Chalkbeat

Philadelphia’s school selection process postponed to October

2026-08-31T21:50:50+00:00

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Philadelphia’s school selection process this year will begin later than usual as the district waits for state officials to finalize standardized test scores.

The process will now open on Oct. 5 at 4 p.m. and close on Nov. 24, according to a statement from district officials late on Monday.

The selective admissions process was originally scheduled to open on Sept. 8, Superintendent Tony Watlington told families as much in his back-to-school letter just last week. The district’s subsequent decision to postpone the admissions process was done to ensure “families have access to official, verified 2026 assessment data when making their school choices,” according to the district statement.

Delays in releasing scores from the 2025-26 PSSA and Keystone exams have left educators and school leaders scrambling this year, and created uncertainty for families. District officials did receive preliminary PSSA score information in June but have opted not to release those scores to educators and families. Instead, they’re waiting for the state to review and release official results, which officials expect sometime this fall.

Criteria-based schools in the city usually rely on the most recent PSSA exams as part of their admissions requirements. District officials had previously said students would take an “alternative assessment” that could replace the PSSAs.

Monday’s statement said students will use both their 2025 assessment results and the official 2026 data as part of their applications this year.

“Once the verified 2026 PSSA and Keystone results are released … later this fall, District staff will contact all applicants to assist them with submitting their scores,” the district said. “Families do not need to take any action regarding their 2026 assessment scores at this time.”

There are several other important updates to the selective admissions process this year:

The district will only consider final grades in English Language Arts (or reading), math, and science. Grades in social studies, writing, or any other class won’t be used to determine a student’s eligibility for school admission.
Students who attended the district’s summer career and technical education program will get priority if they are applying to such a program for the 2027-28 school year.
ZIP code preference is still a factor in the admissions system. Families whose home address is within one of the following eligible ZIP codes may receive priority consideration when applying to Masterman, Central, Carver, and Palumbo: 19132, 19133, 19135, 19138, 19140, 19141.
Prekindergarten students seeking to enroll in the same school for kindergarten will get lottery preference.
The individualized review process has been expanded. This process is used for students who are English learners and those with disabilities or 504 plans. Those students will receive an individualized review regardless of whether they meet the eligibility requirements for any criteria-based school to which they applied. District officials said this is designed to allow more qualifying students applying to criteria-based middle and high schools to be considered.

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

Unequal algebra access in Philly is ‘discriminatory’ says key city official as district plans changes

2026-08-06T19:56:49+00:00

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Philadelphia school officials say they want all eighth graders to have the opportunity to take an algebra course before high school, but they’re still roughly 50 schools and a school year away from reaching that goal.

Until everyone has access, the district’s math offerings remain inequitable, education advocates and city councilmembers said at a City Hall hearing on Thursday. And councilmembers said they want schools to offer the course to all students regardless of where they live or their test scores, although not everyone is necessarily on board with that idea.

Philly school leaders announced Thursday they intend to offer algebra at all 126 district schools that enroll eighth graders by the 2027-28 school year — for those students who are prepared for the extra rigor. That determination will be made based on students’ Star test scores.

“We certainly want to offer it to students who are ready for it,” Brenda Elliott, the district’s deputy superintendent of academics, told Chalkbeat before Thursday’s hearing.

Amid a heated national debate about when to offer access to the advanced math course, in Philly, patchy algebra availability for eighth graders can mean deserving students are locked out of the most competitive public high school. In addition, some see algebra as a gateway course to more advanced classes like calculus and career opportunities in science and technical fields. But experts caution not all eighth graders have a solid grasp on the basic concepts that algebra builds on. And granting universal access hasn’t translated to success for some districts.

City Councilmember and Education Chair Isaiah Thomas called Philly’s current approach “discriminatory.” And Councilmember Nina Ahmad said at the hearing that by not offering algebra to all eighth graders, “we’re really truly not letting our children have a quality education” at selective admissions schools, “which changes their trajectory in life.”

A 2023 Chalkbeat analysis determined that the lower the median household income in a Philly school’s surrounding neighborhood, the less likely that algebra is offered to eighth graders by that school. And because the course is a prerequisite for admission at Julia R. Masterman — the district’s most selective public high school — hundreds of students every year are effectively excluded from even applying there.

Thomas said his own children were among those excluded because they could not take algebra before high school.

About 400 district eighth graders passed the Pennsylvania state math test in 2025 and “could have succeeded in algebra, but didn’t have the opportunity because their school simply did not offer it,” Symbol Lai from Children First, a Philly nonprofit, said Thursday.

Lai suggested the district implement a universal screening process so “students’ readiness for algebra isn’t left up to chance.”

Philly is not the only city school district grappling with the algebra problem. In 2014, San Francisco pulled algebra courses from middle schools in an attempt to improve students’ foundational math skills and reduce racial disparities in math achievement. After largely failing to accomplish that, the San Francisco school board voted in March to reinstate the class as an elective available for all eighth graders.

In the 2025-26 school year, a total of 65 Philly schools offered algebra, an increase of 15 from two years before. The majority, 40 schools, offered it through a dedicated class in the building, and the remainder offered it through the district’s hybrid in-person, virtual learning program called Cross School Learning.

For the upcoming school year, Elliott said 42 district schools will offer algebra as a dedicated class or section and 33 schools will participate in Cross School Learning. That will bring the total number of schools offering algebra in some form to 75 schools.

That still leaves 51 district schools serving eighth grade students without access to algebra, according to district figures.

The district also offers a course called Algebra 1a for ninth graders who may need what Elliott called a “booster” class. The first-semester course allows students “to address gaps and build up their math proficiency,” and begin the grade-level Algebra 1 class in the second semester.

The course launched at 12 schools in the 2025-26 school year because Elliott said too many district students were failing Algebra 1 in ninth grade, signaling they weren’t properly equipped for the level of math rigor.

“When kids fail a class, particularly in that first year of ninth grade, it can be deflating,” Elliott told Chalkbeat.

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

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.”

Will Philadelphia’s school board approve closing 18 schools? It has a lot to consider first.

2026-02-27T03:06:52+00:00

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Philadelphia’s $2.8 billion plan to close nearly 20 schools is now in the hands of the Board of Education.

Thursday’s board meeting marked the first time most of the members spoke publicly about the proposal the district released last month. It’s likely to be the core issue of board meetings going forward.

The district’s plan would close 18 schools beginning in 2027, colocate (combine two schools in one building) and relocate others, and invest in more than 100 school buildings. Superintendent Tony Watlington announced at the meeting Thursday that the district removed Conwell Middle School and Motivation High School from the initial proposed closure list it released last month after taking community feedback into consideration. He said the district would not cut staff positions as a result of the closures.

Board members said during the meeting that they understand the motivation behind the proposal but need more information and more time before they decide whether they support it. A vote hasn’t been scheduled. The board will hold a town hall March 12 to hear more feedback.

Students, educators, and families packed the meeting, with hundreds more in an overflow room, urging the board to reject the proposal. Several union officials, state representatives, and City Council members joined them in a protest before the meeting, calling for more transparency about the data officials used to decide which schools to close and more investment in school building maintenance.

Several self-described “shy kids” testified that their schools helped them come out of their shells and improved their mental health. They asked for greater investments in their buildings and urged officials to consider students as “more than lines on a spreadsheet.”

Students from AMY Northwest and Lankenau Environmental Science High School said the district should fix the selective admission application system that they said keeps small schools’ enrollment artificially low. Parkway Northwest and Laura Waring students said by closing their school the district was closing their home.

Watlington emphasized that the plan comes after dozens of community engagement meetings and reflects feedback from Philadelphians.

Kathryn Lajara, special education compliance monitor at Stetson Middle School, said she felt like the meetings so far had been “just checking a box.”

“They keep claiming that this is what people want, but it’s actually not,” Lajara said. “They hold these community meetings, but then there’s really no comprehensive feedback from it.”

Board members ask for more clarity about closure plan

Board President Reginald Streater asked for open hearts and minds from the public about the plan. He said that chronic underfunding and declining enrollment put the district in a difficult position.

Streater said he was infuriated that the board is being asked to consider closing schools but that it is willing to make tough decisions.

Watlington told board members that the plan would benefit all students by increasing access to desirable classes and academic programs and ensuring students attend class in high quality buildings.

Several board members called for more clarity about how the district would address transportation and safety concerns and provide support for displaced students. Some said that they worry the plan doesn’t directly support student learning and that the promised new opportunities would not be equally accessible.

“If we are asking communities to sacrifice neighborhood schools, the benefit must be worth the sacrifice,” said board member Wanda Novalés.

Several board members said they worried about how the district would scrape together enough money to afford the plan’s $2.8 billion price tag. District leaders have already said they would need additional philanthropic and public funding. And they wanted to know how school leaders will prevent this situation in the future.

Watlington said he doesn’t believe in closing schools and that he wouldn’t want his own child’s school to close. He said he is committed to growing district enrollment to avoid future closures. However, he said if enrollment continues to decline — a trend largely the result of falling birth rates — “we’ll be back in this boat again at some point.”

Leaders of 5 school-based unions oppose school closure plan

Leaders of five school-based unions joined the protest before the meeting, including the heads of the teachers union, principals union, and school police officers union.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Arthur Steinberg called the plan to close schools an abomination. He said he feared students and staff would leave the district if the board approves it.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, which represents school principals and other staff, called for more transparency from the district about the decision-making process.

Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, president of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, said she was particularly concerned about student safety. As far as she knew, Ambrose-Smith said that the district had not done a safety analysis of the closure plan.

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

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

Philadelphia wants to entice students back to neighborhood high schools. Will it work?

2026-02-13T18:43:51+00:00

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For Philadelphia parent Samatha Bromfield, the choice to send her kids to Paul Robeson High School was deeply thought-out.

Bromfield said she spoke to her children and saw what they needed: “They needed something small. They needed a family.” That’s what she found at Robeson, which has around 300 students and where the teachers all know her children’s names.

But now, the school’s future is in doubt. Robeson is one of the 20 schools the district wants to shutter in an effort to address declining enrollment and move students out of dilapidated buildings. Five are criteria-based magnet high schools or citywide admissions high schools with low enrollment.

Many of those schools would be absorbed into neighborhood high schools as honors programs. But their buildings would fully close in 2027, and the district has not made clear exactly what options current students will have then. Students who recently accepted an offer to schools on the chopping block have been told their only other option is their neighborhood school.

All together, those moves amount to a shrinking number of choices for some students and families, who have come to count on the idea that they have a real say in where they go to high school in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s high school selection process is a rigorous and often confusing one. It requires middle school-aged students to explore dozens of options and rank their top picks for a lottery system.

The choices are meant to help students find schools that “nurture their passions,” Superintendent Tony Watlington has previously said. For decades, the district has promoted these options to attract families.

Now as the district moves to close some of those schools and reduce the number of choices, families say they feel betrayed. If the plan moves forward, officials will be faced with the challenge of enticing families back to neighborhood schools.

Already, many say they will not go.

“I choose to decide where my children go,” Bromfield said. “If you decide — you, as in the board members — decide to close Paul Robeson, I have a choice to pull my children out of the public school system.”

Why attracting families to neighborhood high schools is so difficult

Watlington will present the plan to the Board of Education, which will ultimately decide which schools close, later this month.

Until then, district officials have told students at closing schools and those who recently accepted offers to attend them that they should stay enrolled. If they want to switch schools, their only option is attending their neighborhood school.

Watlington has stressed that the district plans to create a transition team to support all families impacted by the closure plan. The district’s goal, he has said, is to keep all students within district schools.

“We are laser focused on doing everything we can to not contribute to more out-migration of students,” he said during a recent radio interview.

The plan would provide students more access to desirable opportunities, like AP classes and career and technical education programs. It includes investments in some neighborhood high school buildings.

But attracting families to neighborhood high schools will likely be a tall order. For decades, school leaders have pushed small high schools as an answer to parents’ concerns about neighborhood high schools, which often have a reputation for being more chaotic and violent than smaller magnets.

In the meantime, these small schools are also trying to convince incoming families to stay enrolled, even with the threat of closures looming.

Successive district leaders in Philadelphia have championed different versions of specialized schools. In the early 2000s, for example, then-chief of schools Paul Vallas opened two dozen new small high schools. He divided some schools in half and turned others over to charter organizations under the promise that students’ experiences and outcomes would improve.

The idea was that at small schools, there would be more opportunities and better academic achievement. Increasing the number of available schools would also reduce overcrowding and give families the sense of choice. And magnet programs could offer the promise of a more intimate and often more rigorous education than a neighborhood high school.

In some cases, it works. Several longstanding magnet schools, like Julia R. Masterman and Central High School, are top-ranked in the state with families desperate to get in.

But not every small school is equally desirable. Over the past decade, the district has lost around 17,000 students, largely because of declining birth rates and more students attending cyber charter schools. Some magnet and citywide admissions schools now have hundreds of empty seats.

In the meantime, some neighborhood high schools have also struggled. Several have low academic achievement and, in some cases, reputations for in-school violence. Many are also in old buildings that families say would not represent an improvement for their children.

Watlington and other officials have promised to boost those schools. But so far, families say they’re not convinced.

“The neighborhood schools are unacceptable for me as a parent,” said Janae Crawley, a parent of a student at Parkway Northwest, during a meeting at the school about the closures. The district wants to close Parkway Northwest and turn it into an honors program at Martin Luther King High School, which has around 600 students — more than double the size of Parkway Northwest.

Crawley, like other parents, said the high school selection process was lengthy. After a “very important and very big conversation” with her child, they decided on Parkway Northwest.

Closing the school would be “almost catastrophic,” she said.

District plan would expand capacity at some popular magnets

The district’s proposal isn’t just about funneling more resources to neighborhood high schools. District officials acknowledge that many families want choices in high school selection, and are frustrated that many of the city’s top magnets are exceedingly hard to get into.

By closing some schools and colocating and relocating others, the district would be able to increase capacity at five top magnet schools, Watlington has said. That includes expanding enrollment at Central and Masterman and adding selective middle schools at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush and Palumbo Middle School.

Watlington also wants to open a new, specialized year-round high school that any family could apply to. It’s unclear how students would be chosen for admission or when the school would open.

Still, enrolling more students at neighborhood high schools remains a core promise of the plan. Many students at the schools slated for closure say that’s exactly what they don’t want.

“If I wanted to go to a neighborhood school, I would have applied there,” said Leille Lane, an 11th grader at Motivation High School, which the district wants to turn into an honors program at Bartram High School. Bartram is nearly four times the size of Motivation, and has a much lower graduation and attendance rate.

“If I wanted to attend Bartram or any other school, I would have put that school on my list,” Lane said.

Carly Sitrin and Sammy Caiola contributed to this story.

Appeals court: Philadelphia magnet school admissions policies may be discriminatory

2026-02-03T21:35:38+00:00

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A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Philadelphia school district’s admissions policy for selective high schools could have had the “purpose and effect of discriminating on the basis of race.”

The ruling revives Sargent v. School District of Philadelphia, a lawsuit that alleges the district’s controversial selective admissions policy is unconstitutional because it favored some races over others. A district court judge had previously dismissed the case. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision cites the Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court case that ended the use of race-based preferences in college admissions to send the case back to the district court for a trial.

The decision reopens questions about what methods, if any, Philadelphia school leaders can use to create more diversity in the district’s elite high schools, which historically have been disproportionately white and Asian American.

It also bolsters a long-running campaign by conservative legal activists to end the use of race-neutral factors in K-12 admissions policies. School districts have been barred from using race as a factor in school admissions and enrollment decisions for nearly two decades, but courts have generally held that using race-neutral factors, such as geography or income, to promote diversity are allowed. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to take up cases that could upset that status quo, but conservative legal groups continue to bring challenges, such as the Philadelphia lawsuit.

In 2021, the Philadelphia school district overhauled its admissions process for magnet high schools, which are widely considered to be the city’s most desirable public high schools. Unlike neighborhood high schools, students must apply to magnet schools and not all are accepted. Before the admissions process changed, principals of magnet schools had discretion over which students they admitted.

The new policy created a lottery system that prioritized students from certain ZIP codes and also required students to meet higher academic and attendance standards. School leaders at the time said the changes were part of an effort to make the school district an “antiracist institution.”

In its ruling, the federal appeals court said the new policy increased Black and Hispanic students’ chances of admission to some of the city’s top magnet schools, including Palumbo, Carver, Central, and Masterman, while decreasing Asian American and white students’ chances.

A school district spokesperson said Tuesday that the district does not comment on pending litigation.

Before the change, white students had long been overrepresented at Central and Masterman high schools, two of the city’s top schools. More recently, so had Asian American students. In 2020, some Black students at Central urged the district to overhaul its admissions policies to address the declining percentage of Black students admitted to the school.

Some parents and students immediately pushed back against the new system, which they said prevented some high-achieving students from accessing top schools.

Three parents whose children did not get into their top-choice school under the new policy sued with support from America First Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit law firm. The parents have children who are Black, white, and biracial. They alleged that because students from predominantly Black and Hispanic ZIP codes who met admissions criteria had an automatic in, the policy had a discriminatory effect.

In sending the case back to the lower court, the appeals court justices noted that top district officials, including then-Superintendent William Hite, had openly discussed wanting to address racial disparities, especially in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. That did not necessarily mean the policy was discriminatory, but it requires the lower court to more fully consider those arguments, the justices wrote.

America First Legal was founded by Stephen Miller, a top advisor to President Donald Trump. Trump has used executive orders to ban analyses that examine disproportionate impacts in considering whether policies violate civil rights, and his Education Department has used a similar legal theory to pressure school districts to end diversity policies that rely on race-neutral factors.

Since Sargent was originally filed, the district has made some changes to the admissions process, including allowing students to rank multiple choices and giving students who attended middle schools attached to selective high schools priority access to those schools as well. It has kept priority ZIP codes, but has made some changes to which ones are included.

Magnet school admissions policies contested across the country

Many school districts don’t have a network of selective admissions high schools like Philadelphia or New York do. However, the districts that do have garnered legal scrutiny. As school districts have tried different tactics to diversify these schools, conservative legal groups, often working with Asian American parents, have challenged changes to admissions policies they see as proxies for race in Boston, New York, and Fairfax County, Virginia.

Justin Driver, a professor of constitutional law with Yale Law School, said the Supreme Court may not necessarily get involved in this case, with the “ball in the Philadelphia School District’s court.” The district could change its policies rather than appeal an unfavorable ruling, and even if it did, the Supreme Court might not agree to take the case.

“They could decline to do so because of what lawyers refer to as percolation,” he said. “We want to see how other courts are going to wrestle with these issues. But I do think that from a preliminary view, the facts of this case are similar to other cases.”

As in the case of other admissions policies challenged, “George Floyd’s death was sort of the cataclysmic event that made them rethink the policy here,” Driver said.

Erin Wilcox, a senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, has represented plaintiffs in similar cases, including Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. In that case, Pacific Legal argued against an admissions process that awarded additional points to students from underrepresented schools or from low-income families.

The Supreme Court declined to hear that case in 2024. But Wilcox said she believes that “eventually the court will grapple with this issue,” now with a split of opinion between circuit courts on this issue.

Wilcox said Supreme Court justices dissenting on these cases have written some “pretty fiery” dissenting opinions.

For example, Justice Samuel Alito wrote of the Fairfax case: “The Court’s willingness to swallow the aberrant decision below is hard to understand. We should wipe the decision off the books.”

“Maybe ... some justices putting that out there so forcefully, which is not something they do all that often, might be having an impact on some of the appellate court judges across the country,” Wilcox said.

Wilcox said the plaintiffs she’s represented have fought to get into magnet schools in pursuit of a rigorous education.

“In a lot of cases, students have been preparing or trying to go to these schools for years,” she said.

Derek Black, a constitutional law expert with the University of South Carolina, said he believes just because administrators may have had a goal of increasing racial parity in enrollment doesn’t mean the resulting admissions policy is discriminatory. Nor, he said, should that goal alone trigger the heightened judicial standard that’s applied to policies that consider race.

“As I read the facts, no, not a single student was admitted based upon his or her race,” he said. “That means it’s race-neutral.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Philly boosts Black and Hispanic enrollment in top schools, Chalkbeat analysis shows

2022-08-18T23:33:58+00:00

Philadelphia’s new lottery admissions system will likely bolster the overall proportion of Black and Hispanic students in the incoming ninth grades across the city’s four most selective public schools, a Chalkbeat data analysis has found, although the picture varies significantly between individual schools.

At Central High School, for example, the largest and most well known of those four top-tier schools, the proportion of Black students in the incoming class is nearly twice as high as the prior year’s class, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis. And the corresponding share of Hispanic students has more than tripled.

Meanwhile, the size of the freshman class at Carver High School of Engineering and Science will increase by more than a third, so more students of all races will attend. But while Black students comprised 55% of last year’s class at the school, only 46% of this year’s incoming class is Black.

The changes to admissions — which affected all 21 of the district’s magnet programs — appear poised to considerably alter the racial makeup of several schools where Black and Hispanic students have been historically underrepresented compared to their citywide enrollment. Families throughout Philadelphia strive to have their children gain entry to these schools, and changes to how they work attract close scrutiny and intense debate.

Last year, the district changed the admissions process by placing qualified applicants in a lottery, rather than letting individual school principals continue to make final admissions decisions. For this year’s incoming ninth grade class, all students who met benchmarks based on grades, attendance, and scores on a writing test were entered into the lottery.

For the four most selective schools, which include Masterman and Academy at Palumbo, the district weighted the lottery to favor qualified students from six ZIP codes that rarely send students to four most selective high schools, automatically offering admission to all qualified students living in ZIP codes.

Historically, a minuscule fraction of students enrolled in those schools resided in those ZIP codes, which cover parts of North and West Philadelphia.

District officials said they wanted to make the system more equitable and antiracist. The goals of the changes were to increase access and participation among qualified students who may not have otherwise applied, and to eliminate any “implicit bias” from the selection process.

Several parents and students who live in the affected ZIP codes said they weren’t aware of the policy change and couldn’t say how it affected them. But Sheila Rosado is delighted with the new system. Her daughter, Esmeralda Miller, who lives in North Philadelphia in one of the six ZIP codes favored in the admissions process, is going to Central in the upcoming school year.

“We were worried that they changed the way they were doing things, but we didn’t have any issues. Every single school she applied to she got accepted,” Rosado said, adding that her daughter has always received top grades.

She said she thought the lottery was “awesome … it’s more fair, and more people can apply.”

