"There are no good schools in the city." (Philadelphia: house, neighborhoods)

[MarketStEl]

The quote above comes from a regular on this forum who made this statement to a poster who's moving here from Dallas and sought advice on where to look for housing - ideally within a 30-minute commute of 20th and JFK Boulevard. His other top criteria:

• the home should lie within the district of a good public (elementary) school
• the neighborhood should be safe
• the house should be new construction, up to $1.5m ($1m if he chooses to live in the city

I had identified some of the city's top-ranked public grade schools. I responded to the followup poster's blanket statement with the following comment:

The city's two top public high schools, Julia Reynolds Masterman in Spring Garden and Central in Ogontz, consistently rank among the ten best in the state, and Masterman routinely tops the list. It also regularly appears in the top 50 of U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of "America's Best High Schools." No other school in the Commonwealth appears that high on the list.

My contention: These schools are highly competitive, granted, and one must pass an exam (and in Masterman's case, get picked in a lottery) to get into them. But their feedstock comes from the city's public grade schools (and presumably some of the charters as well). If indeed "there are no good schools in the city," where do the students who make these schools so good come from?

This also touches on several subjects that I don't think get enough consideration when we discuss public education - things like parent involvement in both the school and their children's education, social class and its impact on how well both schools perform and children perform in school, "dream hoarding" and integration, and community support for schools (not just via paying taxes for them).

I do believe there are both "good schools in the city" and schools that, while not top performers, deliver educations that will serve their students well if they and their families put a little effort in. Am I on target or off base? If there aren't enough of these schools, what should we do to get more of them? And if there are, but parents don't consider them, how do we change that?

Over to you all.

[NewtownBucks]

I think you both go too far in your beliefs in opposite directions. Inner city public education is definitely subpar and Philadelphia is no exception, but at the same time, it's ridiculous to say that there are NO good schools in the whole city. I work with people who have or had their kids at Meredith, and they are perfectly happy with that.

[1ondoner]

These 2 schools cater for may be 1% of the students in the city. What's the point of mentioning them if they are not an option to the other 99% of students?

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

The city's two top public high schools, Julia Reynolds Masterman in Spring Garden and Central in Ogontz, consistently rank among the ten best in the state, and Masterman routinely tops the list. It also regularly appears in the top 50 of U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of "America's Best High Schools." No other school in the Commonwealth appears that high on the list.

My contention: These schools are highly competitive, granted, and one must pass an exam (and in Masterman's case, get picked in a lottery) to get into them. But their feedstock comes from the city's public grade schools (and presumably some of the charters as well). If indeed "there are no good schools in the city," where do the students who make these schools so good come from?

[MB1562]

Originally Posted by 1ondoner

These 2 schools cater for may be 1% of the students in the city. What's the point of mentioning them if they are not an option to the other 99% of students?

Because they are far from the only good schools in the city. They just get mentioned the most because they are the top of the top, but far from being alone.

[1ondoner]

Which other schools are these? There are 214 schools in the city so let's see how many other schools you can come up with.

Originally Posted by MB1562

Because they are far from the only good schools in the city. They just get mentioned the most because they are the top of the top, but far from being alone.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by NewtownBucks

I think you both go too far in your beliefs in opposite directions. Inner city public education is definitely subpar and Philadelphia is no exception, but at the same time, it's ridiculous to say that there are NO good schools in the whole city. I work with people who have or had their kids at Meredith, and they are perfectly happy with that.

(emphasis added)

The seven schools I bullet-listed in that post I would say are all good.

Nebinger parents especially try to get the word out that their school also provides a good education and their kids go on to do well in high school and college, albeit fewer of them do so than at Meredith. But - and this is where the social-class stuff comes into play - there are more lower-income students in Nebinger's catchment than in Meredith's, which IIRC has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, percentages of students eligible for free lunches (a proxy for low SES) in the city. Nebinger's catchment lies immediately south of Meredith's.

As for the part of your comment I boldfaced: Yes, I agree with that statement in general. How to change that remains the great pressing question we face. The answer, from where I sit, appears to me to be, Get more affluent parents involved in city public schools. Chester Arthur's improvement from subpar to at least decent is the result of parents and neighbors in that area choosing "voice" and "loyalty" over "exit" - they decided to send their kids to the school, form a Friends of group, and work with the teachers and school staff to up its performance.

