limit teachers’ agency by offering a daily script or rigid timeline? And what resources would it provide for working in a classroom where many of the students might be grade levels behind in their skills?

Ultimately, Spencer said the training convinced her that she could “switch things up if I need to.” She also said she thought the curriculum was nimble enough to allow her to help students who need additional help.

“The curriculum gives a list of prerequisites for each lesson,” she said. “We can see what students are supposed to have mastered [and can] review skills they’ve missed.”

Lola Sergeant, a five-year teaching veteran at Mayfair Elementary School who will teach seventh grade this fall, noted that the district’s academic framework calls for a more “conceptual” approach to math to deepen student understanding.

She said that dealing with students who are at vastly different levels “is an ongoing challenge,” but added: “I think this curriculum will do a better job of it, because it’s embedded more differentiation.”

Annemarie Hindman, a professor of early childhood education and educational psychology at Temple University, said the district’s emphasis on continuity through the new materials is an admirable goal.

But in practice, she said, teachers and school leaders are going to need a lot of support and buy-in to put these materials to work for their students, especially any changes to the reading materials.

“There is no curriculum package, no matter how scripted, that can help you work with every individual kid,” Hindman said.

Francis-Thompson said she understands these concerns, and said the district must ensure there’s “ongoing professional learning,” coaching, and other strategies in the coming years.

Spencer, for her part, is optimistic the new materials will be a boon for her as a new teacher.

“I trust what they’re trying to do,” Spencer said. “It’s a good starting point for me.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.