A “successful” system will soon change again

Chalkbeat’s analysis of the four most selective Philadelphia magnet schools is based on the district’s tally of students who have accepted offers of admission. The students in the numbers provided by the district include only those who attended district schools prior to accepting offers, not those from charter and private schools who have sought admission.

In response to Chalkbeat’s request for comment about the analysis, the district said in a statement that the revised system had been “successful on all these fronts.”

There were disparate demographic trends for the incoming classes at Masterman and Palumbo.

The share of Black, Hispanic, multiracial, and white students at Academy at Palumbo all grew significantly from the ninth grade classes of 2021 to 2022, while Asian enrollment dipped from almost half of the student body to under a third.

At Masterman, where the incoming class is only 100 students and more subject to year-to-year fluctuations, Asian enrollment grew to 43% of the class. Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic enrollment dipped slightly, and white enrollment fell by 6 percentage points.

Between 2017 and 2021, just 1% of students at the four most selective schools came from the six favored ZIP codes. But 12% of the students in this year’s incoming class reside in those ZIP codes, ranging from 11.1% at Central to 13.5% at Masterman.

More broadly, there were 11,479 eligible applications to all 21 selective schools for 2022, nearly double the number from 2021, officials said.

Although the new system seems to have led to significantly different outcomes than in past years, Philadelphia’s selection admissions process continues to evolve.

On Tuesday, the district announced that while the lottery system for selection admissions would continue, scores from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, would be reintroduced into the admissions process for the 2023-24 school year.

The state assessment, which was not administered in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, had been replaced in the selective admissions process by a separate writing test, which will now be discontinued.

District spokeswoman Marissa Orbanek said the district reintroduced the PSSA to the admissions process “because we need another criterion.” But some principals worry that using the test will whittle down the eligible pool of students.

Orbanek said the district doesn’t know the impact the elimination of the PSSA may have had on the growth of the student applicant pool for the selective schools this year, or on the higher proportions of Black and Hispanic students in the pool. But, she said, the district plans to continue studying the data and gather feedback “to continue its commitment to providing equitable access for all students.”

The district will share new minimum PSSA scores for selection admissions at the end of September.

Overall, 36% of students in Philadelphia scored proficient on the PSSA’s language arts test from 2019 (the most recent results available), while 21% did so in math, and 36% in science. But results differ markedly by race and ethnicity.

For instance, while 55% of Asian students and 42.5% of white students scored proficient in math, just 11.6% of Black students and 13.8% of Hispanic students scored at that level.

There is also concern that some students may have opted out of the PSSA last spring because they believed that the PSSA would not be a factor in 2023-24 special admissions. The district said public school students who did not take the test could substitute scores on certain other tests, although that could present logistical challenges to families.

There are three levels of so-called criteria-based schools and programs, all with differing requirements regarding grades. But all three of those levels mandate 95% attendance.

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 reintroduces test score requirement for magnet admissions

2022-08-17T12:52:36+00:00

Philadelphia school district officials announced Tuesday they will resume using state standardized test scores as a criterion for admission to the city’s most selective high schools for the class that will start ninth grade in September 2023, but the acceptable minimum scores are being reevaluated, they said.

The cutoff score on the state test — the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment or PSSA — for each magnet school “will be adjusted this year in light of the learning loss and other challenges our students have experienced,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said in a letter to parents Tuesday. Historically, minimal acceptable scores for the most selective schools have been in the 88th percentile or higher.

“There is a place for the PSSA as a standardized measurement criteria for the school selection process, but we realize that it’s just one test score achieved on one day,” Watlington said. “Multiple measures of student performance are always preferable.”

The new PSSA cutoff scores for magnet school admissions — for students who took the test last spring and will be applying for admission this fall for entrance in 2023-24 — will be made public by the end of September, according to a district statement. The application window is between September 16 and November 4.

Philadelphia’s selective admissions policy that directs Philadelphia’s best students into a group of prestigious magnet schools is a hot-button issue in the city. Families of all backgrounds covet admission to these schools, and they often make decisions on whether to stay or leave the city based on expected access to selective schools like Central and Masterman. The district’s move to once again make test scores part of the admissions process will likely stir controversy among parents and educators.

The district will also continue to use a centralized lottery system for qualified students to determine who can attend the city’s most selective schools. The district adopted this system last year for the current incoming class as an attempt to increase participation among students from historically underrepresented schools and neighborhoods, and to remove any “implicit bias” in the process. Previously, principals at magnet schools traditionally made final admissions decisions.

Students qualify to enter in the lottery based on their grades, attendance, and now, their standardized test scores. Each school has somewhat different criteria.

The district’s announcement of its plans for the 2023-2024 school selection policy comes just over a week after a federal judge dealt a setback to plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging the new system.

In 2020, the district removed the test score requirement for magnet admissions out of necessity: The PSSA, generally given in April, was not administered in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. For several of the most selective schools, it substituted a controversial MiWrite writing test, but that requirement will now be eliminated.

The PSSA was administered this past spring, albeit in an environment significantly affected by COVID.

The district has not provided data on whether participation dropped. But some principals expressed concern that students may have opted out of the tests because they didn’t think they would be used in admissions decisions.

Most selective admissions start in high school, and students apply in the fall of eighth grade for high school and the fall of fourth or fifth grade for a few selective middle schools. That means seventh grade PSSA scores are used for high school admissions, while third grade or fourth grade PSSA scores are used for middle schools.

However, the district said any student who missed the 2022 PSSA could submit the results of an alternative test, such as the TerraNova and the Educational Records Bureau. These have long been used by private and parochial school students who apply to these schools.

The district plans to hold three meetings where families can get information about the admissions system. Virtual meetings will take place Aug. 25 and Sept. 1, and there will be an in-person meeting Aug. 30. The application window for admission to schools for 2023-24 opens Sept. 16 and closes Nov. 4.

Diversity in the spotlight at top Philly public schools

In a statement to Chalkbeat, district officials said the lottery system had been “successful” in meeting its goals — encouraging participation, increasing access, and removing bias — and had changed the demographics at the district’s four most selective schools.

At the four most selective of the 21 criteria-based schools and programs — Central, the Carver High School of Engineering and Science, Masterman, and Academy at Palumbo — the new policy gave preference to students residing in six ZIP codes in North and West Philadelphia with large proportions of low income students of color, which had the lowest residential representation of students attending these schools.

For those four schools, “the percent of offers that were allocated to students from the identified ZIP codes ranged from 11.1% at Central to 13.5% at Masterman,” according to a district statement. “Those same zip codes accounted for less than 10% of total enrollment at these four schools from 2017-18 through 2020-21.”

In the statement, the district also reported that under this system, 11,479 eligible eighth grade students applied to the 19 selective high schools and magnet programs located in two neighborhood schools, double the number from years prior.

The ZIP code preference also significantly increased the diversity of the qualified applicant pool for the four most selective magnets, the district said. However, district officials did not indicate whether it had studied or determined how the lack of PSSA test score requirement affected the size of the qualified applicant pool.

In his letter, Watlington said that he would appoint a group to review the selection process for the 2022-2023 class and provide recommendations going forward.

In April, three parents whose children failed to be admitted to their first-choice schools sued the district in federal court, calling the new admittance criteria “a blatantly unconstitutional race-based system,” primarily citing the ZIP code preference.

The plaintiffs, who are represented by attorneys connected to conservative causes, including the America First Legal Foundation, argued that the new policy violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

On Aug. 8, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Chad F. Kenney ruled that the plaintiffs, whose children are white, Black, and biracial, denied a preliminary injunction to bar implementation of the new system. Kenney ruled that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed because they “have failed to show a reasonable probability of eventual success on the merits because they have not shown any evidence that the changes to the admissions policy have had a racially discriminatory impact.”

At Masterman and Central, the city’s two best known magnets, Black and Hispanic students are underrepresented while whites and Asians are overrepresented, an imbalance that drew backlash following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Tuesday’s selective admissions announcement represents Watlington’s first major policy decision.

“As the new superintendent, I want us to communicate clearly and take the time to engage a diverse project team in careful and thorough analysis of the school selection process,” said Watlington. “This approach will strengthen our decision making in preparation for the 2023-2024 school selection 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.

Correction, 11/9/2022: A new policy gives admissions preferences to four of the district’s most selective high schools to students from six ZIP codes that currently account for less than 10% of the enrollment at those schools. Due to incorrect information provided by the school district, a previous version of this story said those students accounted for less than 1%

New Philly high school admissions process, meant to increase equity, leads to pleas for a redo

2022-02-01T23:12:13+00:00

At 5 p.m. last Friday, thousands of Philadelphia eighth graders learned whether they were admitted to one of the city’s most selective high schools.

It’s an annual ritual, but this year, with a major difference: In October the district overhauled the process by putting the names of all qualifying students into a lottery instead of letting individual school leaders shape their incoming classes.

Now, several parent groups are asking for a redo, saying the new system – meant to remove bias in admissions decisions and increase diversity at the city’s most elite public schools – has unfairly left some high-achieving students wait-listed at all their choices and without any offers of admission. Each student could list up to five schools on their application.

Parents scheduled two meetings on Tuesday to discuss ways to advocate for amending the process and a Change.org petition started last Friday night had almost 1,500 signatures by Tuesday. The petition asked for a “re-selection phase,” and the development of “a new and improved method that helps everyone involved.”

The district rewrote the selective admissions rules in October, right before the application window opened. In moving toward a lottery system, officials said they wanted to avoid “human judgment” and remove implicit or overt racism from the process.

The goal of the new system is to make the demographics at the most prestigious schools, particularly Central High and Julia R. Masterman, more reflective of the district’s as a whole. While the district is 80% Black and Latino, enrollment at these schools is predominantly white and Asian American.

Along with the lottery, officials also said they would give preference to students from five city ZIP codes that historically have sent few students to selective schools. All students who qualify from these ZIP codes and choose Central, Masterman or Academy at Palumbo, or Carver High School of Engineering and Science automatically get accepted.

District leaders and the Board of Education are still analyzing data to see if the new system is having the desired effect. At Thursday’s meeting, officials said that this year 62% of the students who qualified for criteria-based school are Black and Latino, up from 40% last year and surpassing a board goal.

The number of Black and Latino students who qualified jumped from 768 in the 2020-2021 school year to 3,584 in the 2021-2022 school year.

However, in presenting the data Superintendent William Hite stressed that this is based on the minimum standards for the least selective of the 19 schools – all As, Bs, and Cs and good attendance.

“More eighth grade students met qualifications in 21-22, across student groups and all types of schools,” Hite told the board. He also attributed this to the elimination of the state standardized test, the PSSA, which hasn’t been administered for two years due to the pandemic. In past years, the selective schools had cutoff scores on the test.

Hite did not say how many of these or other qualified students actually applied to the selective schools, nor did he provide the number of Black and Latino students who met the criteria for the most selective schools, including Central and Masterman.

But some parents of students who struck out in the lottery this year, who are largely white, expressed dismay about the new system.

“I’m happy for other children to be given opportunities they were never given before,” said one parent who asked to remain anonymous and whose daughter – a straight-A student with a long list of middle school extracurriculars – was wait-listed at all of the five schools to which she applied. “But this is coming at the cost of other children.”

She agrees that the district needs to improve neighborhood high schools so that all students get a high-quality education, but she said that hasn’t happened. Her neighborhood school is Horace Howard Furness, but based on a lot of things – low reading and math scores and the need for $32 million in repairs to the building – she doesn’t see it as a viable choice for her daughter.

“There’s a whole systematic shift that needs to happen and there’s a need to prioritize schools like Furness,” said another parent who lives in its catchment and whose child did not get a placement. “My heart goes out to families who have to put their child in that situation every day. But right now it is not somewhere I feel my child would thrive.”

Saida Nhari said her daughter, an eighth grader at Masterman, did not get into either of her top choices, Central or Masterman.

“My daughter stressed herself out to get straight As and got up in the early morning to get to school on time,” said Nhari. “All that effort was in hopes to get into the high school. But two weeks before the applications opened, they decided to change everything.”

Masterman starts in fifth grade, but students have to reapply to the high school, which is smaller. Before this year, almost all those admitted to Masterman’s ninth grade had come from the middle school.

However, this year the high school opened up to all qualifying eighth graders in the city.

Nhari’s older daughter, a college student and Masterman and Central alumna, started the Change.org petition.

“I know [the district] did it in the name of equity, and I agree that’s an issue, but they rushed in with what they did and lowered standards,” said the eighth grader, who did not want to be identified. “That’s a bad idea in itself.”

But groups who advocated for reform of the process aren’t sympathetic to the complaints. Black students and alumni at Central and Masterman called for changes, forming groups in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis.

The “Black at Central” and “Black at Masterman” groups highlighted implicit bias and other issues at both schools, and the district changed the admissions process partly in response to their activism.

“Supporters of the [Change.org] petition are complaining that the new system is unfair because they ‘worked so hard to get into the best schools,’ one post on the “Black at Masterman” Instagram page said. “It must be hard for those living a life of privilege when the oppressive systems in place begin to work against them.”

There are 19 so-called “criterion-based” schools, but some are harder to get into than others. Masterman and Central have the highest standards, with the requirement of all As and Bs, and a 21.5 score on a machine-scored writing test introduced into the process this year.

Palumbo, Parkway Center City, and Carver require all As and Bs, but a 16.5 score on the writing test. Five others – Science Leadership Academy, Science Leadership Academy-Beeber, Girard Academic Music Program, or GAMP, Creative and Performing Arts High School, and the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush – allow one C and have either an audition or portfolio or both. They do not require the writing test.

Nine other schools require all As, Bs, and Cs. Students must also have at least 95% attendance.

Use of the writing test as a substitute for the PSSA to determine admission eligibility to the five most selective schools created controversy since it is machine-scored and its manufacturer has specified that it was not designed to make placement decisions.

A 2017 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts Philadelphia Research Institute found that in the prior admissions system students who are white, Asian American, female and from relatively affluent families are more likely to get into selective schools than those who are Black, Latino, male and low-income. It also found that qualified Latino students were less likely to apply to these schools and less likely to attend if they were admitted.

The report also found that 11% of those who were admitted didn’t have the minimum test scores necessary, while many students who did were not admitted. In this group, there were significant differences based on race, gender and socio-economic circumstances, the Pew study found.

The big jump in the pool of eligible students and the use of a lottery reduced the chances of any one student, regardless of qualifications, to be accepted to their school of choice and opened up the possibility that they could be accepted to none.

Parents and students who received no offers are now anxiously awaiting the next phase of the process. Students who received offers have until this Friday to make their choices, which then opens up waitlists.

Said another parent whose daughter is also a straight-A student who didn’t get into any of her choices: “My concern in the name of increasing diversity, equity and inclusion, a lot of people from all sorts of backgrounds are going to be very, very hard hit by this.”

Efforts to promote equity in top Philly schools could have opposite effect, parents fear

2021-11-20T00:28:22+00:00

Unhappy parents expressed frustration to the Philadelphia Board of Education Thursday night over the district’s overhauled selective schools admissions process, especially a provision changing conditions for students in selective middle-high schools as they reapply to ninth grade.

The policy, announced in October, will put all qualified students in a lottery to choose who will be admitted to the most selective middle and high schools for the next school year with a preference being given to qualified students from underserved ZIP codes, not those already in the middle school. The district said it changed the policy to promote equity and become an anti-racist institution.

The new system surprised parents of students already enrolled in those middle schools after it was unveiled just a day before the seven-week application window opened in early October. The deadline is midnight Sunday.

Carver High School of Engineering and Science parent Tanya Folk and others said the longstanding practice at Carver and other schools was for the middle school students to continue through high school if they kept up their grades, behavior, and attendance.

Carver, along with Science Leadership Academy-Beeber and Hill-Freedman World Academy, are magnet schools with both middle and high school grades. Parents said that before the new policy, the understanding was that middle school students at these schools could stay through high school if they met those standards.

“Why change the rules for existing students?” Folk asked the board. “How does this lead to equity for all?” What would be equitable, she said, is “to honor previous practice.”

Parents said that the new policy continues to confuse them, even with the application deadline approaching, and they fear it will harm some students.

“There’s a huge gap between how parents understood the policies and how the district is claiming they work,” said parent Miriam Hill, whose 14-year-old son is a Carver eighth grader.

Karyn Lynch, district chief of Student Support Services who oversees the school selection process, said that individual principals may have led parents and students to believe that their children could automatically continue through high school. But that was never district policy, she said.

“My understanding is that when students enter the middle school, as an incentive to encourage them, they may have been told that if you do well, you will be admitted to the high school.” But, she said, “there has always been a ninth grade readmission process.”

While Philadelphia parents can apply to attend schools outside their neighborhood starting in kindergarten, the high school selection process carries the highest stakes. The opportunity to attend one of Philadelphia’s highly rated schools can make the difference between a family moving out of the city or staying.

The previous process set qualifying benchmarks for each school, mostly grades, attendance, and, pre-pandemic, test scores. That process also gave more authority to individual school principals to shape their classes.

In their testimony and interviews, parents said that they made “life choices,” including where to live, based on the understanding that once their children were accepted into these schools, they could stay through high school graduation.

Folk and other parents said that at Carver, there are 150 more seats in each high school grade than in seventh and eighth grades, leaving ample opportunity for qualified students from traditionally underrepresented schools and neighborhoods to be admitted.

But, in response to questions from board members Mallory Fix-Lopez and Maria McColgan, Lynch said the district is not considering giving any preference to students already enrolled.

There is “no policy of automatic admission of eighth graders to the high school,” Lynch told McColgan.

Adding to parental anxiety are scant details about how exactly the lottery will work and how the ZIP code preference will be applied. There is also confusion over how students will know if they meet the qualifications for their chosen schools and if they will be included in the lottery.

Lynch said that students will learn if they will be included in the lottery from a message in their private district online portal.

Additionally, a new writing test will replace standardized tests, which have not been administered for two years during the pandemic. The test will be scored by algorithm, not human beings, another effort to promote equity and remove bias from the selection process. Students have between Nov. 29 and Dec. 16 to complete the writing test and will learn immediately if they met the cutoff for their selected school.

“Like a driver’s test,” Lynch said.

The new policy was especially aimed at Central High School and the J.R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration school, which spans fifth through 12th grades.

The demographics at Central and Masterman, the city’s two flagship schools, have become increasingly white and Asian even though the district’s enrollment is majority Black and Latino. But Carver, SLA-Beeber and Hill-Freedman are all predominantly Black. They also have high percentages of low-income students; at Carver, they make up more than three-quarters of the student body.

While Masterman starts in fifth grade, its high school has always been smaller than its middle school, so students know they must compete for ninth grade admission.

Parents estimated that at Carver, about 80% of the middle school students stayed through graduation. Some voluntarily moved to other schools including Central.

Hill told the board that she appreciates “that you are trying to solve the immense problems of inequity in our schools.” But the lottery in its current form, she said, “is causing immense pain and stress.

“We told the kids their hard work pays off; now you’re saying, never mind.”

Philly overhauls selective admissions policy in bid to be antiracist

2021-10-06T20:14:23+00:00

As part of an effort to be an “antiracist institution,” the Philadelphia school district is changing its school admissions process to make the city’s most coveted magnets more accessible to those who have been traditionally underrepresented — primarily low-income Black and Latino students.

All students who qualify, based on criteria including their grades and attendance, will now be selected from a lottery, rather than giving principals the final say from among a larger pool of eligible students. For five of the city’s most selective schools, preference will be given to students from zip codes that historically have sent few students to them.

The district’s most selective schools, Central and Masterman, have long seen overrepresentation of white, and more recently, Asian American students, and underrepresentation of Black and Latino students. But the severity of the imbalance has fluctuated. Last year, students, faculty and alumni at both schools pointed with alarm at the shrinking proportion of Black students compared to earlier eras and demanded change.

“We will continuously look at our practices so all students in the city of Philadelphia have equal access,” said Karyn Lynch, the district’s chief of student supports, whose office oversees the process.

School selection for the 2022-23 school year was due to open at 4 p.m. Wednesday and will run through midnight on Nov. 21. Now called Smart Choice, it is entirely online and centralized. The application will be available in nine languages.

The changes were made after talking to hundreds of teachers, administrators, principals, parents and students, district officials said. “Our central objective is to make systemic change, and to align ourselves with an equity focus,” said Sabriya Jubilee, director of the district’s new Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

As officials continue to “delve deeper into the equity lens process,” more changes are likely in the future, Lynch and Jubilee said.

The schools for which a zip code preference will be applied are Central, Masterman (which admits students starting in fifth grade), Carver High School of Engineering & Science, Academy at Palumbo, and Parkway Center City Middle College.

These schools will also now require a writing sample, but those essays will be digitally scored. “We worked hard to avoid data points that involve human assessment,” Lynch said. The process will be entirely centralized, she said.

For the second year, scores on state standardized tests, the PSSA, will not be considered. Due to the pandemic, the tests were not administered in the spring of 2020 or 2021. It will also eliminate from the requirements interviews or letters of recommendation.

Test score cutoffs have historically contributed to Central and Masterman admitting a disproportionate number of white and Asian American students. Some neighborhoods and elementary schools rarely send students to those schools. About a third of admitted students come from private and parochial schools outside the district.

Whether test scores will permanently be eliminated is still under consideration, officials said.

The changes are likely to be controversial, as parents and some officials, including former Governor Ed Rendell, have made the argument that access to the city’s flagship schools is what keeps many middle class families, particularly those who are white, in the city. Past attempts to make similar changes, most recently under Superintendent William Hite’s predecessor Arlene Ackerman in 2010, have failed. In the 1990s, Superintendent David Hornbeck tried to implement a similar policy, but clashed with Rendell, then the city’s mayor.

“We recognize that there will be people that are uncomfortable, but we’re leaning into that discomfort, and we’re going to do what we need to [in order to] do right by our students,” Jubilee said. “It’s our responsibility, our duty.”

The district has three tiers of high schools. The selective admission schools traditionally have had test score cutoffs at least above the 88th percentile as well as stringent grade, attendance, and discipline criteria. Citywide admission schools include the city’s longstanding Career and Technical Education centers like Dobbins and Mastbaum, but also a group of specialty schools created over the last two decades like the Workshop School, Robeson, and U School. And the third category are the traditional neighborhood schools, some of which contain magnet programs that have admissions requirements, like Northeast’s Aeronautical Academy.

In addition to the zip code preferences, the district plans to look at curricular offerings in schools in all neighborhoods to make sure that more students are adequately prepared to meet the selective schools’ criteria.

