The+Philadelphia+Public+School+System

=I. A School System as a Piece of Technology?=

Technology is defined in many different ways, from the cellular telephone that many working professionals cannot seem to live without, to the system of government that keeps the United States of America in more or less one piece. Technology does not have to be a piece of equipment that you can touch. Often, institutions of social technology play an even larger part in shaping our society than we realize. There is no better example of that than the public school systems of America.

School is one of the most important and foundational institutions in a child's life. It not only acts as source of knowledge, but lays foundation for today's children to become the responsible and able future of our society. Though schools were introduced as institutions of knowledge, non-college students sometimes cannot see the connection between schooling and a better future for themselves. Content of the public school system is constantly debated in America, with many studies and institutions all having something to say. However, despite the important role given to the schools, concerning and serious problems plague the system. S ince around the 1960’s, the Philadelphia Public School System has been in a state of decline. Serious problems that stem from improper management and funding have caused high dropout rates, violence, and illiteracy, among other issues.

=II. The Facts of The Matter: The System as it Exists Today=

 The first school to be opened within the 13 British Colonies was the Boston Latin school in 1635. It is to date America's oldest school. The first institution of higher learning was Harvard University, which opened in 1638.

A federally funded public school system did not come about until much later. The first public high school was also opened in Boston in the year 1821. Soon the public schools began to outnumber the private universities. In these early schools, teachers were not specially trained. Teaching was not considered a profession, and as such had a female gender bias. The only real reason to teach a specific subject was if the teacher had real-world experience with their area of expertise.

Philadelphia's public system was established in the year 1818. Today, it is the eighth largest in the country. A School Board was established in 1850 to better direct its progress. In the year 2001, the state of Pennsylvania took a much larger role in shaping the school district because of the growing problems facing its schools.

**B.) The Problems Facing the Schools Today**


 * Dropouts**

Perhaps the most serious problem facing the Philadelphia Public School System is its dropout rate. A study by two research scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Ruth Curran Neild and Robert Balfanz, examined statistically just how serious the problem is. This study was undertaken as a part of Project U-Turn, which is part of a larger collaborative effort by the city of Philadelphia with the private sector to stem the dropout rate and improve the system.

The key findings of this study were that as of the year 2007, about 6% of Philadelphia's 185,000 students would drop out of high school. This would be compounded by an additional 4% classified as near dropouts, because their class attendance is less than 50%. The 4-year graduation rate in the Philadelphia School District is around 50%. Of the remaining students that do not graduate in 4 years of high school, only an additional 10% would remain in school in order to graduate in 5 or 6 years. This means that around 40% of all students in the district do not receive their high school diploma.

Another study, published in 1995 by the National Research Center on Education in the Inner Cities, looks at the effect of poverty in Philadelphia and its correlation to school attendance and reading proficiency. The average percentage of students living below the poverty line of the three high schools in the lowest-poverty area of the Philadelphia School District is 16.0%. These schools are "Northeast High", "Abraham Lincoln High", and "George Washington High". However, their reading percentile was only 11.1% and the average daily attendance was 85.5%.

By contrast, the average of the 5 schools in the highest-poverty area shows that 55.8% of the students are living below the poverty line. These 5 schools are "Thomas Edison High", "William Penn High", "Strawberry Mansion High", "Simon Gratz High", and "Benjamin Franklin High". The average attendance rate at these schools was 67.66%.

What is even more alarming than these numbers is the fact that we can see where the dropout rate is coming from, but do not yet have an effective way to deal with it. A paper written by the collaborative minds of Nield, Balfanz, and Herzog that appeared in the October 2007 edition of Educational Leadership points out the early warning signs that a child may be headed in the wrong direction. According to their research, when a student reaches the ninth grade and has an attendance record of below 70%, fails to earn more than 2 credits in a semester, or fails a mathematics or English course, the odds are 75% that they will drop out of school. This number is higher if more than one of these warning signs are present.


 * Violence**

The other major problem that the schools are currently facing is the violence that has grown out of a lack of regulation of the entire system. While violence in schools is a problem that is drawing national attention, the inner cities continue to be the hotspots for trouble. There were over 11,000 incidents of violence involving assault or fighting, with or without weapons, reported nationwide in a study done in 1996-97.

Philadelphia schools are affected by this in a very serious way. There have been many reported incidents over the years, but one report that comes out of West Philadelphia High and Germantown High is particularly disturbing. In 2007, a wave of violence that left several teachers hurt prompted the Philadelphia Police Department to become involved in enforcement of order within the schools. After several teachers were injured, chief executive officer of the district Paul Vallas announced that any student who assaults a teacher will be given a mandatory 10-day suspension, pending expulsion or transfer to a disciplinary school.

In the 2006-07 school year, there were 409 reported cases of student assaults against teachers. This is up 4% from the 2005-06 year. A particularly gruesome case involved a mathematics teacher who was confiscating an iPod from a 17 year old student. The student caused an incident, enraging another student, who was 15. The 15 year old hit the 60 year old math teacher 3 or 4 times, causing him to fall into a locker and break his neck. The student pleaded guilty to aggravated assault charges.

A very recent case involves the protest of the school environments in South Philadelphia High. On December 7th, 2009, at least 30 students of Asian decent did not go to school because they feared for their own safety. Wei Chen, a student who was interviewed regarding this protest, told press reporters that he and several of his friends were attacked in the lunch room by a group of African-American students. He was unable to tell who it was because he was covering his face in self-defense. Even though the school's demographic is 18% Asian, there is a large amount of strife between the different cultures. Chen said that their protest was intended to call attention to the plight of all of the students in his position, and that he "just wanted to be safe at school."