One change in the School District that I think has gone largely unheralded and which may help turn things around in the long run is that the district has now devolved a lot of power down to the level of the individual school. Local school administrators now enjoy a great deal of autonomy in determining how their schools will be run. That's an ideal opportunity for parents who want to get involved to do so, because it means they will likely see their efforts bear fruit.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by 1ondoner

Which other schools are these? There are 214 schools in the city so let's see how many other schools you can come up with.

I listed seven elementary schools in that post.

The citywide magnet high schools are also good performers even if they don't make it into the upper ranks of the Niche.com rankings. CAPA, Bodine (the international affairs high school) and Academy at Palumbo especially turn out students who go on to good colleges and do well in them. Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP) in Girard Estate also regularly ranks among the top schools in the region and state - just not in the lofty regions.

Those may not be high numbers, but they're certainly greater than zero. Your statement was a blanket absolute. Ergo, it's already been disproven. Had you said instead "Good public schools in the city are hard to find and hard to get into," I would have let it slide, for that is definitely true. But you neither have to pass an exam nor go through a lottery to get into any of the schools I just mentioned.

The-plural-of-anecdote-is not-data anecdote: I have a friend who graduated from Bodine who I know has a gift for both writing and performance. I've engaged him in numerous Deep Conversations, usually about matters psychological but also political and social. This guy would have definitely been Harvard material, and I asked him once why he didn't apply. "I was more concerned with being popular," he said.

And if you think that doesn't go on in some suburban schools too, I'd like to suggest you think again.

However, it does point to that issue of how "extracurricular" matters also affect school performance, student culture being one of them.

[MarketStEl]

Relevant to this discussion, and this wouldn't be possible without the decentralization and devolution of authority I mentioned above:

The Neubauers want to fix Philly schools. Their plan? To sharpen the principal force. | The Philadelphia Inquirer

[NewtownBucks]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

(emphasis added)

The seven schools I bullet-listed in that post I would say are all good.

Nebinger parents especially try to get the word out that their school also provides a good education and their kids go on to do well in high school and college, albeit fewer of them do so than at Meredith. But - and this is where the social-class stuff comes into play - there are more lower-income students in Nebinger's catchment than in Meredith's, which IIRC has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, percentages of students eligible for free lunches (a proxy for low SES) in the city. Nebinger's catchment lies immediately south of Meredith's.

As for the part of your comment I boldfaced: Yes, I agree with that statement in general. How to change that remains the great pressing question we face. The answer, from where I sit, appears to me to be, Get more affluent parents involved in city public schools. Chester Arthur's improvement from subpar to at least decent is the result of parents and neighbors in that area choosing "voice" and "loyalty" over "exit" - they decided to send their kids to the school, form a Friends of group, and work with the teachers and school staff to up its performance.

One change in the School District that I think has gone largely unheralded and which may help turn things around in the long run is that the district has now devolved a lot of power down to the level of the individual school. Local school administrators now enjoy a great deal of autonomy in determining how their schools will be run. That's an ideal opportunity for parents who want to get involved to do so, because it means they will likely see their efforts bear fruit.

Being a suburbanite, I can't really comment on specific schools in the system, except secondhand about Meredith, and I certainly wouldn't be surprised at all if Meredith catchment had the lowest percent of low-income students. Queen Village is obviously one of the wealthier neighborhoods in the city, and the catchment was specifically drawn in the days of redlining to end at Christian so that the kids from the now-demolished Southwark projects were excluded. I agree with you on most of the other issues that you are raising about the district, and I hope the autonomy and local control of the schools does have a positive impact.

[MB1562]

Originally Posted by 1ondoner

Which other schools are these? There are 214 schools in the city so let's see how many other schools you can come up with.

Just off the top of my head...

Masterman
Central
Independence
FACTS
Science Leadership
Mast
McCall
...and many more I'm just not thinking of right now.

There are a lot of lower performing schools in the city, true. But there are also so many that are top-notch and offer something just as good, if not better, then your precious little suburbs.