But the policy changes go beyond affecting the most selective high schools. Parents have the opportunity to choose a different school for their children than their traditional neighborhood catchment starting in kindergarten.

“I want to stress this is a K-12 process,” said Lynch.

Historically, under a court-ordered voluntary desegregation plan that was in effect for close to three decades starting in the 1980s, parents could choose elementary schools outside their catchment if their child’s presence would improve the receiving school’s racial balance.

But Lynch said that in this new plan, the goal is primarily to give parents choice, not to promote a larger goal of diversity or integration.

“The opportunity for families and parents to have choice is important,” she said.

Outside of that desegregation process, there was always a mechanism for parents to request that their child attend another school, sometimes for reasons of convenience, such as a different school being closest to a workplace or to the home of a caregiver, such as a grandparent.

Stephanie King, a white parent with two students in Kearny Elementary, a predominantly Black school in Northern Liberties, has long argued that white parents in gentrifying neighborhoods like hers use the selection process to avoid largely Black neighborhood schools. She questioned how allowing parents to do this would promote the goals of equity.

“How is this actually going to feed into equity plans, when the process has historically favored more privileged students?” she said. She requested a list of kindergarten students who sought transfers this year — 534 out of more than 12,000. More than 200 were white, a percentage out of proportion to their numbers in the district, about 14%.

Some of them, King said, are people in her neighborhood who apply to send their children to Adaire, Hackett, or Moffett — nearby schools with larger percentages of white students.

But Lynch said that the district’s analysis showed that parents of all races and ethnicities sought transfers for a variety of reasons and sees little evidence that parents seek to avoid schools with certain demographics. There are parents who want to transfer into Kearny, Lynch said.

Behind the patterns and practices and expectations today, both on the part of parents and people who work in the schools, is a long history that needs to be studied, Jubilee said.

“In order to undo the patterns,” she said, “we have to understand them.”

Philadelphia board and superintendent vow to combat racist practices in schools

2021-05-28T20:05:23+00:00

Superintendent William Hite told the Board of Education Thursday that embedded racist practices in schools are holding back Black and Latino students.

Black and Latino students are far less likely to qualify for admission to the district’s most selective schools and far more likely to be suspended for disciplinary infractions, Hite told the board. In the district’s most racially and economically segregated schools, far fewer students of all backgrounds meet special admissions standards.

“The district does not provide equitable opportunities for students to access academic rigor in the early grades and be prepared for secondary and postsecondary success,” Hite said in a presentation to the board as part of its effort to focus its attention on the quality of its academics, called “goals and guardrails.”

The meeting focused on the fourth guardrail, “addressing racist practices,” and looked at two areas: the admissions process for magnet schools and disciplinary practices.

“Acknowledging and addressing structural racism and holding individuals accountable to their implicit and unconscious biases have not been historically addressed and prioritized by the district,” the presentation said.

Hite said his administration plans to develop an “equity lens” by next month through which “to examine our systems and policies and ensure they are anti-racist.” Actions will include training staff members to recognize “implicit bias” and ensure that “all staff make decisions aligned with anti-racist practices and policies.”

In addition to raising awareness, the administration and the board are looking for ways to direct more resources to schools that serve the students with the greatest needs, such as by reducing class size and providing more counselors and other services.

Now, he said, “our system sets up the expectation that some schools can and do offer their students more opportunities to excel.” And those schools, by and large, enroll more white and affluent students than the district as a whole.

Board members repeatedly expressed the sentiment that students were being held back by schools that did not serve their needs.

While not every student needs to attend a selective school to do well, “the bigger issue has to do with the racist practice of how we allocate resources to schools that have high populations of Black and Hispanic/Latinx students,” said board member Angela McIver.

The superintendent presented data showing that the percentages of students who meet the special admissions standards differs markedly based on the demographics of the school they attend.

In the 58 elementary schools that are most racially and economically isolated – with 90% or more Black and Latino students – small percentages of students meet the special admissions standards, regardless of their racial and ethnic background: just 5.6% of Black and Latino students, and 8.3% of the other students in those schools.

Those schools, which Hite said were mostly located in Southwest, West and North Philadelphia, tend to have less experienced teachers, more turnover, and older facilities.

In contrast, a greater percentage of Black and Latino students who attended wealthier, less segregated schools, met special admissions standards. Of students of color at those 22 schools, mostly in Center City and the Far Northeast, 30% met the standards, Hite said.

Despite the disparities, last year the proportion of Black and Latino students who qualified for selective admissions schools grew from 33% to 40% of the applicant pool, largely as a result of revised admissions criteria brought about by the pandemic – the use of grades and standardized test scores from earlier grades, and the use of two years of data instead of one. This growth put the district ahead of the board’s goal that 52% of those qualifying for special admission schools will be Black and Latino by 2026.

With the new requirements, more students from all racial and ethnic groups qualified, but the disparities among them grew wider. The qualifying pool grew more diverse because Black and Latino students comprise 70% of the district’s enrollment.

For the 2022-23 school year, the district has decided to drop the use of standardized test scores entirely and is asking the public for input on what other criteria should be prioritized.

Hite said the decision has not yet been made on whether to drop use of the test permanently. At least one board member, Mallory Fix-Lopez, an educator, said she favors that approach.

“We don’t need standardized assessment to determine who can be admitted into our schools,” she said, adding that other factors about students are much more revealing of their potential and achievements.

Board members were particularly upset that the district’s single most selective school, Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School, had a high school admissions policy that requires students to have at least one year of Spanish or French. Masterman offers those language courses, but most of the city’s elementary and middle schools do not.

But almost all the students who are admitted to Masterman’s high school come from its middle school, which starts in fifth grade; very few students from other schools are admitted.

Board members did not question that exclusion. But they insisted the language requirement be dropped nonetheless, viewing it as a blatant example of inequity. There should be no such requirements — for languages, art, music or any other such courses — unless all students have access, Fix-Lopez said.

Hite agreed. In dropping the use of standardized test scores, the district will examine “what criteria are appropriate for special admission schools. Many on their own created criteria on their own to be very exclusive, and we understand that, but they do operate within a system, and we have to look at that system to ensure it is fair.”

At least one parent who spoke at the meeting expressed doubt that things would change. Parent Stephanie King berated the board for what she called a “laughably scant” plan to address racial inequities in the system.

King, who is white, has a child at Masterman, which is predominantly white and Asian American, and another at Kearney Elementary in her Northern Liberties neighborhood, which is predominantly Black.

“Half of Masterman’s admits are from private schools or from a handful of the whitest, wealthiest schools in the city,” she said. “This is not about ability. This is about where the students are. No amount of entrance interviews can overcome the fact that you have put the responsibility for adequately staffed and funded elementary schools back onto neighborhoods.”

She said the board should stop “making every decision out of fear that white parents would move to the suburbs if you don’t roll out the red carpet for them on the way to select schools. Dropping the [standardized test] is great, but I haven’t heard any proposals for real structural change that acknowledges your role in creating the problem.”

Masterman alumni issue demands to improve racial equity at selective school

2020-07-15T00:44:15+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

After a series of impassioned protests on Sunday where Black teachers, students, and graduates called for an end to racism in Philadelphia schools, Masterman High School alumni publicly released a 13-page outline of demands urging the school’s administration to eliminate “disadvantages and trauma” for Black students who attend the top Philadelphia school.

Masterman Alumni for Change (MAfC), an organization that includes graduates from the 1990s to the class of 2020, is asking for more transparency in the admissions process, stronger disciplinary action against teachers who commit racist acts in the classroom, and a restructuring of the curriculum to include literature by more authors of color.

The intent of these changes is to make Masterman more accessible to and comfortable for Black students, whose representation at the school has been precipitously declining since the 1990s. While the District as a whole has an enrollment that is 52% Black, at Masterman only 15% of students are Black. Alumni say the enrollment of Black students was 55% in 1997.

Kayla Gibson, who graduated last month, said the African American Cultural Committee (AACC) at Masterman had long been having conversations with the administration about racist incidents that take place in and out of the classroom. After the protests over George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis and the recent creation of the Black at Masterman Instagram page, which chronicles racist incidents experienced by Black students at the school, the administration has only now become receptive to demands for racial justice, Gibson said.

“The African American Cultural Committee had meetings with the administration [in 2018] where we talked about all the racist things that happened to us at Masterman,” Gibson said, but after the meetings, “we didn’t hear anything else about it” from the administrators.

This time, however, change could be on the horizon. Principal Jessica Brown, when asked for an interview, issued a statement to the Notebook on Tuesday afternoon saying that she was disheartened to hear about racist incidents at Masterman and that she’s “firmly committed to working to better understand and practice being an antiracist.”

Older alumni were similarly disheartened after reading the Black at Masterman Instagram page; they held a meeting with younger alumni and Masterman administration earlier this month and, a week later, sent the demands in the form of a charter to Brown with a plan to improve Black student life at the school.

“Masterman administration and faculty and the School District of Philadelphia have a legacy of failing their Black students,” the charter reads. “The failure to adequately support Black students at Masterman has resulted in documented mental and physical harm, regardless of class, neighborhood or country of origin, or other cultural or socio-economic indicators. This is unacceptable at any institution designed to educate children.”

Masterman, which has about 1,200 students, starts in 5th grade. More than 700 students attend the middle school, and about 460 are in the high school. It is the city’s most selective school, and almost all the students admitted to the high school previously attended the middle school. That means the demographics are set early; only 60% of the 8th graders are accepted, and outside students have virtually no chance of getting in.

In the charter, alumni say they want more transparency in the admissions process. They say the selection of students should now involve an “alumni steering committee” who would be tasked with “ensuring that the student body reflects the demographic makeup of the city of Philadelphia.” There must also be numerous slots on that committee for Black alumni, the charter says.

In her statement, Brown seems to side with the alumni. “There are items in the Charter that are not in an administrator’s purview, however. There are admissions conversations that have taken place which we expect to lead to a more equitable process for admissions. In the past, one roadblock has been that no race and gender data has been available to the schools. Without a doubt, clarifying and having transparency with the admission process is key to creating a culturally diverse school.”

In interviews and in the charter, many recent and older alumni have complained that they don’t know how the admissions process works for Masterman’s middle or high schools. Ginneh Akbar, class of 1997, said MAfC has repeatedly asked Brown to elucidate the process, but said she hadn’t done so in a satisfactory manner.

“It’s unclear who’s on the [admissions] committee,” Akbar said. “[Brown] said some administrators were on the committee, but some of the administrators who were on the call with us said they’re not on the committee.”

Currently, a disproportionate number of Masterman students come from Center City, University City and Northeast Philadelphia — areas of the city that are overwhelmingly white and Asian. Black alumni want to change that by also accepting more students from North Philadelphia and other zip codes that are underrepresented at Masterman.

To accomplish this, the charter says, the selection committee needs to actively prioritize racial and geographic diversity, and de-emphasize high test scores; right now, a student must score in the 88th percentile on the PSSA to be considered for admission.

Even when Black students are admitted to Masterman High School, Gibson said, a lot of them don’t want to go. A 2017 study of Philadelphia’s high school selection process by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that qualified Black and Latino students were either not being accepted, not applying, or not choosing to attend schools that have highly competitive admissions criteria.

In the case of Masterman, Gibson said, “At that point, we’re just so worn down from racism in middle school.”

Gibson said she recalls one racist incident in particular from when she was in 6th grade.

“My best friend got called up to the front of the room to do a problem in front of the class, and she almost accidentally used a dry erase marker on the smartboard,” Gibson said. “The teacher said, ‘What are you doing? That smartboard is worth more than you are.’” The Black at Masterman Instagram page has many other stories like Gibson’s.

When Gibson and other alumni asked Brown whether any teachers had recently faced disciplinary action for racist incidents, Brown said no, according to the alumni.

In 2018, after the AACC put significant pressure on Masterman’s administration to address instances of anti-Black racism, principal Brown launched a diversity committee mostly made up of parents. The committee aimed to address the falling number of Black students at Masterman and the lack of Black teachers (currently, four out of the school’s 50 teachers are Black), and to improve the Black experience at the school.

Two years later, the committee is no longer active and there was little progress in those areas, Gibson said.

“It felt like the administration created the committee to say that they were doing something,” Gibson said. “In reality, they weren’t really giving us any say.”

In her statement, Brown said the school has taken on numerous initiatives to clamp down on racism at Masterman, including the creation of a group called Building Anti-Racist White Educators and the introduction of an equity coordinator position to ensure that the school is maintaining an antiracist environment.

President Timothy McKenna of Central High School, another highly selective magnet school in Philadelphia, said he would introduce an equity coordinator and reevaluate admissions policies, among other changes, after a group of faculty and students issued a set of demands similar to those of the alumni at Masterman.

Other issues that Masterman alumni want to be addressed are reevaluations of disciplinary policies for students, an overhaul of the dress code, a Black student mentoring program, elimination of police in schools, and the introduction of more antiracist reading materials.

The alumni who drafted the charter, Brown, and a District representative plan to hold a meeting on July 22 to address the complaints and demands in the charter. As of now, Brown will not definitively say which demands will be implemented, but she and the District say they’re ready to engage in a productive dialogue.

“This work will not be easy, nor will it be quick,” said District spokesperson Monica Lewis. “But we believe that it is very necessary, and we are prepared to have these very necessary conversations to ensure that we create the change that is needed.”

Gibson said she’s hopeful that, after years of reciting racist incidents to the administration, meaningful change will finally come for Masterman’s Black students.

“I’ve watched every class before me at Masterman ask for these things, and we weren’t being listened to,” Gibson said. “We don’t want to watch another generation of Black students be traumatized, because it really does stick with you for a long time.”

Full text of the statement from Masterman principal Jessica Brown in response to the Notebook:

Over the last few months, I have been saddened to hear of alleged incidents of racism and derogatory speech by and towards Masterman students. These incidents have led to my own questioning of how to recognize the many varied forms of hateful messaging and conduct and to think about how to effectively eliminate these acts. I am firmly committed to working to better understand and practice being an anti-racist. I recognize that systemic racism has affected all of us and much work needs to be done to uncover it and correct it. I am up for the work.

We have reviewed the MAfC Charter and look forward to discussing many of the points where we are already in agreement. Many of the areas addressed are equity initiatives that we are broadening and refining. We welcome the collaboration with MAfC as well as many stakeholders. There are items in the Charter that are not in an administrator’s purview, however. For example, there are admissions conversations that have taken place which we expect to lead to a more equitable process for admissions. In the past, one roadblock has been that no race and gender data has been available to the schools. Without a doubt, clarifying and having transparency with the admission process is key to creating a culturally diverse school.

Going forward these are just a few of the more immediate action steps that are taking place:

Current students, faculty and administration meet weekly to discuss race and related topics such as implicit bias, micro-aggressions, colorism led by student leaders. These forums have been very valuable in providing an insight to students and faculty around Black experiences at Masterman.
The faculty has created a Building Anti Racist White Educators (BARWE) group and is reading Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi as a first step in PD and plan on reading more works around anti-racism towards a goal of creating more culturally sensitive classrooms. The School Advisory Committee created a survey to encourage more members of the school community to work on important equity issues.
Created an equity coordinator position to ensure that the school is doing everything possible to maintain a culturally sensitive, anti-racist environment.
Reporting incidents relating to race and gender has been an area that is being worked on in conjunction with the Office of General Counsel so that there is clear communication when a racial or sexist act occurs. Current allegations of racial and sexist acts are being investigated systematically.
If the goal of the Charter for Masterman is to be an anti-racist institution and be as diverse as possible we are in complete agreement. The Charter will be discussed in great detail with both school members and District-level individuals. We look forward to the discussion with MAfC.

Neena Hagen, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, is a 2017 graduate of Masterman and a Notebook intern. Twitter: @neena_hagen

Students, teachers, alumni march against racism in schools

2020-07-13T03:58:13+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

From toxins in educational facilities, to plummeting representation at selective schools, to white classmates casually dropping the n-word, Black students in Philadelphia say they face racism all the time and they are fed up.

That rage spilled over in a Sunday protest where hundreds of students, alumni, teachers, and community members packed Center City to demand justice for the more than 100,000 Black students in the city’s District and charter schools. They marched from City Hall to the District’s headquarters, at 440 N. Broad St.

“Walk as if you’re transforming education with your feet,” said Keziah Ridgeway, a teacher at Northeast High School and graduate of Philadelphia High School for Girls. “I am where I am today in spite of my racist counselor and racist teachers.”

The march was organized by teacher groups, including the Melanated Educators Collective and the Racial Justice Organizing Committee.

Marching to the beat of an accompanying fleet of drummers, the protesters – most wearing masks – shouted “No justice, no peace” and carried signs that read “Fund Black Futures.” They then stopped at the District headquarters, where organizers and students delivered several impassioned speeches.

Dana Carter, one of the organizers, mentioned that dozens of Black-majority schools in Philadelphia were forced to close their doors in the last decade. City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks decried the crumbling school buildings in Philadelphia. Carcinogenic, loose asbestos fibers have been found in many District schools in the last few years. Other building issues include lead in water fountains and collapsing ceilings, which Brooks said disproportionately impacts students of color.

Students at Masterman and Central High Schools also called attention to the fact that the Black population has been steadily declining at the selective Philadelphia schools. At Central, Black students make up around 20% of enrollment; 10 years ago, it was 35%. At Masterman, the numbers are even more jarring – throughout the 1990s, the Black population remained steady around 50%, but now, it’s declined to 15%.

Sheyla Street, a rising senior at Central, said that needs to change.

“We need teachers to encourage students to apply to Masterman, Central, SLA [Science Leadership Academy],” Street said. “We need teachers to tell students ‘you can do that challenging problem.’”

Street also noted that most teachers at Central and Masterman are white and said they can’t understand the experience of Black students at school.

Referring to the teacher hiring committees, Street said: “Who are these people made up of? What do their faces look like? Do they look like mine? Do they reflect my experience? We demand equitable hiring practices, including the recruitment of Black educators.”

Mariame Sissoko, who just graduated from Central High, said that even though many teachers try their best to make students feel welcome, Black and brown students inevitably struggle more with racist experiences.

“We have counselors who, despite their best efforts, do not know how to counteract the effects of anti-Black racism,” said Sissoko.

After the crowd at District headquarters dispersed, a cohort of protesters marched on to Masterman – just four blocks away – for another round of speeches and protests. There, Black Masterman students and alumni shared stories of persecution at the hands of teachers and the administration.

“You can’t claim to be a top school and traumatize your Black students,” said organizer and recent graduate Zora Charles. Masterman’s national rank, according to U.S. News & World Report, rose to 16th this year.

But even with its reputation for being a top school academically, Johari Sankofa, class of 2011, says he remembers one thing distinctly.

Protesters in front of Masterman High School. (Photo: Neena Hagen)

“What I remember from Masterman is being in the office all the time,” Sankofa said. Sankofa recalled white students trying to rile him up by saying the n-word, and he’d get angry and retaliate. “All I heard was ‘Johari, go to the office’… and I was like ‘they said the n-word.’”

Sunday’s protest came on the heels of nationwide conversations about race that occurred after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by police in Minneapolis. Teachers began having serious conversations about racism in their classes, and there were District-wide calls to defund the police.

After the news came out earlier this month that Central and Masterman students were using slurs and joking about raping black women in private Instagram group chats, Black teens at the selective schools began pouring out their experiences with racism on social media.

The crowd marches up Broad Street (Photo: Neena Hagen)

Last week at Central High, president Timothy McKenna responded to a list of student demands to improve Black student life at the school. Among other initiatives to combat racial injustice, Central will introduce an equity coordinator position on the faculty and evaluate hiring practices in an effort to employ more Black teachers. Masterman alumni are crafting similar demands.

On Thursday, the District announced that it was recruiting staff and eventually others for a racial equity initiative. Among other actions, it will overhaul curricula to ensure more of a focus on anti-racism, said Superintendent William Hite, and require continuous implicit-bias training for all faculty and staff.

Both organizers and students at the forefront of Philadelphia’s racial justice movement applauded the efforts by their administrators, but insisted there’s still work to be done.

“Dr. Hite and our administrators need to do more,” said Youma Diabira, a rising senior at Central. “Do something or we will.”

Black students at Central High, some faculty call for overhaul of admissions, school policies to increase equity

2020-07-08T21:30:38+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Updated at 8:30 p.m. with a statement from Central President Tim McKenna.

Central High students Youma Diabira and Mariame Sissoko say they have grown used to racism at the elite Philadelphia school. They described Central’s “anti-blackness” as covert but ugly and palpable. Most of the time, they said, it comes up casually, though that doesn’t make it any less painful.

“I was accused of cheating on a quiz because my score was too high,” Diabira said.

“In 10th grade, I had an Afro and a teacher said to me — this was a white teacher — ‘when I stick my finger in a socket my hair gets like that,’” said Sissoko, who graduated last month. “It just made me feel so uncomfortable.”

Diabira and Sissoko are now leading an effort by students, faculty, and alumni from Central, one of the most selective high schools in the city, to demand big changes in admissions policies, curricula, and staff training to increase Black enrollment and end what they refer to as the school’s “culture of racism.”

The reckoning, teachers and students said, has in some ways been long in coming, but it has been accelerated after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent nationwide protests and activism. Central’s Black student groups held a passionate virtual meeting on June 9 outlining grievances that moved faculty members to craft their own statement of support for the students’ demands. The faculty effort was led by teachers in the social studies department.

“This is a moment for change: a moment to restructure the anti-Black environment Central High School fosters,” says a statement by Black students. “It is time for Black students to be seen, to be heard, and to take action now more than ever. Central High School functions off of the myth of meritocracy. That every student who enters the red doors located on 1700 W. Olney Avenue is granted the same opportunities, perceived the same way, and if a student fails then it is their fault. This is simply not the case for many Black students who are admitted to Central.”

Central President Tim McKenna, the school’s principal, pledged to implement the students’ demands in a statement sent to the Notebook on Wednesday evening. “Student voice is critical when you are leading a school and our student voices need to be recognized,” he wrote. “The goal is for us to collaboratively improve student life for our African American students. I care deeply about the students I am fortunate to support each day as the leader of this school. I take ownership and recognize changes need to be made. As a human being, I empathize and want the best for our school community. I am inspired by the leadership that has been exhibited by our students and am committed to improving Central High School.”

Among the actions McKenna plans to take: Hiring a new full-time climate manager to support a restorative team building program during advisory and creating an equity coordinator position; instituting implicit bias training for all administrative and faculty members; and creating a recruiting team with the goal of increasing the percentage of incoming Black students.