This racial tension is not by any stretch new. A report put out by the Harvard Civil Rights Project back in 1998 found the Philadelphia school district to be one of the most, if not the most, segregated in the country. Even with tougher police penalties for disrupting the school environment, violence continues to plague the inner city schools.

C.) Is There a Solution in Sight?
Even if the record is bleak, there is reason to believe that Philadelphia's schools are on the path to getting better. There are several things that must happen in order to stem the tide however. In order to make the teachers feel safer within their classrooms, they need to be safer within their classrooms. Increased security within schools is a temporary solution however. So how would the system have to change?

Funding for the inner city schools would need to increase. This is the most important part of all, as nothing can change without the help of the local and state governments. Because students in the inner city are living below the poverty line, their government funding for schools is much smaller than the richer suburbs. And because the suburbs are richer, they will get better educations from better schools and the cycle will perpetuate itself. However, since the state took over the district's School Board in 2001, they will have the power to allocate resources to start to solve the problem.

Secondly, teachers, principals, and administrators need to enforce discipline within the schools. Students who have committed acts of violence and disruption without repercussion will learn that it is acceptable for them to continue this behavior. Initially this will mean more security and police presence around the schools, but this will be less and less necessary as order is slowly restored. This will also serve a dual purpose of keeping teachers safer and allowing them to do their jobs.

The last piece to this puzzle is already being enacted by CEO Vallas, which is to separate particularly violent offenders into reform facility schools, and change the structure of the high school system from a few very large schools to several smaller ones, where order is more easily kept. An article from Education Week, which detailed some of the violence that took place to start these events in motion reads:

"Since becoming the district's chief in 2002, Mr. Vallas said, he has created 33 small high schools to replace the large, aging neighborhood schools that typically have been the city's most violent and lowest-achieving. Germantown High and West Philadelphia High are two of six remaining comprehensive high schools that serve more than 1,500 students, most of whom come from low-income families."

And there is evidence that the schools are improving. One article published by Christopher Paslay details the rise of the graduation rate of the district from 39% to 62% over the span of 10 years. Unfortunately, achievements like this are not discussed because of the lingering problems that plague the system, and the long road ahead in solving those problems.

=III. Conclusion=

Schools are an integral part of the society and civilization. They have the very important responsibility of educating and guiding the children of today. This ultimately drives them to be the bright future of the society. And it is the duty of every educational system to value this responsibility. The Philadelphia High School system is no exception to that duty. But in the recent years it had been plagued by some very serious problems.

The dropout concern in Philadelphia is so serious that according to a study held on this topic showed that throughout a period of 6 years, only about half of the students entering high school graduated within four years, and fewer than 60 percent graduated within six years. Also disturbing is the the violence in the schools of Philadelphia.

But like every problem in a system, there are always solutions to counter them and make the system more efficient. In regards to the problems which the Philadelphia School system is facing, various remedies could apply. Discipline, both moral as well as academic is the most important of all. In fact, the teachers which are in direct contact with the students must be given the authority to enforce the discipline among the students. The students today in school quickly learn that no significant disciplinary action will occur for any behavior, and they soon learn that they can "get away" with absolutely any behavior.

Therefore it is the duty and responsibility of the teachers, parents and society to emphasize or even if necessary enforce discipline on the young students, however harsh it may seem. Sometimes in order to cure a disease one has to take bitter medicine. And after most of the students have come to understand discipline and rules and authority and order and respect, the number of incidents of violence in schools and in society will drop drastically.

With reform and proper funding, inner city schools would not need metal detectors, or bulletproof backpacks. School environments could be even safer while being open and airy, such that intellectual creativity and growth is possible and encouraged. This reality is a very long way off, obviously. But it is important for our lawmakers now to realize that future is what we are striving towards. By having a clear and open mind to the problems of the present, we can begin to see the solutions of the future.

Bibliography and References
Jurgen Herbst: //"The One and Future School: 350 Years of American Secondary Education."// (1996)

Yancey, William L. and others. //"Neighborhoods, Troubles, and Schooling; The Ecology of Philadelphia's Public Schools."// National Research Center on Education in the Inner Cities. Published 1995.

//Phila. cracks down on Assaults by Students//. Maxwell, Lesli A. Education Week, Volume 26, Issue 28. 3/21/07

Philadelphia's Project U-Turn: //Citywide Efforts to Address the Dropout Rate//. http://www.aypf.org/forumbriefs/2007/fb030807.htm March 8th, 2007.

Nield, Balfanz, and Herzog. "//Educational Leadership: An Early Warning System//" Volume 65, October 2007.

"//Violence and Discipline Problems in US Public Schools: 96-97//" http://nces.ed.gov

 //Philadelphia School District leads nation with improved graduation rate, new study shows. Christopher Paslay. []   //

John Rawlins. //"Asian Students protest violence at South Philly High."// December 7th, 2009. www.abclocal.com

//“A Case for Community.”// 2 March 2005. http://www.philaedfund.org/pdfs/smallschools.pdf.

“//Philly School Funding Isn’t Fair.//” Dec 12, 2002. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/speakout/editorial/philly_schools.html

Lloyd, Mark Frazier. “//West Philadelphia Public Schools,//” The University Archives and Records Center.

O’Neill, James M. “//Grant Helps Penn with New School//,” Philadelphia Inquirer. 15 Jan 1999.

“Lea Henry C. School.” http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/browse_school/pa/2147.

Mezzacappa, Dale. “//For 17 years gifts have signified hope//,” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 19 Dec 2004.