Come On Philly Let Principals Fill Open Slots In Magnet Schools! (Philadelphia: low income, high crime)

[JimfromPennsyl]

The Philadelphia School District (PSD) is making an epic mistake that will likely permanently hurt its magnet (city-wide admission) and generally very effective schools. This thirty-nine (39) magnet/selective/criteria-based admission schools has a great track record of giving Philadelphia's young people an excellent education and a good start in their life it will be a real shame to see this system decimated. Back in 2021 the PSD changed the admission process for these schools because not enough kids from low income/high crime neighborhoods and minority young people were getting into these selective schools, the PSD began a lottery system where if you meet certain minimum thresholds on standardized test scores, academic and attendance record you get put in a lottery and if your number comes up you get admitted before principals would have discretion and utilize applicants academic and attendance records, standardized test scores and their expression of their desire to attend the school. Overall the lottery is a step forward for the district it is a fairer process of selection. This is the colossal or titanic size problem with the lottery system it is not filling up all the openings in these selective schools, for this upcoming school year this lottery system will leave at least eight hundred openings in these magnet schools, this destruction of enrollment really hurts these Special Focus schools! This hurts the effectiveness of these schools in part by depriving them of having full incoming classes and full classes facilitates learning by children in part because students having trouble learning a lesson often aren't alone in that difficulty so teachers helping one student master a lesson often are helping other students in the class likewise do so. In addition, the PSD headquarters seeks to cut the funding to these magnet schools in accordance with their enrollment decline, the District Administration threw upset magnet supporters a small bone by limiting the loss of teachers for twelve of the thirty-nine schools to two teachers but anyone that thinks that minor restraint will last is not realistic; this is an important point because a hallmark of great schools is that they find great teachers and hold on to them for decades and this new system which creates large instability in student enrollment and individual school funding will discourage great teachers from going to these schools because they don't offer a stable teaching job and thus stability in these teachers lives. The solution to this critically serious problem is actually very simple and many supporters of these magnet schools have been calling for it but the authorities in the Philadelphia School System are ignoring these requests; the solution is utilize this new lottery system to determine who gets admitted to these Selective schools but after the lottery system is complete if there is still open seats in a magnet school allow the old system to be used, that is give the Principal of the respective school the power to fill the open seats in that magnet school. Officials in the PSD and member of the Philadelphia Board of Education are supposed to be public servants that is they have a duty to serve the citizens of Philadelphia, so that if a good to great Philadelphia school which the magnet schools classify as have open seats and the Principal of that school has identified children that can succeed there and their families want them to go to that selective school there is no good reason for School District Authorities to block that child from going to that advantageous school! The PSD should modify its admission policy for its Selective Schools in accordance with these Philadelphia families wishes.








What is going on here with the PSD is the bureaucratization of the Philadelphia School System the people behind this course for the District view the Philadelphia School system as a jobs program get as many people on the system's payroll as possible, effective use of the school systems funding to achieve the Districts mission of educating children is not something cared about. It sure seems like the people behind this agenda would like to see a lot of these magnet schools close down so their funding would go to the ordinary district schools so these people could hire more Climate specialist, counselors, food service workers, bus attendants and the like for the ordinary schools; bloat the school systems payroll and when the standards test reveal Philadelphia children system have not been educated to their respective grade level complain like hell the District doesn't get enough revenue inadequate school funding is the problem - these character depraved people's playbook here is evident. People want to be nice so you give a guy a chance but it sure seems like this new PSD superintendent, Tony Watlington, is not best type of candidate to lead the District he seems to be fully on board with this feed the bureaucracy mentality. He seems to definitely be a Bureaucrat type, a leader that likes bureaucracies that doesn't care about curbing the drawbacks of bureaucracies, bureaucracies tend to grow payrolls and a lot of jobs end up being created turn out to not be what is needed if the system is optimally focusing on accomplishing its mission and bureaucracies tend to have excessive layers of management and rules that also hurt and impede the organization from accomplishing its mission. Mr. Watlington has changed the School Districts organizational chart having two deputies which lower people will report to instead of directly to him it is not a good sign when the access to the ultimate decision maker is restricted. Mr. Watlington will have two executives in the communications office I am sure their compensation isn't insignificant, it is good to be responsive to the families of Philadelphia but do you really need two Communications executives to achieve it how about just having public forums where other key executives in the District are available to the public to address their concerns. With this asbestos Building 21 problem that popped up in the last month and the required school shut down until the problem is repaired you would think the Superintendent's focus would be on minimizing the disruption in the kids education you think he would be meeting with parents of Building 21 school children explaining how he did the best he could in getting a contractor that would as quickly as possible repair the stairs and insulation where the asbestos is exposed and you would have thought the Superintendent would have met with Building 21 student's parents and explained the choice of Strawberry Mansion school as a temporary school building and find out what if any are their problems with that district decision and if the parents said what seems to be their problem safety at the Strawberry Mansion school and the difficult commute for some of the kids he could have offered more security at Strawberry Mansion and for the commute problem offered to have in the morning yellow buses pick up the students at the Building 21 site and transport them to the Strawberry Mansion school site and at the end of the school day reverse the bus transportation, show you care about these kids not losing any education. What does Mr. Watlington do he gets on his bully pulpit and rails about the abundance of school buildings in the system that are extremely old and need to be replaced for asbestos and lead paint problems and how the City and the State aren't ponying up the money he thinks they should to remedy the problem!