(McKenna’s full statement is printed at the end of the article.)

Both students and those who signed the faculty statement favor an admissions policy that no longer prioritizes high standardized-test scores above all else. With rare exceptions, a student must score in the 88th percentile or above on the state PSSA standardized test to be considered for admission.

Students and the faculty’s statement call for the elimination of test scores as a criterion for admission, favoring a more holistic approach and active recruitment of students from mostly Black elementary and middle schools in areas of the city that rarely send students to Central. Students and alumni from Masterman, widely regarded as the most elite high school in the city, are demanding a similar rethinking.

“We want standardized testing removed as an admissions requirement given that it historically and currently serves to restrict access to magnet schools and maintain racial and class hierarchies,” says a faculty statement, which as of Wednesday had 57 signatures of current and former staff. “Standardized tests measure relative family and community wealth more than individual academic ability.”

Alumni have also mobilized, noting that the percentage of Black students at the 2,400-student school has been precipitously declining for the last decade.

“In the 2019-2020 school year, only 18% of the first year class was Black, compared to the 2009-2010 school year, when 35% of the first year class was Black,” an alumni statement says. “That’s a 50% reduction over the past decade.”

It cites a study released in 2017 from the Pew Charitable Trusts that found qualified Black and Latino students were either not being accepted, not applying, or not choosing to attend Central and other top schools that have highly competitive admissions criteria.

The faculty statement noted that standardized tests were not administered this year because the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools, making this the perfect time to redesign Central’s selective admissions policy.

“Therefore, our schools have no choice but to envision a new admissions policy just as many colleges are,” the faculty statement says. “We want an end to the school district’s ‘colorblind’ admissions policy that removed racial data from the selection process, and we want more students to be recruited and accepted to special admit and magnet programs, such as Central, from predominantly Black and Latinx and chronically underfunded public schools.”

Efforts in the past to change the selective-admissions process to make schools like Masterman and Central more diverse have faltered amid opposition. Ten years ago, then-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman vowed to upend the system in pursuit of more diversity, only to quickly retreat in the face of an outcry. The opposition was led by those who benefit most from the current system, especially those who said these schools helped to keep white middle-class families in the city.

Back then, opponents of change cited numbers showing that Masterman and Central were quite diverse, even if their enrollment did not reflect the racial makeup of the District’s student body as a whole. Masterman’s African American enrollment in 2010, for instance, was 30%. But today, those numbers have fallen precipitously. And with the current focus on anti-racism, the political atmosphere is different, perhaps signaling a renewed receptivity to re-evaluating these policies.

The issues for Black students don’t end when students are admitted to selective schools, according to both students and teachers. Like many high schools, Central has an academic tracking system. And Black students are underrepresented in honors, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate courses.

Central uses testing as a metric for admitting students into advanced classes, Diabira and Sissoko said. A lot of Black and working-class students have jobs and various other responsibilities after school, Diabira said, so they don’t have the opportunity to stay after school to take exams for advanced classes.

“It’s never been that [Black students] aren’t qualified,” Diabira said.

Other elite Philadelphia high schools, such as Masterman and Carver High School of Engineering & Science, don’t require their students to test into AP classes. At Carver, any student who wants to take an AP class can enroll, and at Masterman, admissions to AP classes are based on grades and teachers’ testimony.

Diabira and Sissoko want to introduce teacher recommendations and perhaps essays into the process of selecting students for advanced classes.

But testing isn’t the only area where racial bias creeps in, Sissoko said. Central teachers “target” certain students for advanced classes, by either pulling them aside after class or sending them an email encouraging them to apply for an advanced course. Anecdotally, Sissoko said, she’s seen far fewer Black students targeted for advanced classes than their white and Asian counterparts.

Last year, the social studies department made a special effort to encourage Black students to apply for African American history honors, and this year, Sissoko said, that class has a lot more Black students than in the previous year.

“It’s literally as simple as sending out an email,” Sissoko said.

One Central teacher said that admission to AP courses varies by department and that it is common practice for teachers to “emphasize school ranking over student opportunity” and seek out students for AP courses who are perceived as more likely to earn a 4 or 5 on an AP test — the scores necessary to earn college credit.

Diabira attended Masterman for middle school and said she always planned to stay at Masterman’s high school, but a series of events pushed her to go to Central instead. She shadowed at Central in 8th grade and realized quickly that there were a lot more Black students at Central than at Masterman.

“[I] just thought ‘wow, there are no Black kids at Masterman. … This is not where I want to go.’” The Black student population at Masterman High School is 15%.

There was one racist incident she experienced at Masterman that she said was a dealbreaker. In 8th grade, during practice for the school play, she got into a spat with a white student.

“She told her mom that she didn’t like me,” Diabira said. “And then her mom said she didn’t have to worry about me because people like me don’t get accepted to the high school.”

But when Diabira attended Central, she started noticing many of the same issues regarding racism and a lack of Black representation at the school.

Other demands from the Central students and faculty include a restructured teacher hiring process that includes Black students and parents on the committee, the screening of all new teachers for “implicit bias,” and an increase in the number of Black teachers.

The faculty statement said that interviews of applicants should include questions “designed to ensure that all hired teachers are committed to racial equity, prepared to use anti-racist and culturally responsive frameworks, and able to reflect on their own implicit bias and racist ideas that may manifest in the classroom.”

The statements also call for a curriculum overhaul in which all curriculum is “designed through an anti-racist lens,” as the teacher spokesperson put it.

The faculty statement was written by five social studies teachers: Elizabeth Wesley, Monique McKenney, Nick Palazzolo, Thomas Quinn, and Ken Hung. Wesley answered questions on behalf of the group.

Although history and social studies classes may more easily lend themselves to revamped and more inclusive curriculum, teachers in all disciplines need to be reflective about what and how they are teaching, Wesley said. Some examples: Math can be used to teach about racial inequity, English teachers must make sure they are teaching Black authors, and science teachers should make clear what contributions Black scientists have made.

No matter what the department or discipline, teachers can ask themselves whether their teaching reflects who their students are and whether they are being culturally responsive, Wesley said. “We all have a broader curriculum beyond the lessons we teach. … This all gets back to the training.”

Among the other issues that students and teachers want to be addressed are disciplinary policies as they affect Black students and a focus on more academic mentoring for Black students.

Superintendent William Hite has said that he wants to see changes in many of the areas cited above with an eye toward increasing opportunities for all students. He is planning to “address the District’s ongoing work around antiracism” in a news briefing Thursday morning.

Statement to The Philadelphia Public School Notebook
Prepared by Timothy J. McKenna, President of Central High School

As is the case across our city, commonwealth and nation, schools and organizations are evaluating their current systems regarding racial equity. At Central High School, we are not exempt from this process. Prior to the Covid-19 school closure, the Central High School Administrative Team met with student leaders from our African American Student Union to discuss issues regarding racial equity at our school. These conversations led to the development of a plan to support our students. In early June, a virtual town hall on racial equity for members of the Central High School community was held. The administrative team and faculty members were presented with a list of demands from our African American student leaders. I have pledged to take action and implement the demands.

Student voice is critical when you are leading a school and our student voices need to be recognized. The goal is for us to collaboratively improve student life for our African American students. I care deeply about the students I am fortunate to support each day as the leader of this school. I take ownership and recognize changes need to be made. As a human being, I empathize and want the best for our school community. I am inspired by the leadership that has been exhibited by our students and am committed to improving Central High School.

Here are the actions we are taking during the 2020 – 2021 school year:

Hire a new full time climate manager to support a restorative team building program during advisory. Advisors and student leaders will be trained to facilitate conversations on racial equity, racism and other topics
Develop a pilot summer bridge program that will begin in August 2020 to support student transition to our school
Create a new Equity Coordinator position on our faculty
Plan ongoing Professional Development on topics of anti-racism, beginning with implicit bias training for all administrative and faculty members
Evaluate current curriculum offerings and expand them regarding racism, racial equity and African American history in our English and Social Studies classes
Evaluate our hiring practices with an effort to hire more Black teachers
Work with student leaders to create a recruiting team with the goal of increasing the percentage of Black students at Central High School
Work with student leaders to create student mentorship program

The Central High School Administrative Team, faculty, alumni, and students are committed to this work. We are not shying away from the difficult conversations. We are proactively working as a school community to improve student life for our students.

Board supports ‘re-imagining,’ but not disbanding, school police

2020-06-26T13:13:47+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

This story has been updated.

This story has been corrected to note that it was Ameen Akbar, not Julia Danzy, who voted against the metal detector update policy.

Members of the Board of Education indicated support Thursday for “re-imagining” rather than disbanding its school police force, despite numerous and fervent pleas from students, parents and teachers that the very concept of uniformed security in school traumatizes and criminalizes Black and brown young people.

At the same time, several board members told retired Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, who now oversees safety in the District, that they expect him to deliver on his promise to retrain his 350 officers to “create a culture where every person feels safe and respected” in school.

Bethel defended the need for school security and promised that it will look very different for students when they return to school in the fall.

“We have been focused on [reform] for quite some time,” Bethel said, not just in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the ensuing protest and heightened awareness of racial injustice. He and Superintendent William Hite, backed by Board President Joyce Wilkerson, have said they want to make Philadelphia’s school safety approach a national model.

“I’m in support of what you’re doing, but you haven’t had a chance to prove any of the measures you are putting in place will work,” said Board Vice President Leticia Egea-Hinton. She said she was willing to give him time, “but I don’t want students traumatized or criminalized in the process.”

Board member Mallory Fix-Lopez was more skeptical. “I see a repackaged system with minor changes, not an overall climate and culture shift,” she said.

Bethel made his case for reform as speakers, led by the Philadelphia Student Union, demanded that the board pass a resolution creating “police-free schools” and divert the $31 million spent on security to hiring more counselors, nurses, and social workers. A PSU petition, signed by more than 13,000 people, called for replacing the officers with specially trained community members.

“Policing cannot be repackaged. The presence of police is traumatic,” Megan Gildin, social-emotional health advocate, told the board. “The softer approach is still problematic policing.”

Among those calling for an end to school police was City Council member Kendra Brooks, who is also a trainer in restorative justice practices for schools in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

“Police do not make schools feel safer,” she said. “They increase the likelihood that young people of color will be criminalized.”

Personnel will now be called “school safety officers,” not school police, and Bethel promised that they would not engage in the type of confrontational and demeaning behavior toward students that some speakers have described. He said their uniforms would change to have a “softer look,” although he said that not all officers would have the new uniforms at the beginning of the school year.

Philadelphia’s school police have never been armed, but they do carry handcuffs. City police do not patrol Philadelphia schools, which is the case in some other cities where the #policefreeschools movement has had success. A legal agreement required under state law details the conditions under which city police can be called to schools.

Bethel is nationally known for his work on transforming how police interact with young people. While he was on the city force, he created a diversion program for minor offenses, in partnership with the District Attorney’s office and the Department of Human Services, that has dramatically reduced the number of school-based arrests.

Bethel, whose title is special adviser on school safety, said that his personnel serve as valuable members of the school community and that it is impractical and unwise to ditch school security entirely. Many come from the neighborhood in which they work, many are Black, many are female, and only a few are retired city police officers, he said – a change from the past. Many transitioned to the job from other jobs in the District, including food service and positions dealing with climate and culture, he said.

Amid calls that the very presence of police in schools that serve mostly Black and brown children is an example of racism, the board announced that it was embarking on a “goals and guardrails” re-evaluation of its mission and purpose. One major guardrail is an effort is to “dismantle racist practices” in the District.

On the police issue, board members suggested that they wanted to see whether Bethel could really pull off his ambitious plans to transform school culture and the role of the school safety officers before looking at any substantial reallocation of resources.

“Clearly, meaningful change takes time,” said board member Julia Danzy. “I have seen some good school resource officers. I’ve also seen some bad ones. We need to be more assertive in getting those out. Mr. Bethel’s program carries for me the opportunity for change.” Danzy also said she would like to see a further name change that drops the word “officer.”

The board’s newest member, Ameen Akbar, said the District needs to “re-imagine discipline structures.” He works in youth development and has been a staff member at YouthBuild Charter, a second-chance program for students who have not succeeded in other schools. They spend a year learning construction skills and earning a diploma.

Many of the students who wound up there were the victims of a “zero-tolerance” discipline approach, Akbar said, which is no longer the District standard. He said he saw firsthand that the District’s discipline policies stifled student potential; some of his former students have gone on to work in the schools in jobs ranging from bus aide to teacher.

Akbar noted that truly building a “climate of school safety physically, emotionally, and culturally” is multi-faceted and “daunting” work.

While many speakers echoed the call for police-free schools, several spoke in support of keeping them.

“We don’t just respond to crimes and detain children,” said T.C. Caldwell, who said he had been a school police officer since 2000 and a sergeant since 2005. Before that, he spent a year as a volunteer assistant basketball coach. “We are mentors, coaches, nurturers, relatives of students and neighbors, and proud products of the Philadelphia school system.”

Catherine Blunt, a former principal in the District, said she has not seen “any evidence of Black children being afraid of school police officers,” calling school security “essential” in many neighborhoods in the city.

“They are not our enemies, they are friends of students, protectors, confidantes, and sometimes saviors,” she said. “They are part of school families.”

Connie Carnivale, principal of H.A. Brown Elementary in Kensington, described how her officer is instrumental in helping her deal with “homeless people and prostitutes” who she said might be at the school’s doorstep in the early morning and reminding them they have to leave before the children arrive.

The officers are “vital to providing a safe learning environment for all stakeholders,” she said.

The discussion of safety came up in the context of Board Policy 817, which governs the use of metal detectors, which are mandatory in all District high schools. After consulting with student advisory groups, Bethel recommended changes to the policy that include clear signs letting students know what they are permitted to bring into schools, training the officers to be pleasant and welcoming, and having an “amnesty bin” where students could leave a banned item. The definition of “weapon” is broad, and includes scissors and penknives that students might not know violate the policy.

The revision did not include making their use voluntary. The changes passed 5-3, with Fix-Lopez, Ameen Akbar, and Angela McIver voting no.

“I will never be in agreement. … I don’t think there is a place in high schools for metal detectors,” McIver said.

Last year, the board approved the policy that made the metal detectors mandatory in all high schools over the vociferous objections of PSU and other activists.

Bethel said he has met with PSU and other student leaders and takes their concerns to heart. He promises to continually survey them to ask “if our men and women are meeting the bar that we’ve raised.”

Focusing on inequity in the District

Speakers emboldened by the nation’s reckoning with its ugly legacy on race issued challenges to the board regarding practices that raise racial bias issues, including aspects of the curriculum and the admissions process for magnet schools that results in Black students being severely underrepresented in them.

Hite said that history curricula are being rewritten to emphasize “social justice and anti-racism components,” along with “colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy and people’s resistance movements.” All District employees will receive anti-racism training this summer, he said.

But several speakers pointed out that the District for the past three years has declined to endorse a Black Lives Matter week organized by various teacher groups that had long been working on anti-racist issues and the need for curricular revisions. And others said the District needed to re-evaluate its criteria for special admissions schools, pointing out that Black students – who make up just over half of the District’s enrollment – are vastly underrepresented at schools like Masterman and Central High Schools.

Speakers cited the #blackatmasterman and #blackatcentral Instagram hashtags in which students describe instances of discrimination and microaggressions at the hands of peers and teachers.

“I am demanding that you implement school-based equity boards,” said Keziah Ridgeway, a teacher at Northeast High School and a member of the Melanated Educators Collective. She called for “equitable access” for all students to “all institutions and [academic] tracks, and the opportunity for teachers of color to teach those students.”

Teacher Kristen Luebbert urged the board to “tear down structures of Masterman and other magnets in order to rebuild them in an anti-racist way.”

‘Goals and guardrails’ initiative

At this meeting, the board outlined a major initiative that members are calling “goals and guardrails” with a mission to improve education for all students and address inequities within the system that more recently have been drawing parents’ and activists’ attention.

Declaring that “education is the key to fostering equity in society” and that its mission is to make sure all students reach their fullest potential, the document says that the board’s agenda going forward “must drive systemic change and dismantle racist practices in a system that far too often has gone unfunded and unchanged.”

It set four guardrails:

Make every school safe, welcoming, healthy, and clean with “inclusive climates that provide … social, emotional, and mental health supports.”
Give every student a well-rounded education that includes arts and athletics.
Welcome every parent and guardian as a partner.
“Work to dismantle racist practices that hinder student achievement.”

The board is entering its second two-year term after nearly two decades of the District being under state control. Danzy described that period as “20 years of … system survival mode” without a focus for improvement. She noted that on key federal indicators, the District has consistently ranked among the lowest in achievement among the nation’s big cities.

“This is,” she said, “a stake in the ground.”

Also at the meeting:

The board renewed the charters of Community Academy Charter School, KIPP Philadelphia Charter School, and Global Leadership Academy. It delayed, without explanation, planned votes on renewing Lindley Academy Charter School at Birney and Tacony Academy.

It accepted a nearly $500,000 grant from the Philadelphia School Partnership to increase enrollment at Philadelphia High School for Girls and prepare students for academic rigor. The school has been losing enrollment over the last 10 years and is accepting students below its usual academic threshold of scoring in the 85th percentile or better on state standardized tests.

For new Rhodes scholar, a journey tied — in many ways — to Philly’s school system

2018-11-26T17:03:25+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When Anea Moore was in 7th grade, she gave her mom an ultimatum.

For years, she had bugged her parents to let her apply to Masterman, one of Philadelphia’s premier public magnet schools. Her parents worried that it was too far away — and maybe too challenging.

Moore needed her mother’s signature to complete the Masterman application.

“I don’t know where I got these guts from, but I said, ‘Mommy, either you sign it or I forge your name on this paperwork,’” Moore said. “But either way, it’s going out.”

Moore thought Masterman could push her in ways that her neighborhood K-8 school, Penrose, couldn’t. Though the teachers there tried to nurture her talent — even sneaking her into advanced math classes — she wanted to learn with the “best of the best.”

She also thought that at Masterman she’d finally fit in with students.

Read the rest at WHYY

Students risk a lot to buy into charismatic principal’s vision

2013-11-13T15:17:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

by Kevin McCorry for NewsWorks

Anthony Majewski learned at an early age what it means to lose trust in the powers that be.

As a 6th grader, he says he was "jacked up" by a math teacher who told him he was "never going to be anybody."

"Like, he actually jacked me up, and put me up against the wall, ’cause I don’t sit still too well," Majewski, 44, said, chuckling. "I don’t think they had ADHD back then."

Although he laughs it off now, that moment forged the educational philosophy of the man who is now principal at the Philadelphia School District’s Hill-Freedman World Academy.

"That’s kind of my passion," he said, "creating an environment where kids never feel like that."

Talk to students, parents, and faculty at Hill-Freedman, and they’ll tell you that, so far, Majewski has succeeded.

But talk to Majewski himself, and he’ll tell you that this year will prove to be his greatest test in maintaining that trust.

That, he says, is the challenge of expanding a school in the midst of a district-wide budget crisis.

The pitch

Hill-Freedman is a small, selective-admission, traditional public school in Northwest Philadelphia. It serves a student body that’s 91.7 percent African-American and 83.4 percent economically disadvantaged.

The school itself has two parts: One is a magnet program where the best and brightest learn through the International Baccalaureate program, a world-minded curriculum at an accelerated pace above their grade levels.

The other part is tailored for intellectually and physically disabled students with complex support needs.

Although the two student programs have different curriculums, the school prides itself on providing "as many opportunities for inclusion as possible," including mixing its complex-needs and magnet students in elective courses such as cooking and ceramics.

Children applying for admission to the magnet program must score well on state tests and must have all As and Bs on report cards from their previous two years. And their attendance rate must be 95 percent or better, with a maximum of five tardy arrivals.

Among all middle schools in Pennsylvania, Hill-Freedman ranks sixth in aggregate English and math middle school PSSA testing — second only to Julia R. Masterman among Philadelphia’s other traditional public middle schools.

Until this year, the school served grades 6-8, but after conversations with the Hill-Freedman community — specifically with complex-needs parents who disliked the idea of sending their children to nearby Martin Luther King High School — Majewski convinced the District to let him expand it into a high school.

Majewski then made his pitch to his magnet-school 8th graders — 95 percent of whom typically would have gone to the District’s long-esteemed, high-performing high schools: Don’t go to Central or Girls High, he cajoled. Instead, stay here and become Hill-Freedman’s first 9th-grade class.

Read the rest of this story at NewsWorks

Now sharing a building, 2 schools seek collaboration

2013-09-14T09:38:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Dimner Beeber Middle School was headed for extinction.

Since it was barely a quarter full and posted poor academic indicators, the District planned to close it and send a few hundred Beeber 7th and 8th graders to nearby Overbrook High School.

But for Raynae Bosley, a rising 8th grader, Beeber was working.

In 7th grade, she said, “all of the teachers didn’t give up on me and they kept getting me up to the next level.”

“I really didn’t want the school to be closed at all.”

She was not alone. The Beeber community, including Raynae and her mother Rayette, launched a fierce and successful campaign last spring to keep the school open.

But the Bosleys are still concerned about the school’s future because Beeber’s rescue came with a catch. They were never formally notified that the middle school would be sharing the building this fall with the first cohort of 9th graders attending a new satellite campus of Science Leadership Academy, a popular special admission high school.

“I believe a lot of the parents were hoodwinked because we weren’t told until after the fact … that there was going to be another school pretty much renting space with our students,” said Katherine Stokes, another Beeber mother.

Stokes believes SLA is moving into Beeber’s Wynnefield neighborhood to test the location for expanding its enrollment and ultimately push Beeber out.

“I truly believe this is probably the last year for this building and this school as Beeber itself,” Stokes said.

“We fought long and hard to keep this school open, not knowing that this was in the works. So we basically saved the school for someone else.”

Superintendent William Hite focused attention on Beeber on opening day in September, when he chose to escort one of its students to school in the morning.

A study in contrasts

Beeber, in a stately and sturdy 1930s building, started out as a junior high school, with a 7th, 8th and 9th grade. This is just what it will have next year, although in two distinct schools with different demographics and different educational approaches.

The building sits in a pleasant, almost bucolic neighborhood, surrounded by neat twins and row houses and just a block away from parts of Fairmount Park. Nevertheless, it has the statistics associated with a failing urban school.

Test scores have been mostly below those of the District as a whole, although 7th and 8th graders did better than entering 6th graders. (This year, the school no longer has a 6th grade.)

Beeber was once on the city’s persistently dangerous schools list, and last year almost all its students – 95 percent – qualified for free and reduced price lunch. Its enrollment, almost entirely African American, has been plunging, largely due to the lure of charter schools. Since 2010-11, it fell from nearly 500 students to just over 250 last year. The building can hold 1,100.

SLA, on the other hand, which operates in partnership with the Franklin Institute, has become one of the District’s most popular schools in the eight years since its founding. It is known for its interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum, in which students pose and answer essential questions. Its test scores are high, and its student body encompasses the races and ethnic groups of the city as a whole.

SLA is gaining a national reputation – Microsoft founder Bill Gates has visited the school – and it holds a major annual conference on educational technology called EduCon. It has far more applicants than slots in its Center City campus, which enrolls fewer than 500 students.

“The whole impetus for [SLA@Beeber] was that so many kids were coming and interviewing and we had so few seats,” said SLA founder and main campus principal Chris Lehmann. SLA had 800 students on its waiting list – students deemed suitable and qualified for whom there was no room.

Plus, Beeber’s location in West Philadelphia makes it easier for more students from other parts of the city to get there.

“Traditionally, that is not a neighborhood with magnet schools,” Lehmann said.

The staffs at both schools are hoping that the co-location will prove mutually beneficial and have had some conversations about how the schools might work together.

But there is still a lot of uncertainty. And with the District’s funding problems and instability, there has been little chance to hash out ideas.

“We have the opportunity to bring together two distinct schools … for collaboration in powerful ways,” said Lehmann. But, it is “a tough conversation to have at a time when schools aren’t sure which teachers are going to be in the building.”

Collaboration is ‘paramount’

Current Beeber teachers have ideas for the schools moving forward together, most of them based on the hope that the older SLA students can be role models for the Beeber students.

“My hope with SLA in the building [is that they will] inspire our kids to push harder academically to possibly be admitted,” said Beeber special education teacher Bethany McCabe.

SLA admits students based on test scores, grades, and disciplinary record, but also based on interviews to make sure they understand the school’s approach to learning. They have privileges and opportunities, such as a one-to-one laptop-to-student ratio, that Beeber students do not.

McCabe hopes that these new elements in the building will motivate her students. She believes incorporating project-based learning into Beeber’s curriculum “would be great” and hopes teachers will have the opportunity to learn about this from their SLA peers.

Chris Johnson, the principal of SLA@Beeber, sees professional development for the teachers as a distinct opportunity.

“If Beeber staff wants to participate in our professional development, that’s not a problem,” he said.

But he was quick to add that “if folks think we are going to take our program and put it in place at Beeber … I don’t know if that’s going to work due to a thousand different reasons.”

Either way, these will be two distinct schools. SLA will occupy the third floor, Beeber the first two. SLA and Beeber students will most likely not be eating lunch together.

“Our students need to know that these are two separate schools,” said Beeber principal Joseph Starinieri. One obvious difference that students will notice: Beeber has a dress code, and SLA does not. “At this point in middle school, to get that privilege, [they] have to home in on skills to get into that school,” he said.

Ron Morris, a long-time Beeber administrator who will be a teacher in the fall, sees cultivating a strong relationship between the two communities as paramount, especially given the differences in the student demographics.

“It would behoove us, before things get strained, to work together, to collaborate,” he said. Morris worries some “jealousy issues” may arise between the two different communities.

So, “before that even happens, we as instructors have to come up with a plan … for kids to do something together … and make it seem like a family even though there are two different programs,” Morris said.

Incorporating families may be the key. Stokes, whose daughter Maiya Jones is entering Beeber’s 8th grade, said she would like to see the two schools organize public meetings.

“I would love to take the initiative to get an open dialogue. People are generally standoffish when they don’t know what’s going on,” Stokes noted. “I would hope to be an integral part of building that bridge and hoping it’s an inviting atmosphere.”

Stokes and her daughter, who aspires to a nursing career, are already scouting high schools and said they would at least explore whether to add SLA@Beeber to the list.

Raynae Bosley, who plays the trumpet and enjoys singing and acting, has her sights set on Central or Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. Could SLA be a possibility? She’s not thinking about that right now.

“I’m fine with it,” she said of SLA’s co-location in the building, “as long as I’m still going to get the help and nobody is going to be giving up on me.”

Free book bags, activities at annual ‘back to school’ event

2013-08-08T11:54:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

With the new school year just about a month away, parents and students will prepare by attending the District’s Family and Education Reunion, better known in past years as the Back to School Expo or Extravaganza.

The event will be held on Friday, August 9, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the High School of the Future, 4021 Parkside Avenue. Thousands of parents, students, and community members will converge on the school grounds for a day filled with food, educational workshops, interactive activities, entertainment, and lots of giveaways, including the perennial favorite, free book bags, donated this year by Office Depot. According to the District, about 6,000 of the bags will be given out along with other school supplies.

This will mark the sixth year that the School District of Philadelphia has collaborated with Radio One to host the event. Other sponsors include Forman Mills, Comcast, and Elliot Lewis. Over 60 vendors will man booths to present their services to attendees. We will also have a table at the event where we will distribute papers and be available to speak with parents about the work we do and how they can become Notebook supporters or members.

The District estimates that in past years the event, which was once held at District headquarters on North Broad Street, has attracted more than 20,000 people throughout the course of the day. At this year’s event attendees can look forward to informational workshops that will help students prepare for the school year, music, entertainment, and a series of fun-filled activities that include a petting zoo offered by the Philadelphia Zoo, information workshops from the Please Touch Museum, an interactive truck provided by SEPTA, a 76ers basketball clinic, a family arts workshop compliments of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and much more.

If you are interested in volunteering at the Notebook’s table, please contact Shawn Phillips, advertising sales/business manager, at shawnp@thenotebook.org or 215-951-0330 ext. 2160.

Representatives from the District’s Office of Student Placement and Enrollment will also be at the event to offer on-site registration for students wanting to register at their neighborhood school for the 2013-14 school year. Parents must bring all required documents to the event in order to complete registration. A list of required documents can be found here.

Choosing a high school: Commonly asked questions

2012-10-01T12:55:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

How do I get started?

Talk to the adults in your life, including teachers, counselors, and parents or guardians. Review the articles and school profiles in this guide. Get a copy of the District’s high school directory published every fall and meet with your counselor. Seventh and 8th graders should attend the High School Expo, scheduled this year on September 28 and 29, where all District and charter schools are represented and you can ask questions. In October, the Philadelphia School Partnership will launch its website, greatphillyschools.org, from which you can get information on academics, extracurricular activities, graduation rates, college enrollment, safety and other factors.

When should I start thinking about high school choices?

It’s an important decision, so it’s good to start early: no later than the beginning of 7th grade. High schools look at attendance, grades, and test scores from that year in determining who is qualified to attend.

What is the difference between a special admission and a citywide admission high school?

Special admission schools set a high bar, with test score cutoffs and specific requirements regarding grades and attendance. Citywide admission schools give less weight to test scores, but still set minimum standards regarding grades, attendance, and discipline records. The principals at special admission schools decide who gets in, while citywide admission schools put all qualified students into a lottery.

What if I want to go to a charter school?

You should contact that school directly as early as you can. Charter schools are required to conduct lotteries if they have more applicants than spaces, but each has its own application process and deadlines. They are not permitted to discriminate or deny admission to students based on test scores, disability, or English language proficiency. They can limit enrollment to certain grades and a particular area of study but must make their admissions standards clear. Many charters have detailed applications and strict deadlines in order to be entered into the lotteries.

How can I find out the admissions requirements of a school?

This guide and the District’s high school directory include the admission requirements for each school. Your counselor can help explain the requirements.

If I don’t meet the exact criteria of a selective school, should I apply anyway?

Yes, but only if your record comes close to meeting all the requirements. They often admit students who do not meet every criterion. Principals at selective schools may seek recommendations from counselors and principals from the schools that applicants attend. Interviews can also make a big difference.

Certain schools have lots of applicants – how can I improve my chances?

Before you apply to Masterman, keep in mind that nearly all the high school slots are filled by students from their middle school – your odds may be one in a hundred. Some of the other most selective schools may admit only one out of every 10 applicants. But there are schools in the city that are not as well known yet have similar programs. Check them out. Applying to charter schools is another way of improving your odds; you’re not limited on how many you can apply to.

Should I visit the school as part of the admission process?

Yes, to get the “feel” of a school. Some schools allow applicants to shadow students for all or part of a day. Some require interviews or auditions. Check with your counselor.

If I get rejected from all my choices, what should I do?

If you get on the waiting list of a special admission school or a charter school, there is a chance that you will be admitted. You should keep in touch with your counselor and with the school you want to attend. These schools manage their own waiting lists.

If you are on the waiting list for one or more citywide admission schools, your name will be entered in a second or even a third citywide lottery to fill the spaces in those schools once students accepted in the first round have made their choices and some have opted out. You should keep informed about these lotteries. While decisions for citywide admission schools are not made at the school level, it doesn’t hurt to let the principal know of your interest.

What is “directed admit?”

Once the selection overall process is completed, each District school with an 8th grade is asked to submit the names of several students who the school feels would benefit from attending Central or Girls High. Each region then submits two or three names each for Central and Girls to the Office of Student Placement, which makes the final decision. This affects only a very small number of students and only applies to these two schools.

Are there high schools that will help prepare me for a trade or career?

Yes, there are 97 state-approved Career and Technical Education programs in Philadelphia, some of which lead to a certificate or credential along with your diploma that can help you in the job market. State-approved programs are those in which students take academic and technical courses for three years in their chosen field. The programs are on the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board’s High Priority Occupation list, which indicates that the program is meeting the workforce development needs of the region. To see which schools offer these programs, check the school profiles listed in this guide.

I want to go to my neighborhood high school. Do any have special programs?

Many neighborhood high schools house special programs in such areas as health occupations, culinary arts, criminal justice, communications, graphics, and automotive technology. The District’s high school directory includes a summary by area of interest of where these programs are located.

Can I apply to a neighborhood high school in another area?

Yes. Keep in mind that students outside the feeder area are selected by lottery and only after all neighborhood students are accommodated.

Should students with IEPs apply to selective high schools?

All students are encouraged to apply to any high school that interests them and for which they meet the basic qualifications. A court decision called LeGare requires the District to maintain a minimum percentage of students with individualized education programs (IEPs) in selective schools. There are separate lotteries for special ed students (and English language learners) at the schools that have lotteries.

What are the rules for English language learners?

All schools are required to serve English language learners, and the District encourages ELL students to apply to selective schools. A court decision called Y.S. requires the District to maintain a minimum percentage of English language learners in selective schools and bars schools from denying qualified ELLs admission by claiming a lack of services.

Besides my counselor, where can I get help with high school placement?

At the Parent and Family Resource Centers. Applications, high school directories, and explanations of the policies and procedures for the voluntary selection process are available at six centers located around the city (see box). They can help you navigate the District’s website, where there are detailed school profiles.

Where can I find official information from the District?

At the website of the District’s Office of Student Placement. The District also publishes its own high school directory.

A version of this article in Spanish is on page 10.

From neighborhood schools, 1 in 4 made it to college

2012-05-16T11:19:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

There are some glimmers of progress. The percentage of Philadelphia high school graduates who enroll in college immediately after finishing school is on the rise, from 40 percent in 2008 to 44 percent last year.

"It’s low, but I definitely think we’re moving in the right direction," said Fran Newberg, the District’s deputy for accountability and technology

Looked at another way, though, it is evident that the "pipeline" running from the city’s public schools on to college remains broken. Only 36 percent of students who began 9th grade in fall 2005 – the high school class of 2009 – made it to any form of postsecondary education within six years.

At Philadelphia’s neighborhood schools, that figure drops to 25 percent, compared to 80 percent for the District’s special admission schools.

And a closer look at the performance of individual schools in an analysis conducted by the Notebook shows just how pronounced the disparities are among Philadelphia’s high schools.

At Julia R. Masterman High, one of the city’s elite special admission schools, 97 percent of entering 9th graders in 2005 made it to college, compared to only 11 percent from Kensington Culinary, one of the city’s struggling neighborhood schools.

"The starkness of that change when you look down the list is breathtaking, and it’s unacceptable," said Lori Shorr, the city’s chief education officer and an advisor to the District, after reviewing the school-by-school results.

"I don’t think we could be possibly be more stratified than we are right now."

Treasure trove of data

The new data come via the School District from the National Student Clearinghouse, which works with over 3,300 colleges and universities, enrolling over 96 percent of students in U.S. public and private institutions, to track students’ postsecondary education patterns. College enrollment figures include four-year and two-year institutions as well as some less-than-two-year institutions.

This year, for the first time, the District’s Office of Accountability agreed to share with the Notebook detailed NSC college enrollment records to allow for the analysis presented in this edition.

Besides the disparities in college-going rates between different types of high schools, there are also stark differences when the results are broken out by the students’ race and gender. Overall, males from the class of 2009 lagged females by 13 percentage points in college enrollment, the data show.

What the recently obtained information does not provide is a detailed look at how students fared after they got to college.

Last year, the District released NSC data showing that only 10 percent of Philadelphia public school students who entered 9th grade in 1999 went on to earn two- or four-year college degrees within a 10-year span. In that earlier cohort, only a minority of students who started college wound up earning a degree.

But an updated version of that analysis was not available this year.

The newly released data also do not include information on whether students who make it to college are taking credit-bearing classes or progressing towards a degree.

A preliminary analysis by the Notebook on whether students were staying in college did, however, show some evidence of persistence.

Looking citywide at the students who started out in the high school class of 2009, 80 percent of those who graduated high school and enrolled right away in college made it back for a second year. Neighborhood high school students did not lag by much here; 77 percent of those who enrolled directly in college came back for a second year.

Charter school success

The enrollment data show that Philadelphia’s charter schools sent 48 percent of their 2005 cohort of first-time 9th graders to college, a rate markedly higher than both Philadelphia’s neighborhood high schools and its citywide admission schools.

That figure does not include some recently established charters who have demonstrated success but did not have a 9th grade class in 2005.

"If [charters] truly were open enrollment, they are definitely doing something we need to explore and understand and study," said the District’s Newberg.

In recent years, postsecondary performance of students has emerged as an increasingly important measure of high schools’ success. The District now factors high schools’ college-going rates into schools’ ratings on its School Performance Index.

With growing skepticism about the meaning of scores on high-stakes standardized tests, the college enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse offer a new means of assessing how high schools are doing – a useful tool for policymakers and parents alike as the District continues its move towards a portfolio model.

The data presented in this edition were made available courtesy of the School District of Philadelphia’s Office of Accountability and Assessment. The Notebook would like to offer a special thanks to Rosemary Hughes and Yijing Huang of that office for their extensive support. Special thanks to Michelle Schmitt, who conducted the Notebook‘s analysis. Thanks to OpenDataPhilly for financial support and for sponsoring the Open Data Race in fall 2011, which was a catalyst for this project. For more details on the data, see the school-by-scool breakdown.

19 high-performing District schools to expand

2012-04-17T14:50:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

by Benjamin Herold for the Notebook and WHYY/NewsWorks

The District will add 2,272 seats across 19 high-performing traditional public schools beginning next September, officials announced Tuesday.

“This lets the city of Philadelphia know that the District is investing in the growth of high-quality, high-performing school options,” said Penny Nixon, chief academic officer.

A total of 1,802 seats will be added in 11 high schools, all of which are either special admission or citywide admission schools. In six elementary and two middle schools, 470 seats will be added. All of the schools are highly rated, with scores of 3 or better on the District’s 10-point School Performance Index (SPI) scale. On that scale, 1 is the top score.

Under the District’s plan, the Philadelphia High School for Girls will experience the single largest expansion, adding 334 students.

“We are more than ready for the challenge,” said Girls’ High principal Parthenia Moore, who hosted Tuesday’s announcement.

“The rigor that we have at our school will not be watered down in any way, shape, or form.”

E.M. Stanton Elementary, recently spared from closure after a vigorous advocacy effort by parents and supporters, will add 60 students. AMY Northwest, a special admission middle school, and Middle Years ~~Academy~~ Alternative, a citywide admission middle school, will each add 100 students.

Nixon said the cash-strapped District expects the expansion to be revenue-neutral, but exact costs won’t be known until next year’s school enrollments are finalized in October.

Because school budgets are tied to student enrollment, the 19 schools slated for expansion will receive additional resources. Girls’ High, for example, could add as many as 15 new teachers, Moore said.

Processes for selecting and enrolling new students will remain the same at the special admission and citywide admission schools involved. For next year, these schools will seek to pull extra students from their current crop of applicants, although Nixon said the application process could be opened back up if necessary.

The elementary school seats will be filled by highlighting these schools as available to families through the little-used school-choice provision under No Child Left Behind. This allows students in schools flagged for low achievement to transfer to better schools. Parents of eligible students will be notified by mail.

“The commitment is to make sure we fill every seat,” Nixon said.

She said she had been pushing for months to make Tuesday’s announcement a reality. The idea began in response to the District’s facilities master plan, through which officials hope to shed 40,000 “excess seats.” It gained steam with the School Reform Commission’s participation in the Philadelphia Great Schools Compact, which has set a goal of replacing or transforming 50,000 “low-performing seats” over the next five years.

“The [SRC] is clear that we want to focus on quality,” said Nixon. “This is just one of the steps.”

By comparison, the latest round of the District’s Renaissance Schools Initiative calls for shifting roughly 3,000 seats in low-performing traditional public schools over to outside management through conversion to charters.

Both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Philadelphia School Partnership have recently given money to support the expansion of high-quality school options in Philadelphia, with more funds possible in the near future.

But Nixon said there was no external funding to support Tuesday’s announcement.

“This is a District initiative,” she stressed.

Schools that will add seats

Elementary and middle schools

AMY Northwest (100 seats)
Middle Years ~~Academy~~ Alternative (100)
Nebinger (75)
E.M. Stanton (60)
Greenfield (50)
Fox Chase (30)
Greenberg (30)
Fell (25)

High schools

Girls’ High (334 seats)
Randolph Skills Center (300)
Philadelphia Military Academy @ Leeds (265)
Lankenau (163)
Saul (151)
Parkway Center City (152)
Academy at Palumbo (111)
Arts Academy at Rush (98)
Franklin Learning Center (98)
Carver High School of Engineering & Science (88)
CAPA (42)

Setting an example

2011-09-21T22:17:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

As a recently created high school preparing to graduate its first senior class, the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush in Northeast Philadelphia is just beginning to establish a sporting tradition.

If the school is lucky, it will someday have a legacy to equal that of its principal, Jessica Brown.

A three-time collegiate All-American in lacrosse and a standout field hockey player, Brown was inducted into Kenyon College’s athletic Hall of Fame in September.

“Jessica was certainly one of Kenyon’s most prolific field-sport athletes during her career, establishing long-standing records in both field hockey and lacrosse,” said Amy Williams, assistant athletics director for the college, located in Gambier, Ohio.

“That her stats still rank among Kenyon’s best today indicates the impact that she had on women’s athletics at Kenyon,” she said.

A Philadelphia native, Brown wants her students at Rush to learn the same lessons she did while competing at Kenyon and, before that, Germantown Friends School (GFS). So, for the past three years, she’s been working hard to make sure that her students have some of the same athletic opportunities that helped shape her.

“I think [sports] are just such a big part of the high school experience,” said Brown.

“School spirit, confidence-building, a sense of excitement – all of that is important to me.”

Creating a team spirit

Two weeks before the start of the new school year, the fruit of Brown’s labor was on display in Rush’s gleaming gymnasium.

Over two dozen girls were stretching and scrimmaging, hoping to earn a spot on the school’s first varsity volleyball team.

Rising senior Nicole Logue played on Rush’s junior varsity volleyball team last year and is poised to be a team captain this year. She laughed about how far the team has come in just two years.

“The first practice, it was just three girls running in the hallway,” said Logue.

“We didn’t even have any balls.”

Nevertheless, the girls quickly became a tight-knit group, said Logue’s likely co-captain, Mikeira Cole.

“They’re like my sisters,” said Cole.

That’s exactly the kind of camaraderie that their principal says made her own playing days so special.

“I was very close to my teammates,” said Brown, who captained both the lacrosse and field hockey teams at Kenyon during her senior year.

“I loved the whole idea of working together, galvanizing the team, getting everybody ready for the games.”

Finding a niche

Long before she was a college All-American, though, Brown was a little sister tagging along with her big brother to neighborhood street hockey games in Mount Airy.

“I was the girl who wanted to play, so they would just stick me in goal,” laughed Brown.

Brown attended Masterman for fifth and sixth grades then moved on to GFS.

Her first year at GFS, she signed up to play field hockey as a goalie.

“I looked at the situation, saw the competition, and said, ‘I’m not going to be as good as them my first year. I’ll be a goalie,’” explained Brown.

But she truly found her niche when she joined the lacrosse team as an attack wing. There, Brown could use her natural athletic ability – and finally try to score herself.

Her coach at Germantown Friends, Della Micah, remembers Brown well.

“What quickly stood out was her incredible work ethic,” said Micah.

“When she came to practice, she was all business.”

The lacrosse teams Brown played on at GFS were exceptional. In 1983, her junior year, they lost only two games.

Before Brown’s senior year, Micah took the team on a week-long tour of her native Britain.

“The competition was really strong, and just seeing the English countryside was an amazing experience,” said Brown.

“We ended up coming back and having an undefeated year.”

By the time she got to Kenyon, Brown was ready to step right in and start breaking records. A four-year starter, she set the school’s single season scoring mark as a senior, notching 50 goals.

“After racking up 50 goals and eight assists in the 1988 season,” Williams remembers, “Brown was named the NCAC Player of the Year.”

Building a school community

Now a fit 45-year-old, Brown said she hasn’t picked up a lacrosse stick in 20 years, preferring instead to take a run and do power yoga five times a week.

Looking back, Brown says her high school athletic exploits made her entire educational experience better.

“I didn’t look forward to every single class, but I always looked forward at the end of the day to being with teammates and the physical activity,” she said.

So far, Brown has succeeded in bringing similar opportunities to Rush.

Previously a middle school, Rush was closed in 2006, renovated to the tune of $25 million, and reopened in 2008 as a small, special admission high school with an arts focus.

Brown was hired as the school’s first principal. She threw herself into the job with her characteristic passion.

This year, the 531-student school will field six varsity or junior varsity teams, including boys’ and girls’ basketball, softball, baseball, and girls’ soccer.

And Brown is not done. One of her major goals this year is to raise independent funds to create a weight room for Rush.