What does the future of the Philadelphia School District look like it looks like more and more ineffectiveness in its mission in educating Philadelphia children because the authorities for the District only care about doing one part of the two parts of the job that their duty calls for. These authorities are on the job about asking, seeking and lobbying for more financial resources to do their job but these authorities are in a state of malfeasance in using the resources they have to provide the best education they can for the children and young people in the District. The unfortunate reality is that the City of Philadelphia will never have the financial resources per student like Lower Merion Township, the school district on the western border of the City, for two reasons the families that reside in Lower Merion are wealthier than the families in Philadelphia so they can afford to pay more in school taxes and secondly the school district of Lower Merion has a smaller population so it is much easier for the families that are passionate about public education to gain the political power to force high school property taxes on the townships residents Philadelphia with a population of 1.5 million residents it holds too many people that would push back against higher property taxes. The point being is that the system in Philadelphia is going to need to be setup so that it produces school district authorities that do the best with the financial resources they got to educate Philadelphia's children. The system, the Philadelphia Board of Education, isn't set-up to produce such school district authorities. The Philadelphia Board of Education nine members are chosen by the Mayor but have to be confirmed by City Council which practically means City Council members are selecting the Board members which means the Board members are going to be unduly focused on parochial interests like keeping open schools in Council members districts and the jobs in the District of Council members constituents which of course leads to the Board of Education selecting Superintendents that are focused on the school bureaucracy and school district jobs and the citizens of Philadelphia get a Superintendent like Tony Watlington. I know a Superintendent has to pick his battles school district policy decisions have implications which draw the attention of politically powerful people that must be considered. Nevertheless, the Bottom Line is that the Philadelphia School District is never going to get outstanding Superintendents and outstandingly well run School Districts unless the power in the system is heavily weighted toward the mayor. The system needs to allow the citizens of Philadelphia to hold one person accountable that is the way you get results otherwise you have this blame the other guy scenario always prevailing and the most sensible way to do this is make the mayor the one that is held accountable and given the power to fix the problem. The system should be changed to give the Mayor the power over the School Board by allowing the Mayor to appoint four seats on the Board directly no Council confirmation and for the other five seats divide the city into five sections each section comprises of two City Council districts and allow the Mayor to select the Board member for each of these five zones and give the two district council member from each zone veto power over the respective selection and if the veto is exercised the Mayor can still get that selection on the Board by having a majority of City Council members approve that selection! Just to highlight the huge flaw in Philadelphia's current school system you have a new selection system for admitting students into Philadelphia's 39 criteria based admission schools that will leave at least eight hundred openings in these schools, good schools mind you, openings that Philadelphia families would love to send their kids to would love to fill because the overall Philadelphia school system is leaving many of Philadelphia's children inadequately educated and what is the Mayor of the great City of Philadelphia saying publicly on this critical issue - nothing, zippo, scratch! And why you obviously ask because the system doesn't rest power with the Mayor on the running of the school system Philadelphia City Council holds the reins of power in the system Board Members owe their seats to City Council and what do the good people of Philadelphia end up with, a bureaucracy destroying the system it was created to support, protect and improve!

[PHL10]

As a product of the PSD and having graduated over 30 years ago, looking at the situation over that time span, there does seem to be a concerted effort to make every high school equally bad.

[MarketStEl]

Please, JimfromPennsyl, use paragraph breaks on your next post. They make it easier to read.

But after I figured out your point, I have to agree with PHL10 here that this smells kinda like sabotage.

And it also highlights the problem with using counting by the numbers as a means of determining whether various groups are being treated equally. Standardized tests may be culturally biased, but it's possible to learn the culture (that was the whole point of that 1990s bestseller Cultural Literacy).

There is a kernel of truth at the bottom of all this: If we are going to erase the effects of ~250 years of slavery and another 100 of legal subjugation, we are going to have to put a thumb on the scale somewhere. But the place to put it is in the home, where the kids are being raised. How do we make better parents, or supplement the skills the ones we have now with people better able to guide the kids? That's the question we should be asking.

[FindingZen]

Appreciate the effort to break up paragraphs although tripling the amount may have helped even more.

I understand giving more kids from challenged communities the opportunity to attend magnet schools as the resources they grew up with from neighborhood schools are likely lacking. But this lottery system that doesn't allow for the subjectivity of schools to fill slots with kids that are "close enough" to the standard cutoff is obviously a problem. And it's also clear that too many of the newly-arriving kids are under-prepared for the rigors of their schools.

Agree with MSE that concerned parents are a key factor in preparing this city's youth for a better education. Here's where I also briefly repeat my spiel that rebuilding community infrastructure is also at least as important.

[MarketStEl]

Since FindingZen and I appear to be doing a tag team on this issue:

Note how short the paragraphs are on both of our posts are.

Newspapers also have short paragraphs because they make the stories easier on the eyes. Newspaper paragraphs don't follow the rules you were taught in English class about paragraph construction. As in this post, they can often consist of just a single short sentence. Doing that makes the sentence stand out.

So your reworking of that post was a good start, JimfromPennsyl, but to make your posts really readable, you need to use many more paragraph breaks.

And the breaks between paragraphs need only be one line. So, for instance, where you put seven lines between two overly long paragraphs, spread those seven lines among those paragraphs. Say, two or three sentences — two returns for a one-line break — two or three or four more sentences — two returns for another one-line break — and so on.

I don't post to discussion boards from my phone for the reason FindingZen gave in their reply on this topic on another thread you started. However, it is possible to enter line breaks on your phone. It's just that typing on one's phone is harder all around, even with autocomplete.