“She’s just so supportive compared to other principals,” said Todd Corabi, a 14-year District veteran who serves as the school’s athletic director and coaches the girls’ soccer team.

“She really wants the school to be a community, and everybody responds.”

Admisión a la escuela superior: Preguntas comunes

2011-09-08T15:47:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

¿Cómo empiezo?

Habla con los adultos en tu vida, que incluyen maestros, consejeros y tus padres o encargados. Consigue una copia de la guía de escuelas intermedias del Distrito, en la cual explica cómo aprovechar al máximo los años de intermedia y determinar qué cosas te interesan. Luego, lee esta guía, consulta el directorio de escuelas superiores del Distrito y reúnete con tu consejero. Los estudiantes de séptimo y octavo grado deben ir a la High School Expo, que este año está programada en octubre.

¿Cuándo debo empezar a pensar en las opciones de escuela superior?

No más tarde del comienzo de 7mo grado. Las escuelas superiores toman en cuenta la asistencia, las calificaciones y las puntuaciones de exámenes desde séptimo grado cuando van a determinar quién está cualificado para admisión.

¿Cuál es la diferencia entre una escuela superior con admisión especial y una escuela superior con admisión abierta a toda la ciudad?

Las escuelas con admisión especial ponen la barra muy en alto, con puntuaciones mínimas en los exámenes y requisitos específicos en cuanto a las calificaciones y la asistencia. Las escuelas con admisión abierta a toda la ciudad le dan menos peso a las puntuaciones de examen pero de todos modos tienen estándares mínimos en cuanto a calificaciones, asistencia y disciplina. Los principales de las escuelas con admisión especial deciden quién será aceptado, mientras que las escuelas con admisión abierta a toda la ciudad ponen a todos los estudiantes cualificados en una lotería.

¿Qué hago si quiero ir a una escuela chárter?

A las escuelas chárter se les requiere llevar a cabo loterías si tienen más solicitudes que espacios disponibles. No se les permite seleccionar a sus estudiantes. Sin embargo, muchas tienen solicitudes detalladas y fechas límite para poder participar en las loterías. Si te interesa una escuela chárter, debes comunicarte con esa escuela directamente lo más pronto posible.

¿Cómo puedo averiguar los requisitos de admisión de una escuela?

Tu consejero puede explicarte los requisitos de admisión para cada escuela. Esta guía y el directorio de escuelas superiores del Distrito incluyen los requisitos.

¿Debo de todos modos solicitar admisión aunque no cumpla con los criterios exactos de una escuela selectiva?

Sí, pero únicamente si te acercaste mucho a cumplir los requisitos. A menudo admiten estudiantes que no cumplen con todos los criterios. Los principales de esas escuelas selectivas buscan recomendaciones de los consejeros y principales de las escuelas de los solicitantes. Las entrevistas también hacen mucha diferencia.

Ciertas escuelas tienen muchos solicitantes. ¿Cómo puedo mejorar mis probabilidades?

Hay escuelas en la ciudad que no son tan conocidas pero que tienen programas similares. Chequéalas también (en las páginas 6-7 hay más información sobre las probabilidades de ser admitido).

¿Debo visitar la escuela como parte del proceso de admisión?

Sí, para ver cómo se “siente” la escuela. Algunas escuelas permiten que un solicitante pase el día o parte del día con uno de sus estudiantes. Algunas requieren entrevistas o audiciones. Pregúntale a tu consejero.

Digamos que todas las escuelas que solicité me rechazaron. ¿Qué debo hacer?

Si te ponen en la lista de espera de una escuela con admisión especial, hay probabilidad de que te admitan. Mantente en comunicación con tu consejero y con la escuela a la que quieres ir. En el caso de admisión especial, cada escuela se encarga de su propia lista de espera.

Si estás en la lista de espera de una o más escuelas con admisión abierta, tu nombre se pondrá en una segunda y hasta tercera lotería para llenar los espacios después de que los estudiantes aceptados en la primera ronda hayan tomado una decisión y algunos hayan optado por ir a otra escuela. Debes mantenerte al tanto de esas loterías. Aunque la decisión de las escuelas con admisión abierta no se toma en la escuela misma, no sería mala idea dejarle saber al principal que tienes interés en su escuela.

¿Qué es una “admisión dirigida” (directed admit)?

Después de que el proceso general de selección termina, a cada escuela que tiene 8vo grado se le pide que le entregue a la región (o división académica) los nombres de varios estudiantes que la escuela considera se beneficiarían de asistir a la Escuela Superior Central o a la Girls High. Cada región entonces le presenta a la Oficina de Ubicación de Estudiantes dos o tres nombres para cada una de las escuelas (la Central y la Girls) y esa oficina toma la decisión final. Esto afecta únicamente a un número pequeño de estudiantes y sólo se aplica a estas dos escuelas.

Yo quiero asistir a la escuela superior de mi comunidad. ¿Esas escuelas tienen programas especiales?

Muchas escuelas superiores de la comunidad cuentan con programas especiales en áreas como ocupaciones de salud, artes culinarias, justicia criminal, comunicaciones, gráficas y tecnología automotriz. El directorio de escuelas superiores del Distrito incluye un resumen por área de interés que muestra dónde están ubicados esos programas.

¿Cómo averiguo si un programa de educación vocacional y técnica (CTE) otorga la certificación estatal?

En Filadelfia hay 88 programas de Educación Vocacional y Técnica aprobados por el estado. Los programas aprobados por el estado son aquellos en los que los estudiantes se matriculan en un programa académico y vocacional secuencial de tres años en el campo que seleccionaron. Los programas están en la lista de ocupaciones de alta prioridad (High Priority Occupation, HPO) de la Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, lo cual indica que el programa está cumpliendo con las necesidades de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral en esa región. Para ver cuáles escuelas ofrecen estos programas, consulta los perfiles que aparecen en esta guía. Los programas que tengan la marca tipográfica de puñal son los aprobados por el estado.

¿Puedo solicitar admisión a la escuela de otra comunidad?

Sí. Ten en cuenta que los estudiantes que no viven en esa área serán seleccionados por lotería solamente después de haber acomodado a todos los estudiantes que sí viven ahí.

¿Los estudiantes con IEPs pueden solicitar admisión a las escuelas superiores selectivas?

A todos los estudiantes se les alienta a solicitar cualquier escuela superior que les interese y para la cual cumplan las cualificaciones básicas. La decisión del tribunal en el caso LeGare requiere que el Distrito mantenga un porcentaje mínimo de estudiantes con programas individualizados de educación (IEPs) en las escuelas selectivas. Hay loterías separadas para los estudiantes de educación especial y los que están aprendiendo inglés en las escuelas con lotería.

¿Cuáles son las reglas para los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés (ELL)?

A los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés (ELLs) se les exhorta solicitar admisión a las escuelas selectivas. La decisión del tribunal en el caso Y.S. requiere que el Distrito mantenga un porcentaje mínimo de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en las escuelas selectivas y prohíbe que las escuelas les nieguen admisión a los ELLs cualificados alegando falta de servicios.

¿Puedo obtener ayuda en los Centros de Recursos para Padres y Familias?

En los Centros hay solicitudes, directorios de escuelas superiores, y explicaciones de las políticas y procedimientos para el proceso voluntario de selección. A los padres también se les dará acceso al sitio Web del Distrito, donde podrán conseguir los perfiles de las escuelas.

¿Dónde puedo encontrar la información oficial del Distrito?

En el sitio Web de la Oficina de Ubicación de Estudiantes del Distrito Escolar.

El Distrito también publica su propio directorio de escuelas superiores.

Getting into high school: Commonly asked questions

2011-09-01T21:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

How do I get started?

Talk to the adults in your life, including teachers, counselors, and parents or guardians. Get a copy of the District’s middle school guide, which gives advice about making the most of the middle years and sorting out your interests. Then, read this guide and the District’s high school directory, and meet with your counselor. Seventh and 8th graders should attend the High School Expo, scheduled this year in October.

When should I start thinking about high school choices?

No later than the beginning of 7th grade. High schools look at attendance, grades, and test scores from that year in determining who is qualified to attend.

What is the difference between a special admission and a citywide admission high school?

What if I want to go to a charter school?

Charter schools are required to conduct lotteries if they have more applicants than spaces. They are not permitted to pick and choose their students. However, many have detailed applications and deadlines in order to be entered into the lotteries. If you are interested in a charter school, you should contact that school directly as early as you can.

How can I find out the admissions requirements of a school?

Your counselor can help explain the admission requirements for each school. This guide and the District’s high school directory include the requirements.

If I don’t meet the exact criteria of a selective school, should I apply anyway?

Certain schools have lots of applicants – how can I improve my chances?

There are schools in the city that are not as well known but may have similar programs. Check them out (more on the odds of getting admitted).

Should I visit the school as part of the admission process?

Yes, to get the “feel” of a school. Some schools allow applicants to shadow students for all or part of a day. Some require interviews or auditions. Check with your counselor.

If I get rejected from all my choices, what should I do?

If you get on the waiting list of a special admission school, there is a chance that you will be admitted. You should keep in touch with your counselor and with the school you want to attend. For special admission, individual schools manage their own waiting lists.

If you are on the waiting list for one or more citywide admission schools, your name will be entered in a second or even a third lottery to fill the spaces in those schools once students accepted in the first round have made their choices and some have opted out. You should keep informed about these lotteries. While decisions for citywide admission schools are not made at the school level, it doesn’t hurt to let the principal know of your interest.

What is “directed admit?”

Once the selection overall process is completed, each school with an 8th grade is asked to submit to the region, or academic division, the names of several students who the school feels would benefit from attending Central or Girls High. Each region then submits two or three names each for Central and Girls to the Office of Student Placement, which makes the final decision. This affects only a very small number of students and only applies to these two schools.

I want to go to my neighborhood high school. Do any have special programs?

How do I find out whether a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program leads to state certification?

There are 88 state-approved Career and Technical Education programs in Philadelphia. State-approved programs are those in which students are enrolled in a three-year sequential academic and technical program in their chosen field. The programs are on the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board’s High Priority Occupation (HPO) list, which indicates that the program is meeting the workforce development needs of the region. To see which schools offer these programs, check the school profiles listed in this guide. Those programs that are marked with a dagger are state-approved.

Can I apply to a neighborhood high school in another area?

Yes. Keep in mind that students outside the feeder area are selected by lottery and only after all neighborhood students are accommodated.

Should students with IEPs apply to selective high schools?

What are the rules for English language learners?

English language learners are encouraged to apply to selective schools. A court decision called Y.S. requires the District to maintain a minimum percentage of English language learners in selective schools and bars schools from denying qualified ELLs admission by claiming a lack of services.

Can I get help with high school placement at the Parent and Family Resource Centers?

Applications, high school directories, and explanations of the policies and procedures for the voluntary selection process are available there. Parents will also be given access to the District’s website where they can obtain school profiles.

Where can I find official information from the District?

At the website of the School District’s Office of Student Placement. The District also publishes its own high school directory.

A version of this article is also available en español.

A timeline for choosing

2011-09-01T21:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

September – October

Counselors distribute high school application forms, directory, and materials.
District holds High School Expo – this year it is Oct. 22 – Oct. 23 at School District headquarters, 440 N. Broad St.
Non-public students can obtain materials at the Expo or from the Office of Student Placement.
Families research schools.
8th grade counselors may hold information sessions for parents and students to help them choose schools and fill out the application form. Parents should keep in touch with counselors.

September – March

Some high schools allow prospective applicants to visit and shadow students. Families should contact schools directly.

By October 28

Students select up to 5 schools and return application form, signed by parent or guardian, to their school counselor. Applications may be submitted as early as Sept. 23.
8th grade counselor enters application information into a networked computer system.
Non-public school students submit applications directly to the District’s Office of Student Placement.

November – January

Selective high schools begin to evaluate applications.
Selective schools begin to conduct interviews and auditions. Some auditions and interviews are by invitation only and these schools only send out notifications, not rejections. Other schools interview all applicants but may send letters with date and time to counselors, not students (if a student has a conflict, s/he must reschedule). Some schools expect students to take the initiative in scheduling interviews.
Students should regularly consult counselors to keep on top of their applications.

January – March

Special admission schools make acceptance, rejection, and wait-list decisions.
Citywide schools choose the students who qualify to enter into the admissions lottery.
The District Office of Student Placement runs three separate lotteries (for general education, special education, ELL) to determine which students are accepted to citywide schools and to neighborhood schools with outside applicants.

March

Notification letters are sent to students who have been accepted to one or more schools.

March – April

Students with multiple acceptances are expected to choose within two weeks and submit a form with their choice to the 8th grade counselor. They are urged to make timely decisions so the second round of placements can begin. Non-public school students send their choice directly to the Office of Student Placement.

Mid-April

After “multiple acceptance” students pick their schools, final letters are sent to all students that indicate where they’ve been accepted, not accepted, or waitlisted.

April – September

Additional lotteries are conducted to fill remaining slots.
Parents, counselors, and principals can advocate on behalf of students originally wait-listed or disapproved through phone calls and recommendation letters.
Additional letters are sent to remaining applicants, informing them of subsequent decisions. In this round of letters, students are admitted to only one school.

Students face long odds at many popular schools

2011-09-01T21:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

So, what are your chances of being admitted to a particular high school?

By comparing the number of applicants to the number of students accepted, the Notebook was able to compare the District’s high schools on how selective they are.

This information, while not widely known, is potentially vital to applicants. Competition is stiff to get into the District’s special and citywide admissions schools. But each year thousands of students unknowingly apply to schools where their chances of getting in may be lower than 1 percent. Eighth graders get to list just five schools on their application, and need to be strategic in using those options.

Surprisingly, Central High School, despite its high admission standards, has much better odds for applicants than many of the other selective schools.

The selective school that accepted the smallest percentage of applicants, 7 percent, was Parkway Center City, followed closely by School of the Future at 8 percent, and Science Leadership Academy and Bodine at 9 percent.

Masterman’s odds are similarly slim overall – and become virtually nil for anyone who isn’t already a middle-school student there.

The chances of Masterman 8th graders being able to continue into the much smaller high school program are about 50-50, but these students take nearly all available slots.

Principal Marge Neff said that this year, only seven or eight students out of about 1,200 applicants from outside Masterman were accepted for 9th grade. That’s an acceptance rate of less than 1 percent for outsiders.

Besides having high test scores and grades, outside applicants to Masterman must have already taken Algebra 1 and one year of either French or Spanish, Neff said.

"We look at all the applications, but many don’t meet the criteria," Neff said. "The ones that did qualify were wait-listed and a few were accepted."

The Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP) also fills much of its 9th grade of 66 students from the ranks of its middle school. The school received more than 600 applications. Coming from the outside, the odds of getting in are much worse than one in 10.

Central is most popular

Central, which accepts the largest freshman class of all the selective schools, by far has the most applicants — well over 4,000. But since its freshman class has more than 600 students, the odds of being accepted are fairly high – nearly one in four – greater than schools like Dobbins and Saul.

Central President Sheldon Pavel said that he accepted 1,016 students for 9th grade. Of that number 613 enrolled.

Central’s requirements are among the most stringent – standardized test scores above the 88th percentile, all As and Bs, the ability to write a coherent essay, few absences and latenesses, and a good disciplinary record.

"If you meet the requirements, you will be accepted," said Pavel. "This school is a microcosm of democracy. My position is that if kids are qualified, I want them to come. I will find a place."

A large portion of Central’s applicants are from outside the public school system. Pavel said that students from 383 schools – including some from abroad – applied, and 176 schools are represented among the new enrollees.

Girls High also has a higher admission rate than many other schools – 20 percent. Of course, because it is single-sex, the applicant pool is cut nearly in half.

A majority of the selective and citywide schools have acceptance rates of 15 percent or less. Communications Tech is the only District school where more than half the applicants get in. Three others have odds of admission better than 30 percent: the Arts Academy at Rush, Robeson High School for Human Services, and Motivation High School.

After Central, the schools in greatest demand are Franklin Learning Center, Swenson, High School of the Future, Science Leadership Academy, CAPA, Mastbaum, Dobbins, Bok, and Parkway Center City. All these attracted more than 2,000 applicants last year. Bodine’s application count came in at just under that number.

Neighborhood schools

Students also apply to attend neighborhood high schools outside their area.

The most popular is Northeast, where more than 1,500 students applied. Unfortunately, Northeast is overcrowded, and so in 2010 none of those applicants were accepted to the high school. Northeast houses an aerospace magnet program which takes students from all over the city in a separate admissions process. Nearly 1,500 students applied to that, and more than 200 were accepted – a rate of 14 percent.

In all, 18 neighborhood high schools accepted no transfers. Lincoln High School turned away all 634 of its applicants, and Edison turned away all 511.

The most popular neighborhood high school that did accept applicants is Washington High in the far Northeast. It had more than 700 out-of-area applicants, but it took nearly 100, for an acceptance rate of 13 percent.

Ackerman — no changes coming to selective admissions

2010-03-18T20:59:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

In what appears to be a sudden reversal, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman has "no intention" of making any changes to the way students are admitted to the District’s most selective schools. In fact, said her spokesman, she had never even seen the draft policy that was to have been the basis of a parent meeting Thursday night to get feedback on the proposed changes. That meeting was cancelled the day before it was to take place.

"Dr. Ackerman has been clear that as of today, this is not something she is looking to doing," said spokesman Fernando Gallard. "She is not looking at changing the admission policy of magnet or special admit schools. It is not on her priority list."

Ackerman, who has said in the past that she has never seen such a tiered high school admissions policy as that which exists in Philadelphia, ducked for cover quickly after the very predictable and intense outcry that has been building since she directed her staff to review the current policy. She did this after reading a report by Research for Action that raised questions about the fairness of the process and concluded that it further destabilized already struggling neighborhood high schools.

When the RFA report was released in February, Ackerman certainly made it sound like she would jump right on it and seemed grateful for the data that backed what her observations had led her to conclude.

"I agree with most of the findings. The timing of this report could not have been any better, as we have already identified the revamping of the high school admission process as a priority," she said.

She went on: "I asked my executive team to fully review the recommendations in the study and to provide me with a comprehensive action plan by early March that will detail how we should move forward to improve our students’ transition into high school."

The draft proposal, Gallard said, was developed by a committee of principals under the direction of Chief of School Operations John Frangipani, himself a former principal of Masterman, the most selective school in the city. It would have replaced the current process, in which schools set criteria and principals decide whom to admit, with a centralized "point" system. That system would have given weights to other factors besides test scores, grades and behavior, including zip code and income level, with the idea of promoting more ethnic and socio-economic diversity in these schools.

The draft, which the Notebook has seen, suggested giving 200 points for diversity on a 1000-point scale — and also relying on auditions rather than standardized test scores in the specialized arts schools like CAPA, Girard Academic Music Program, and the new Arts Academy at Rush.

On Thursday, The Inquirer ran a front-page story saying flatly that Ackerman "was proposing major changes" and showcasing the fears (and clout) of mostly White, middle class parents who could be affected the most by any move to make the city’s most coveted schools accessible to a larger pool of students.

The Research for Action report that found the drawn-out high school choice process, in which some students are admitted to several schools but most get into none, makes 9th grade transition more difficult for the majority of students who end up in the neighborhood schools. For most students, it said the District’s "choice" policy was no choice at all.

RFA’s research showed that Asians are the most likely to enroll at a school to which they applied and Latinos the least likely. Whites and Blacks applied at similar rates, but Whites were far more likely to enroll at a school of choice.

While 70 percent of 8th graders try to get into schools other than their local neighborhood school, RFA found, 55 percent of the applicants wind up back at the school they tried to escape.

The report strongly urged that the process be reviewed, especially to shorten the timeline, and to "distribute students with different achievement levels and different learning needs across a broader range of schools."

Gallard said that Ackerman was "never briefed" on the proposed new policy developed by her staff before the parent meeting, billed as a "focus group," was scheduled. He also said that — despite her own directive — Ackerman had "no clue" Frangipani’s group "was headed that way in making recommendations to specifically change the admission policy."

He would not say whether a point system is off the table forever. "She said we’re not looking at any point system now. She did not come out and say, ‘I’m rejecting a point system.’"

The opposition included groups of parents from Masterman and Science Leadership Academy, who basically said there is no need to fix a system that is "not broken," and that maintaining the current process is essential to keeping the middle class in the city. One of their arguments is that these schools are quite diverse; Masterman, for instance, is about 45 percent white, 30 percent African-American, 17 percent Asian and 6 percent Latino. But their demographic breakdown generally does not reflect the ethnic composition of the District’s enrollment as a whole, which is 61 percent African-American, 17 percent Latino, 13 percent white, and 6 percent Asian.

Others do acknowledge that the current system is flawed. "I think something should be done, but I also understand this is a difficult discussion," said Harold Jordan, a Masterman parent (and member of the Notebook‘s leadership board) who was not part of the opposition. "It’s partly about what other choices are acceptable for people."

At the same time, he said, "the defense of the status quo is a little bit over the top. I don’t agree with that. I read the RFA report, and it seems like they made reasonable recommendations. They might make it so the process works a little better for a slightly larger segment of the families and population."

Ackerman has run into the same buzz saw that David Hornbeck did more than a decade ago when he suggested changing some admissions criteria to give a broader group of students access to the city’s most selective programs and schools. He was rewarded with his only public disagreement with then-Mayor Ed Rendell, who otherwise supported Hornbeck even in his most beleaguered moments.

So it appears that whatever Ackerman’s original intentions, changing high school admissions policy is not something that she will be able to seriously tackle any time soon.

Struggles at School of the Future

2010-02-05T19:18:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Starting a little more than a year ago, I got involved in a project sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute to compile a book about Philadelphia’s School of the Future, the partnership between Microsoft and the District to create a new kind of urban high school.

My article adapted from the work done for the book by me and others has just been posted on the website of Education Next.

Plagued by leadership turnover and hampered by its admirable commitment to being a neighborhood rather than a magnet school, SOF has had its struggles in trying to break the mold.

Although it recruited within the parameters of the Philadelphia system, it landed a young, dynamic team of educators. Many of the new, first-time teachers on the staff have resumes that look very much like Teach for America recruits, except that they have made the career commitment to be teachers. They and others have worked very hard to create a new model that fundamentally alters the high school experience for urban youth to make it more relevant and engaging. They have done some remarkable things.

But with disappointing test scores, the pressure has been consistent to pull back and adopt a more conventional approach.

As the article points out, true innovation is very difficult. I think this story has important lessons for “turnaround,” even though SOF is a start-up school. Microsoft is not a “school manager,” but instead a partner in an effort to create an engaging and progressive curriculum that takes advantage of the latest technology.

The idea, much like Parkway in the 1970’s, was to reshape the urban high school experience for the typical student – and do it within the system, not outside of it. In its own way, again like Parkway, it aspired to be a "school without walls," by taking full advantage of our virtual world and promoting a concept of education that was not contained by the school walls but engaged fully with its surrounding community through real-world projects.

I tried to engage Superintendent Arlene Ackerman to talk about SOF and the implications of its experiences for promoting real school reform. Disappointingly, she never found the time.

Conozca sus derechos

2009-09-09T16:52:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Querer asistir a una de las escuelas superiores más destacadas de la ciudad puede ser una proposición inalcanzable para los estudiantes con necesidades especiales y sus padres.

Pocos de los estudiantes de educación especial o ELL (English Language Learners) que empezarán 9no grado este otoño han solicitado a las escuelas más populares, y muchos menos han sido aceptados.

La Superintendente Arlene Ackerman dice que su personal está analizando más de cerca los criterios de admisión de los 18 programas de admisión especial del Distrito y de 13 escuelas superiores con admisión a toda la ciudad y que a las escuelas se les está presionando para que tengan más representación de educación especial y ELLs.

“No se si es discriminación intencional, pero en algunas de nuestras escuelas magnet no se ven estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés”, dijo Ackerman en una entrevista con los editores del Notebook.

Este asunto no es nuevo. De hecho, el Distrito acordó en 1995 que establecería objetivos de admisión para los estudiantes de educación especial en las escuelas magnet y de admisión a toda la ciudad en un caso de tribunal conocido como LeGare, y después le aplicó metas similares a los estudiantes ELL. Para las escuelas de admisión especial tales como la Central, Masterman y la Superior de Niñas, el objetivo acordado es matricular 7 por ciento de estudiantes de educación especial y 7 por ciento de estudiantes ELL. Las escuelas que aceptan estudiantes de toda la ciudad, como Bok, Constitución y Saul, tienen el objetivo de admitir 10 por ciento de educación especial y 7 por ciento de ELL.

Pero estas escuelas muy raramente logran cumplir estos objetivos. Aunque los datos recientes sugieren una leve tendencia de aumento en el número de admisiones en las escuelas de admisión especial, solamente cuatro de éstas escuelas y programas informaron haber cumplido con el objetivo de 7 por ciento de ELL en julio, y solamente cinco cumplieron el mismo objetivo en las admisiones de educación especial.

Entre las escuelas de admisión abierta a toda la ciudad, ocho de las 14 escuelas cumplieron con el objetivo LeGare de 10 por ciento de estudiantes de educación especial. Sólo cinco de las 14 escuelas lograron el objetivo de 7 por ciento de estudiantes ELL.

Los datos del Distrito muestran que en el 2007-2008 más del 80 por ciento de estudiantes de educación especial matriculados en las escuelas de la comunidad, en comparación de 66 por ciento de los estudiantes regulares. Las escuelas con admisión abierta a toda la ciudad aceptan más estudiantes IEP y ELL que las de admisión especial, las cuales requieren un expediente académico excelente.

La madre activista June Bey de West Philadelphia tiene un hijo (Xavier) en educación especial; él seleccionó tres escuelas superiores pero no fue aceptado a ninguna. Bey les aconseja a los padres a empezar a estudiar las escuelas superiores cuando sus hijos estén en el 6to grado.

“Vayan a las ferias de escuelas superiores en el otoño. Hablen con los representantes de cada escuela para ver cuán sensitivos son y qué apoyos tienen para sus hijos. No tengan miedo de solicitar a las escuelas que les gusten”, dijo Bey.

También dijo que se siente frustrada con el proceso de apelaciones que ocurrió después. Si un estudiante no es aceptado, los padres pueden pedir una audiencia bajo el Proceso Imparcial de Revisión LeGare, pero no se les permite participar mucho.

“No se tiene la oportunidad de abogar así que uno no puede dar una mejor idea de lo su hijo/a es capaz de hacer”, dijo Bey.

Bey finalmente matriculó a Xavier en la Escuela Superior George Washington. La opción terminó siendo una “bendición inesperada” porque Xavier (que ahora tiene 16 años y está en 11mo grado) está teniendo una buena experiencia, dijo Bey.

“Es una escuela superior completa… una excelente oportunidad para ver cómo él va a encajar en la sociedad cuando se gradúe”, dijo ella.

El Distrito ofrece consejos para los padres de educación especial/ELL en inglés, español y chino, incluyendo asesoría para llevar cuenta de la asistencia, las notas y la conducta – todos criterios importantes en el proceso de admisión a la escuela superior.

El Distrito recomienda investigar las varias escuelas superiores asistiendo a la High School Expo, que será llevada a cabo durante el último fin de semana de septiembre en el Liacouras Center de la Temple University, y hablando con los consejeros de las escuelas que parezcan ser las más adecuadas.

El Distrito también les recuerda a los padres que le envíen una nota al maestro cuando su hijo/a se ausente de la escuela explicando la ausencia para que pueda ser marcada como “excusada”. Los expedientes de asistencia son importantes al solicitar a las escuelas superiores.

Diane Smith de South Philadelphia dijo que temía por la seguridad de su hijo Mark en la Escuela Superior South Philadelphia, pero según Smith, “nunca se nos dio la oportunidad ” de solicitar a las escuelas superiores de admisión especial o de admisión abierta a toda la ciudad. Mark, de 14 años y autista, solicitó y fue aceptado por lotería a la Mastery Charter School – Thomas Campus.

Mastery analizó las necesidades de Mark y recientemente aprobó su colocación en la escuela Delta, una escuela privada aprobada con apoyo extensivo para el autismo. “Es una escuela maravillosa”, dijo Smith alegremente.

Para los padres inmigrantes “el asunto de la tener opciones de escuela superior se está viendo un poco más frecuentemente”, dijo Zac Steele, un organizador de JUNTOS en South Philadelphia.

Al mismo tiempo, hay muchos padres que no están al tanto de las opciones. “Los consejeros distribuyen los formularios, pero la comunicación con los padres no ocurre realmente”, dijo Steele. “Con mayor frecuencia las familias no saben que hay un formulario, ni que hay opciones”.

El pasado otoño el Notebook informó que los estudiantes ELL prácticamente están ausentes de la mayoría de las escuelas académicamente selectivas del Distrito. Tres cuartas partes de los ELL estaban en solamente nueve de las 62 escuelas superiores de la ciudad, la mayoría de ellas en listas por tener bajo desempeño o ser persistentemente peligrosas.

Sin embargo, LeTretta Jones (directora de ubicación de estudiantes del Distrito) dijo que los consejeros tienen el deber de promover la admisión de los estudiantes ELL y de educación especial a las escuelas de admisión especial y de admisión abierta a toda la ciudad. “Creemos que estos estudiantes pueden ser exitosos en estas escuelas. Si hablan un idioma diferente, quizás no están obteniendo buenas puntuaciones en los exámenes. Pero podemos fijarnos en las notas, en su funcionamiento, y queremos hacer una excepción," dijo Jones. “En realidad, se requiere abogar."

Len Rieser, co-director del Education Law Center, dijo que los padres inmigrantes típicamente no saben sobre las escuelas de admisión especial.

El proceso “es tan incomprensible para ellos. El que es nativo de Filadelfia sabe que hay algunas escuelas elite en las que los estudiantes entran de alguna manera," dijo Rieser. “Para los padres inmigrantes es un misterio."

Al seleccionar la escuela superior, la oportunidad no es la misma para todos

2009-09-09T16:47:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Con la reciente creación de las nuevas y pequeñas escuelas superiores de tema especializado y el continuo crecimiento del movimiento de escuelas chárter, los estudiantes de Filadelfia tienen muchas más opciones de escuela superior que nunca antes.

Pero tener más opciones no ha significado que la mayoría de los estudiantes serán admitidos a las escuelas de su preferencia, ni que las opciones disponibles satisfacen las necesidades de ellos.

De hecho, más o menos el 58 por ciento de los estudiantes de escuela superior están matriculados en escuelas que no escogieron, de acuerdo con un análisis de los datos del Distrito Escolar hecho por Research for Action. Las escuelas más deseadas, inclusive algunas chárter, aceptan un pequeño porcentaje de los que solicitan. Los estudiantes con desempeño promedio y los que tienen dificultades todavía no tienen suficientes opciones accesibles o atractivas para ellos.

“Si no eres destacado, tus opciones son limitadas – seamos honestos al respecto”, dijo Wilfredo Ortíz, subdirector de la Oficina de Consejería Académica y Estándares de Promoción. “Y si te fijas en los estudiantes del Distrito que son avanzados o destacados, es un número menor de estudiantes”.

Casi el 80 por ciento de los estudiantes de 8vo grado del Distrito solicitan admisión a otra escuela que no es la de su comunidad. Aparte de eso, muchos también solicitan admisión a las escuelas chárter.

Este proceso de solicitud y selección de las escuelas del Distrito es complicado y no fácil de entender, y la experiencia de cada estudiante es sumamente diferente. Incluir a las chárter en la mezcla, con sus solicitudes individuales, sólo ha hecho que el laberinto sea más complicado.

Algunos estudiantes – en su mayoría los que tienen los mejores expedientes académicos – son aceptados en todas las escuelas que seleccionaron en su solicitud del Distrito, mientras que otros no son aceptados a ninguna. Algunos tienen padres y consejeros que les guían y abogan por ellos, mientras que otros obtienen poca o ninguna ayuda.

El acceso de los estudiantes y padres a buena información sobre las escuelas y los programas es ampliamente variado. No hay un solo lugar o centro en el que toda esta información esté fácilmente disponible, y algunas etapas del proceso de solicitud no tienen fechas límite consistentes.

Los funcionarios del Distrito dicen que asegurarse de que las familias estén informadas es labor de los consejeros en los grados K-8 y en las escuelas intermedias. Sin embargo, reconoció Ortíz, hasta ahora los consejeros no han tenido una guía sobre qué exactamente tienen que hacer para orientar a los estudiantes de octavo grado. Sin directrices, los consejeros ven sus responsabilidades de manera diferente. Algunos son más proactivos para acercarse a los estudiantes y padres, mientras que otros esperan que ellos pidan ayuda.

No está claro si los consejeros deben ayudarles a los estudiantes a completar las solicitudes para las escuelas chárter. Algunos estudiantes entrevistados dijeron que sus consejeros no les ayudaron a través de ese proceso.

La Superintendente Arlene Ackerman ha dicho que a ella le preocupa que el proceso de selección de escuela superior sea justo para todos los estudiantes, y los funcionarios del Distrito tienen planes de organizar un grupo para considerar posibles cambios. Una posibilidad, dijeron, es moverse a un sistema más parecido al de la Ciudad de Nueva York, en el que los estudiantes listan sus escuelas en orden de preferencia y son asignados a sólo una escuela – la opción más alta que los acepte.

Sin embargo, tal cambio sería controversial; un intento anterior de hacerlo causó oposición de algunos grupos de padres.

La investigación de la RFA ha encontrado que el 20 por ciento de los estudiantes son aceptados a más de una escuela. Todos esos espacios se ocupan por semanas mientras estos estudiantes seleccionan su escuela. “Si te aceptan en cinco escuelas, estás ocupando un espacio en todas las cinco”, dijo LeTretta Jones, Directora de la Oficina de Ubicación de Estudiantes.

Jones piensa que revisar el proceso lo simplificaría y lo haría más equitativo. “Podríamos decir, ‘tú vas para la Central’, y pum, eso abre los otros espacios para otros estudiantes”, dijo ella. Los economistas de Columbia University que diseñaron el sistema de Nueva York señalaron que “en un sistema sin exceso de capacidad, el costo de darles múltiples ofertas a algunos estudiantes significa que múltiples estudiantes no reciben ninguna”,

Tres tipos de escuelas

En el proceso de selección de escuela superior del Distrito, hay tres tipos de escuelas. Las 14 escuelas de admisión especial tienen los criterios académicos más estrictos y la mayor discreción sobre a quién aceptar. Hay 17 escuelas de admisión a toda la ciudad cuyos criterios son menos estrictos y seleccionan a los estudiantes mediante lotería después de eliminar a los que no cualifican. A las 31 escuelas de la comunidad se les requiere matricular a todos los estudiantes que vivan dentro de sus límites geográficos, incluyendo a los estudiantes que regresen de escuelas de disciplina o de la cárcel. Si sobra espacio, las escuelas de la comunidad también admiten a estudiantes de fuera de sus límites mediante una lotería.

En base a una revisión de los datos del 2007-2008 provistos por el Distrito, la RFA encontró que los estudiantes asiáticos y blancos tenían más probabilidad de solicitar a las escuelas de admisión especial que los negros y los latinos. Al mismo tiempo, a las escuelas de admisión abierta y de la comunidad solicitó un porcentaje más alto de negros y latinos que de blancos y asiáticos. En general, menos de la mitad de los solicitantes lograron admisión a siquiera una escuela, mientras que los estudiantes asiáticos y blancos más probablemente fueron admitidos a una de sus escuelas de preferencia.

La RFA también encontró que los estudiantes no tienen que satisfacer todos los criterios de admisión para ser aceptados a una escuela. Por ejemplo, los datos mostraron que sólo un pequeño porcentaje de solicitantes realmente cumplió al pie de la letra todos los requisitos de las escuelas más selectas de la ciudad – requisitos que incluyen puntuaciones de exámenes, notas, asistencia y expedientes de conducta. Según el análisis de la RFA, muchos estudiantes “no cualificados” en papel fueron admitidos a estas escuelas. Más o menos un 30 por ciento de los solicitantes que no cumplieron todos los criterios para ninguna escuela de admisión especial terminaron en una de todos modos, y 19 por ciento de los estudiantes que no cumplieron los criterios de las escuelas de admisión a toda la ciudad se matricularon en una, lo que significa que las escuelas tienen bastante discreción para tomar decisiones.

Los estudiantes pueden solicitar hasta cinco escuelas del Distrito y a todas las chárter que quieran. Pero el proceso es totalmente aparte, algo que no todas las familias entienden.

El proceso de solicitud a las escuelas superiores del Distrito comienza en septiembre. En ese momento se espera que los consejeros les distribuyan el directorio de escuelas y las solicitudes a los estudiantes de 8vo grado y el Distrito lleva a cabo la High School Expo, una exposición de escuelas superiores en la que los estudiantes y padres pueden aprender más sobre cada escuela. Los estudiantes que quieren solicitar a una o más de las escuelas superiores del Distrito llenan y firman un solo formulario de solicitud que entonces le entregan a su orientador de octavo grado.

Pero ese proceso no le aplica a las 27 escuelas chárter que tienen grados de escuela superior. Estas escuelas tienen que aceptar a los estudiantes por lotería si tienen más solicitudes que espacios, pero cada una tiene su propio formulario de solicitud y fecha límite y además puede imponer otros requisitos, tales como asistir a un open house o ser entrevistado. Los padres tienen que comunicarse con cada escuela chárter individualmente para conseguir una solicitud y obtener información sobre el proceso de admisión.

El sistema de selección

Algunos consejeros de escuelas llevan a cabo una sesión de información y esperan que los padres de 8vo grado vengan, y después solamente les dan seguimiento a los que muestren interés. Otros requieren reunirse individualmente con cada estudiante para discutir sus opciones. Otros les entregan el formulario y el Directorio de Escuelas Superiores a los estudiantes y hacen muy poco más para ayudar a las familias.

El informe de la RFA encontró que además de proveer información, algunos consejeros activamente abogan por los estudiantes llamando a los consejeros y principales de las escuelas superiores, aún después de que las decisiones se hayan hecho – una práctica que probablemente es más efectiva en las escuelas en las que los principales y otros líderes escolares tienen amplia discreción en las decisiones de admisión.

En la primavera, los estudiantes reciben cartas del Distrito indicando si fueron aceptados en alguna de sus cinco escuelas elegidas. Los estudiantes aceptados en más de una escuela reciben las cartas primero y tienen dos semanas para seleccionar una. Después de eso se abren más espacios y se envía una segunda ronda de cartas. Si a eso se le añade la posibilidad de ser aceptado por una escuela chárter, las cosas se ponen sumamente complicadas.

El Directorio de Escuelas Superiores publicado anualmente muestra la información sobre las escuelas, pero no les dice a los padres cuáles son los pasos que tienen que tomar para participar en el proceso. En años anteriores el Directorio tampoco ha incluido un itinerario con las fechas límite y clave. Por ejemplo, la mayoría de las escuelas con admisión abierta a toda la ciudad requieren que los estudiantes vengan a una entrevista o a un open house, pero los estudiantes no saben para qué fecha deberían haber recibido notificación sobre ese segundo paso.

Jones dijo que el Distrito está preparando una nueva guía de escuela intermedia para los estudiantes en 6to y 7mo grado que explicará más claramente, por ejemplo, que el expediente académico y de conducta de 7mo grado es el que determinará las opciones de escuela superior para el estudiante.

Los consejeros también varían mucho en cuanto a sus conocimientos sobre lo que las escuelas superiores ofrecen, en su habilidad y disponibilidad para abogar por los estudiantes, y en el número de responsabilidades que tienen en la escuela. Usando dinero del estímulo federal, Ackerman está contratando más consejeros para 7mo y 8vo grado. Ortíz dijo que los nuevos consejeros reducirán el número de estudiantes por orientador y mejorará los servicios para las familias. También dijo que su oficina tiene planes de establecer estándares para los consejeros y supervisar su labor más de cerca.

Sin embargo, los funcionarios del Distrito dicen que los consejeros sólo son parcialmente responsables y que los padres deben estar ‘alerta’ a obtener información y mantenerse al tanto de lo que tienen que hacer.

Muy pronto, el estresante proceso comenzará de nuevo. La High School Expo de este año está programada para el 25, 26 y 27 de septiembre en el Liacouras Center de Temple University. La fecha límite para presentar las solicitudes es el 30 de octubre.

Cuando regresaron a la escuela este año, los estudiantes encontraron un grupo más grande de consejeros que les pueden ayudar a entenderlo todo. Pero los cambios más importantes probablemente no ocurrirán antes del próximo año.

En cualquier caso, Ortíz dijo: “Necesitamos enfocarnos en cómo hacer el proceso más sencillo para que todos lo entiendan mejor”.

Transferring schools: what you need to know

2009-09-02T12:28:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

NOTEBOOK: You’re a student in the District who wants to go to a different school from the one that you’re in. How do you do that?

JONES: The first [path] is a voluntary transfer program, which is an annual process. Students can file an application beginning the third Monday in September. And we take those applications through the final Friday in October for a transfer for the following school year. Voluntary transfer is by far the most common form of transfer. [The voluntary transfer process has taken the place of the old EH-36 and EH-38 processes.]

NOTEBOOK: Okay. So, that’s number one. Now the second.

JONES: The District has a process called Transfer Due to Extenuating Circumstances. That form is called the EH-36E. Say a child is in school A, and in October of the current year some problem occurs. It could be [related to] school safety. [The potential circumstances are] actually listed on the back of the [form]. [The student] would fill out a 36-E. We request that some type of documentation is attached to substantiate the reason or the need for transfer under this category. And that would be a serious incident report, a police report. Even if it’s not a serious incident report, the school is aware of it, the principal can confirm that, yes, this is a valid request, etc. Then that form goes to the regional office. It’s initiated at the school by the parent. The principal makes a comment that he forwards to the regional office. The regional office looks at that request. If they validate it as indeed extenuating, they then could approve a transfer to another school.

NOTEBOOK: When are these transfers filed?

JONES: At any time during the course of a school year.

The EH-36E form is also used for the [No Child Left Behind} NCLB Unsafe Schools Act. If a school is designated as a persistently dangerous school [this year, the state has labeled 15 high schools and 10 middle schools “persistently dangerous’], parents may request to opt out of the persistently dangerous school into a school that is not on the list. That occurs during the course of the school year.

NOTEBOOK: So at any time, a parent can learn that not only is my kid not feeling safe, but they’re in a school that gives them that right to transfer out?

JONES: Absolutely. By law, we’re obligated to notify parents that their child is in a persistently dangerous school. We send out a letter to every student in those schools that receive that designation

NOTEBOOK: When do students and parents hear whether their transfer request has been approved?

JONES: If it is a voluntary transfer process, the notification typically goes out as early as spring. If it is an extenuating, they usually are notified within a couple of weeks.

NOTEBOOK: There’s also a low-performing school transfer option under No Child Left Behind, right?

JONES: Correct. That’s called the school choice process. That process usually occurs in the spring. Once the list comes out of the schools that did not make [Adequate Yearly Progress], parents in those schools are notified that they have the option to transfer. They’re also notified that they have an option to stay in the school and avail themselves of some of the specialized services [primarily tutoring] that come through Title I [the federal program that provides targeted funds to districts with low-income students.]

Because we know that we have limited space, our district has a right to establish a priority of need [for transfers]. First of all, parents file the application at the current school. The current school puts in information that is related to their standardized test scores and their income status. Once the application comes in, it is actually ranked [with neediest and lowest-performing students getting priority]. The child who is [ranked first at a grade level], whatever [receiving] school is on the list, they get first priority for those schools as long as the schools have space.

When people hear school choice, sometimes they think they can apply to any school. They also think that, “I’m entitled to a transfer.” And of course, by law they are, but again because of the limited spaces, we have to prioritize and create this rank order list, and we follow that list to the letter. We go down the list until we fill all the spaces. Sometimes we run out of space.

NOTEBOOK: When does the school choice process happen?

JONES: Usually, the applications are filed in the spring, and they’re usually notified before the end of the school year. The application called for NCLB [transfers] this year in April. All the kids who filed an NCLB school choice application this year were notified, I believe, some time in June.

NOTEBOOK Let’s talk about students already in high school who want to transfer. What do they do?

JONES: Let me start by saying that typically when you’re in a school for 9th grade, it is assumed that that is going to be the school that you graduate from. However, there may be some students in grade nine that … got into a school that maybe they really didn’t want, or maybe they didn’t get approved because their grades weren’t what they should have been, or they just weren’t lucky; they didn’t get selected by the lottery. In the 9th grade, those students might reapply for grade 10.

As you move up in grade there’s less space available. [But] if I’m in grade nine and I want to apply for a transfer, I just use a regular [voluntary] transfer form. I have the possibility of maybe getting approved in grade 10. The only other way high school students can transfer is usually through extenuating circumstances or under the persistently dangerous process, or—and this is really not a voluntary transfer process— if I move from one neighborhood to another, I can transfer to my new neighborhood school.

It’s the same process for all students. You fill out a voluntary transfer process form for that procedure. If it’s extenuating, you fill out an extenuating circumstances form. The process is the same for all students preK-12, the same application, the same process.

NOTEBOOK: Considering the 9th grader who realizes, “I really don’t want to be in this school. I need to find a different environment.” Do you have any tips or advice for a student like that?

JONES: Well, first of all, they have to do research. They need to really determine what they’re interested in. They need to consider things such as, “I might be interested in cosmetology. How do I feel using the high school resource guide?" It tells you which schools have which programs. You need to look at that to determine where those programs are located. You could also consult with your counselors because counselors are key for working with students and helping them determine what options are available.

As far as space availability, there’s really no way to determine that. Some people do call schools to try to get a number, but that number is really a dynamic number because kids are moving all the time. So, it’s really hard to call about space availability. The only thing I can really say is if you’re applying to high school or middle school, typically the entry level grade is where they’re going to have the most space. If I’m applying to Masterman, I need to apply for grade five. That’s the entry level grade. If I’m applying to a high school, the entry level grade is grade nine. If you’re applying to a neighborhood school, neighborhood schools are obligated to first take the neighborhood children.

Another thing that may be helpful for high school students interested in going to one of our career and technical high schools: most career technical high schools begin their vocational classes in grade 10. So it’s really hard to approve people in grade 11 because there’s no way available for you to make up those vocational classes. Unless you’re coming from another vocational school, where you already passed some of those classes, you can’t apply beyond grade 10 because those classes start in grade 10, and you can’t make them up.

For high school, schools look at the previous year–that’s it–and start making the determination for admission. So if a child is in 9th grade, and they’re now applying to 10th grade, the application is submitted while they’re in 9th grade. The [school] will look at the final report of grade eight and the grade eight standardized test scores.

NOTEBOOK: So, a child who did not do well in grade seven but did better in grade eight might be the kind of kid who would have a shot at getting into a more selective high school for 10th grade?

JONES: Absolutely.

I hear this from parents, “My child had very high test scores.” And yes, he met that part of the admissions criteria. However, we look at your grades. We look at your attendance. That’s the holistic approach. So, you can’t say my test scores are high and then have 100 latenesses. Because you could have high test scores, but if you have 100 latenesses, the principal using that holistic approach would eliminate you.

NOTEBOOK: Any additional advice on transferring?

JONES: The only other thing I would do is talk to other students in the school that you’re interested in attending. Talk to your school counselor. Visit the schools. Some schools do have shadowing procedures where students get to shadow another student, so they can see what the school is actually like before they make a decision or in terms of submitting an application. And make informed decisions based on doing that research.

Yes, you can transfer … even in high school

2009-09-02T12:18:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Not happy with the school you are in? It is possible to transfer, even if you are already in high school.

There are four major avenues. The first and by far the most widely used is the voluntary transfer program. For high school students, this is similar to the regular application process for 8th graders. Students can apply from September through the final Friday in October and learn in the spring whether they are accepted, with the choice made by the school after reviewing the student’s record.

A 9th grader hoping to get into a different school for 10th grade should start the process soon after he or she arrives. Eighth grade records and test scores are what the desired school will look at.

The second avenue is an emergency transfer, officially called transfers due to extenuating circumstances. This most often occurs when students feel unsafe or are threatened in their home school. These transfers must be approved by the principal and regional office and are generally backed by documentation, such as a police report. They can be effective in a matter of weeks, but are relatively rare.

The third avenue is through No Child Left Behind; students in schools designated as “persistently dangerous” by the state are entitled to transfer at any time to others not on that list. But high school students cannot transfer to selective schools without meeting their admissions criteria. Twenty high schools and five middle schools are on the 2009-10 state list. Transfer requests are also processed within a few weeks.

The fourth avenue is also under NCLB, which guarantees the right of students in schools that have not met performance targets for two or more years to transfer out. Last year, about half the District’s schools fell into this category; the list of which schools made Adequate Yearly Progress is made public shortly after school starts.

However, there are only a few schools designated as receiving schools, and so the number of slots limits the number of students who are approved for these transfers. Under NCLB, students who do not transfer out of these schools are entitled to special services, including private tutoring. The District is required to notify parents by letter of their options.

The District’s Director of Student Placement LeTretta Jones offers the following tips to high school students who are considering transferring:

Students who did much better in grade eight than grade seven – and continue to do well in high school – have a better chance to be admitted to a more selective school as a 10th grader.
Students who want to transfer should do research through the High School Directory and consult a counselor for help. It may also be possible to visit the school and shadow a student. Regardless, said Jones, “I would also talk to students in the school I am interested in attending.”
Those who are interested in vocational programs should transfer by 10th grade since these are three-year programs.
It is much more difficult, but not impossible, to transfer in 11th and even 12th grade.

For special ed and ELL students, choice is often lacking

2009-09-02T12:01:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Aspiring to attend one of the city’s top-tier high schools can be a daunting proposition for students with special needs or English language learners (ELLs) and their parents.

Few of this fall’s incoming 9th graders who are special education or ELL students applied to the sought-after schools, and even fewer were admitted.

Superintendent Arlene Ackerman says her staff is taking a close look at the admissions criteria in the District’s 18 special admission programs and 13 citywide admission high schools and that the schools are being pressured to boost special education and ELL representation.

“I don’t know if it’s purposefully discriminatory, but you don’t see English language learners in some of our magnet schools,” Ackerman said in an interview with Notebook editors.

The issue is not new. In fact, the District agreed in 1995 to set targets for admission of special education students to the magnet and citywide schools in a court case known as LeGare, and subsequently applied similar targets to ELL students. For special admission schools such as Central, Masterman, and Girls High, the agreed-upon target is to enroll 7 percent special education and 7 percent ELL students. Schools that accept students from across the city, such as Bok, Constitution, and Saul, aim to admit 10 percent special education and 7 percent ELL.

But these schools are seldom successful in meeting these goals. Although recent data suggest a slight upward trend in the number of admissions among special admission schools for this fall, only four special admission schools and programs reported meeting the 7 percent ELL target as of July, and only five met the same goal for special education admissions.

Among 12 citywide admission schools reporting, eight schools met the 10 percent LeGare goal for special education students. Five met the 7 percent target for ELL students.

District data show that in 2007-08 more than 80 percent of special education students enrolled in neighborhood schools, compared with 66 percent of the regular student population. The citywide admission schools admit more IEP and ELL students than special admission schools, which require strong academic records.

Parent activist June Bey of West Philadelphia has a son Xavier, who is in special education; he picked three high schools, but failed to gain admission. Bey advises parents to start researching high schools when their child is just in the 6th grade.

“Attend the high school fairs in the fall. Talk with the school representatives to see how sensitive they are [and] what supports there are for your child. Don’t be afraid to apply to the schools you like,” Bey said.

Bey said she was frustrated by the appeals process that followed the rejections. If a student is turned down for admission, the parent can request a hearing under the LeGare Impartial Review Process, but has limited input.

“You don’t get to do advocacy [so] you can’t paint a better picture of what your child is capable of,” Bey said.

Bey ultimately enrolled Xavier at George Washington High School. The option turned out to be “a blessing in disguise,” where Xavier, 16, now an 11th grader, is having a good experience, Bey said.

“It’s a comprehensive high school … an excellent opportunity to see how he is going to fit in the larger society when he graduates,” she said.

The District offers tips for special education/ELL parents in English, Spanish, and Chinese, including advice to monitor attendance, grades, and behavior—all important criteria in the high school admissions process.

The District recommends doing research on the various high schools by attending the High School Expo, to be held during the last weekend in September at Temple University’s Liacouras Center, and speaking with counselors at the schools that seem a good fit.

The District also reminds parents to send a note to the teacher when their child is absent from school explaining the absence, so it can be coded as “excused.” Attendance records are important when applying to high schools.

Diane Smith, of South Philadelphia, said she had feared for her son Mark’s safety at South Philadelphia High School, but according to Smith, “we were never given the opportunity” to apply to the special admission or citywide high schools. Mark, 14, who has autism, applied for and won admission by lottery to Mastery Charter School-Thomas Campus.

Mastery analyzed Mark’s needs and recently approved his placement at Delta School, a state-approved private school with extensive autism support. “It’s a wonderful school,” Smith said happily.

For immigrant parents, “the question of high school choice has been coming up somewhat more frequently,” said Zac Steele, an organizer with JUNTOS in South Philadelphia.

At the same time, parents too often are unaware of the options. “The counselors give out forms, but communication with parents doesn’t really happen,” Steele said. “More often, families don’t know there is a form, or a choice.”

Last fall, the Notebook reported that ELL students are virtually absent from most of the city’s academically selective schools. Three-quarters of ELLs were found in just nine of the District’s 62 high schools, most of them on lists for being low achieving and persistently dangerous.

LeTretta Jones, District director of student placement, said counselors have a duty to promote admission of ELL and special education students to the special admission and citywide schools. “We think these students can be successful in these schools. If they speak a different language, maybe they don’t test well. [But we can] look at grades, functioning, and want to make an exception,” Jones said. “Actually, advocacy is required.”

Len Rieser, co-director of the Education Law Center, said immigrant parents typically are unaware of the special admission schools.

The process “is so incomprehensible to them. If you are a native Philadelphian, you are aware that there are some elite schools that students get into somehow,” Rieser said. “To immigrant parents, it’s a mystery.”

What insiders say about applying to high schools

2009-09-02T11:53:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

When it comes to learning about and applying to high schools in the School District of Philadelphia, what you need to know might not be found in the official guide, the District’s High School Directory.

Principals and guidance counselors interviewed by the Notebook offered advice, tips, and strategies – the most repeated one being the importance of getting an early start.

“Parents have to begin researching the schools long before the 8th or 7th grades,” says Johnny C. Whaley, Jr., the principal at the High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), a special admission school. “It’s incumbent upon parents to know how to read standardized test [results] and to identify areas where students need to improve.” Whaley believes that “the proactive way to go about high school selection is to identify what your child needs academically long before 7th or 8th grade.”

Faith Zaback, a counselor at Meredith, a K-8 school, said she talks with 7th graders at the beginning of the school year to impress on them that high school principals will be looking at their grades, behavior, test scores, attendance, and lateness record for that year. At the end of 7th grade, she hands out the directory and assigns students a “scavenger hunt” to familiarize them with the requirements for various schools.

Zaback prepares 8th graders for the interview process by having them brainstorm questions and do practice interviews “to feel comfortable talking about themselves.”

The directory doesn’t emphasize that students may visit many of the schools to get a feel for whether they would fit. Tom Davidson, principal at Constitution, a citywide admission school with a civics/government focus, advertises his school’s open house at the District’s High School Expo in late September. Prospective students may “shadow” Constitution students from class to class for a half-day.

Similarly, principal Chris Lehmann at the special-admission Science Leadership Academy encourages students and their parents to visit and get “a sense of the flavor of the school.” Later on, if a student applies to SLA, that student must call the school to schedule an interview. Lehmann believes the interview is very important. “It’s the student’s chance to shine,” he says.

Principals stressed that they place a high value on the recommendations of counselors, teachers, and elementary or middle school principals. “We do make phone calls to guidance counselors to get recommendations,” said Davidson. He added that principals will often point him toward a particular student – input he welcomes.

Lehmann said his school also calls counselors “to get as rich a picture of every student as we can.”

It is not widely known that citywide and special admission schools are somewhat flexible about their admissions criteria. Although all the principals interviewed stated that all the students they admit are well qualified to attend, there appears to be some “wiggle room” in meeting specific criteria. While Davidson said that Constitution only accepts students who meet its stated admissions criteria, he noted, “We look at the criteria in a holistic fashion. If a student happens to be weak in one area but strong in other areas, that doesn’t necessarily preclude admission.”

Principal Adrienne Wallace-Chew at the Academy at Palumbo was more direct. “Sometimes you go outside the criteria,” she said. Of critical importance at Palumbo, which doesn’t require an interview, is a handwritten essay that prospective students are required to submit on a topic of their choice.

At citywide admission schools like Mastbaum Technical High School, test scores are not what matters; attendance, punctuality, and positive behavioral records do. But according to Principal Mary Dean, a new requirement at Mastbaum is that students who apply must declare a vocational major before they go through the lottery. This is because some popular programs receive far more applicants than there are spaces. Mastbaum’s graphic design and nursing programs each had more than 300 applicants and accepted fewer than one in seven students. Understandably, Dean emphasizes that Mastbaum is looking for students who have a clear idea of what they would like to do with their lives and are willing to work hard to do it.

So enthusiasm can make a difference in the admissions process. “One of the things we really look for are kids who’ve gotten a sense of what we’re about,” says Lehmann, whose school pursues a project-based learning approach.

Auditioning is a fundamental part of the process in schools with an arts focus, such as the Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP) and CAPA. Since GAMP starts in 5th grade, it has a very limited number of slots for 9th graders, receiving 500 applications for 15 or 20 places. With odds like that, Principal Angelo Milicia admits to being rather hard-nosed about admissions criteria. However, he says, “If there is a recommendation from a music teacher and [the student is] a few points off [in their test scores], I’ll give them an audition.”

CAPA, which receives about 2,800 applications, determines who meets its academic criteria and grants 900 auditions conducted by arts teachers. Ultimately, only 265 receive notices of acceptance. The audition for non-performance majors consists of a drawing test for art students and a writing test for creative writers.

Given the limited number of available places, the principals interviewed mentioned feeling occasional pressure to admit students from parents, principals, and sometimes politicians. However, none said they felt unduly pressured.

“I give everyone a fair chance,” says Wallace-Chew. “The difficult part is you get so many good applications.”

Daunting as it is, the experience is valuable, said Zaback. “Applying to high school is a precursor to applying to college,” she said. “It’s also an absolutely wonderful learning experience.”

What’s new in the District?

2009-09-02T10:41:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Back to school, always an exciting time for students and parents, also comes with new challenges and changes.

The School District enters the year buoyed by good news. It is implementing new initiatives, and was able to make good on promises to hire many more teachers and counselors in time for the opening of school. Standardized test scores improved for the seventh year in a row, with proficiency rates exceeding 60 percent in some grades for the first time. Violent offenses at schools are down by 15 percent.

Now the not-so good news: During a weeklong principals’ summit, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said that despite gains, only one-third of the District’s schools met their academic targets last year. The achievement gap persists, with African American and Latino students lagging far behind their White and Asian counterparts, and it is not closing fast enough.

Looming over everything is a state budget battle that could cause a severe revenue shortfall and make it impossible for the District to pay for its new programs.

If those new programs do survive, there’s a lot to look forward to in the new school year. Several initiatives from Phase One of the District’s Imagine 2014 – reported to cost $126 million its first year – have already taken shape.

“We hired almost 1,000 new teachers, 200 new guidance counselors, and 30 new principals,” Ackerman said. Many of the new teachers are going into the District’s lowest-performing schools.

The addition of new guidance counselors will reduce the student-to-counselor ratio from 500:1 to 300:1 in middle schools and to 350:1 in high schools. Counselors will also stay with the same students for several years.

Other initiatives include smaller class sizes in the K-3 grades, 70 new reading teachers in the lowest-performing schools, student success centers in all comprehensive high schools, and two parent ombudsmen and two student advisers in each high school.

“When young people come to school, they will already see changes,” Ackerman said.

The District has geared up to start naming as many as 35 underperforming schools that will close and reopen in the next five years as charters or schools run by outside management companies. Called “Renaissance Schools,” the first 10 will be in planning this year and open in September 2010.

New schools

Six new charter schools open this fall: Arise Academy, a high school; Eastern University Academy, a middle and high school; Sankofa Freedom Academy, which will eventually serve K-12; KIPP West Philadelphia, a middle school; and two elementary schools, Tacony Academy and Franklin Towne.

Arise Academy, located in Center City, is the nation’s first public charter high school for teens in the foster care system. Any student of high school age in foster care and eligible to attend school in Philadelphia can apply, and enrollment is based on a lottery.

Founded by the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition with the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, Arise seeks to stem the dropout crisis among foster care students while giving them social supports.

“Students who are in foster care have a 75 percent dropout rate, and the data demonstrates that they have very poor outcomes in terms of rates of homelessness, pregnancy, and drug dependency, especially once they are aged out of the system,” said Arise CEO Roger Jackson. “Once they are out of the system, services come to a screeching halt and they may or may not be equipped to navigate life in general.”

Students wanting to get a taste of college can apply to Eastern University Academy Charter School. Located in East Falls, Eastern is a 30,000-square foot “early college,” high school – one that gives students the opportunity to earn up to 60 transferable college credits. It is also affiliated with the Big Picture Company, which has created several high schools built around internships and allowing students to follow their passions, matching them with the same adviser for four years. Students receive individualized learning plans with five goals built around the development of communication and reasoning skills and personal qualities. Before graduation, students must complete a 75- to 100-page autobiography.

“What we found is that what high school is asking our students to do is very different than what colleges are asking us to do, so what we’ve done as an early college is link the two,” said Omar Barlow, CEO and principal.

Admission is by lottery. This year, Eastern will enroll 7th and 9th graders.

Sankofa Freedom Academy, a Frankford-based “freedom school” inspired by those of the early 1960s, meshes a core curriculum with African and Caribbean history and culture, and what it calls “Sankofa enhancements,” or essential questions to help students better understand the concept of freedom. That means “empowering children to participate in social change, social justice, community development, and service learning,” said Ayesha Imani, the CEO and founder.

Sankofa will begin with grades K-4 and 9, but each year will add one elementary and high school grade. Admission is by lottery, but to relieve overcrowding, the District is requiring the school to give preference to students in Frankford.

There are also more alternative schools. In May the School Reform Commission approved more than $45 million in contracts to hire providers to run additional accelerated and disciplinary schools.

The Center for Art, Media and Communication (CAMaC), scheduled to open later this year, will serve up to 150 former dropouts. Operated by Youth Empowerment Services and the Allegheny West Foundation, it will focus on integrated media projects tied to core subjects and include skills development in video, audio, graphic and web design, and mural arts. It will also operate a daily student-run radio broadcast.

New programs

A year ago, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded grants to seven “persistently dangerous” high schools in Philadelphia to create programs that would decrease the dropout rate, reduce violence, and improve overall climate. Bartram, Germantown, Lincoln, Overbrook, University City, and West Philadelphia each received $6 million and FitzSimons got $4 million.

“The goal is to transform these schools into a place where young people are engaged in learning, feel safe, and can compete in a global marketplace after graduation,” said Courtney Collins-Shapiro, the District’s director of Multiple Pathways to Graduation.

While following Department of Labor guidelines, each school has tailored its own plan to its needs and has a “turnaround” assistant principal overseeing its implementation. Strategies must include case management for individual students, instructional improvement, mentoring, and programs focused on improving school climate. “This isn’t just a pot of cash where schools can just buy stuff,” Collins-Shapiro said.

Common initiatives shared by all of the schools include student success centers providing support services, year-round internships, and mentoring programs for at-risk students. This past summer each of the schools had a Summer Bridge program, where rising 9th graders participated in five weeks of intense four-hour days of academics and enrichment.

Lincoln principal Donald Anticoli said his school is using the grant to create a 9th grade academy, reduce 9th grade class size to 28, and expand its partnership with Philadelphia Academies.

While not a DOL grant recipient, Dobbins Career and Technical High School has a new program where students can earn a state barbering license.

“We’re the only school in Pennsylvania (at the moment) that offers a certified barbering program,” said Principal Charles Whiting. “Prior to this you had to graduate and go to another institution to get your license and that could cost you $12,000,” he said.

For just $345 for a barbering kit, students can learn in an authentic barbershop on school grounds that has professional cutting and shampoo stations, a check-out counter, and a barbering pole.

Forty-seven students – male and female – will enter the program this fall.

New buildings

A few high schools got a facelift for the new school year. Others received a total makeover.

Lincoln opened a new building with 21st century technology, including electronic white boards in all main classrooms and three to four computers in every room. The school, which cost more than $84 million, will also soon boast a new football field and track.

Fels High School also has a new $80 million building, complete with a new pool.

And at Academy at Palumbo, $25 million in renovations include a new auditorium and gym, handicapped accessibility throughout, improved bathrooms, plumbing and electrical upgrades, air conditioning in the library, state-of-the-art science labs, and new music rooms.

A note from the editor

2009-09-02T10:27:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Welcome to the Notebook’s first fall guide to Philadelphia schools! We’re hoping that each September we’ll be able to provide you with vital information that you may want to hold onto – about the new school year and Philadelphia public schools, both District and charter.

Thanks to the generous support of our foundation funders, members, and advertisers, this will be the first of six editions of the Notebook for the new school year, after 15 years of publishing four print editions a year. Regular print editions of the Notebook will appear in late September, December, February, April, and late May. Don’t forget that we also have fresh content daily on our Web site.

The focus of our first annual guide is on selecting a high school. Where to apply to high schools is one of the most important decisions that students have to make during their K-12 years.

Applications for admission to District high schools are due early, on October 30. But ideally high school selection is something students and families think about not just months but years earlier. It’s tragic to hear about students finding out in 8th grade that their 7th grade attendance, behavior, grades, and test scores can make or break which high school will accept them.

One reason all this is important is the tremendous variation in outcomes for students, depending on what high school they attend. There are public high schools here where virtually every student goes on to a four-year college. There are unfortunately others where the majority of students never earn a high school diploma. And then many of the high schools fall in between these two extremes.

Until now, most Philadelphia students have not ended up getting matched with one of their preferred high school choices. Our hope is that by providing information about high school selection, more students will be able to make a successful match. We also hope to stir demand from informed students and families that can help move us toward a fairer process and build the momentum for making real improvements at high schools.

The School District produces an annual high school directory with valuable information about the application process and programs offered at different schools. It’s definitely worth getting your hands on a copy. We’ve tried here to also provide information on how schools are doing – data that permit comparisons between schools in terms of their academic performance.

Our section on choosing a high school is still a work in progress. We will be doing a Web version of this guide, and there we will be able to provide some additional information and tools that we couldn’t incorporate into this print edition. We encourage you to join the discussion on our site about how to bring positive change to the city’s struggling high schools.

And we encourage you to become a member of the Notebook to ensure that we can continue to write about what you really need to know. We welcome your feedback and ideas for how to improve this guide in the future. Thanks for reading!