1990s
10/3/93: School Integration Still on Philadelphia Docket the System is not doing its Job, the Court was told. The School District Wants the Case to End (Phila. Inquirer)
"Several days last week, five attorneys - sometimes six or seven - appeared in the elegant courtroom of Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith to argue about Philadelphia school desegregation. Wait a minute. Wasn't that settled when Smith ruled in April that students couldn't be bused to schools outside their neighborhoods against their will? The short answer is: No.
The case has waxed and waned in the public mind for the last 23 years - ever since the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission sued the school district in 1970 and charged it with discriminating on the basis of race. But it is still very much alive. Last week, a coalition of public interest groups finished presenting its argument that the system has reneged on a commitment to provide a good education to poor, minority students. These groups, represented by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, are hoping to force the school district to target more resources or change the way they educate children in "racially isolated" schools - those with fewer than 10 percent white students. Today, in a school district in which three-fourths of the students are black, Hispanic or Asian, 134 of the system's 250 schools are "racially isolated." They educate 53 percent of the district's students and the vast majority of its nonwhites....Judge Smith, who took over the case two years ago, eliminated mandatory busing as a remedy over the objection of the Human Relations Commission. She also eliminated the suggestion from a panel of expert mediators that suburban school districts be joined in the case on a voluntary basis to increase the pool of white students. ...Poverty alone cannot account for the differences in achievement between white and nonwhite students, Janice Madden testified on Wednesday: Racial discrimination also seems to be a factor. Madden is an economist and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania who holds a chair in urban studies and who has studied student achievement in the city's schools.
"Poverty explained a large share of the variation," Madden explained. ''But there was a significant effect on top of that."
Using the school district's own data, Madden compared the test scores in math and reading for students in racially isolated schools with those in other schools. She found that in the racially isolated schools, more students fell below the average in both reading and math - 4 percent more in reading and 7 percent more in math, even when the schools had an equally high poverty rate.
"Whatever is going on in the (racially isolated) schools is less effective in teaching kids," Madden said. "It could be the same thing, but the teaching methods aren't appropriate in these isolated schools." It's up to the school district to find the appropriate methods, Churchill has argued, and to spend whatever it takes....The desegregation program - including the voluntary busing of about 7,000 students each year, special programs at schools targeted for desegregation (not the racially isolated schools) and the maintenance of special magnet schools, has cost $200 million in 10 years, Brown said. With the district forced to cut programs to meet a $60 million deficit - the result of dwindling state, local and federal revenues - that money could be better spent elsewhere, he said."
6/18/98: SUPE: $14M Help Penn/ and Add 2 City Schools (Daily News)
"The cash-strapped Philadelphia School District is ready to pitch in at least $14 million to help the University of Pennsylvania stem professional and middle-class flight from around its campus. School Superintendent David Hornbeck wants to build an elementary school and new engineering and science magnet high school on two sites near the Penn campus, according to a confidential memo obtained by the Daily News. The university would provide the district with two West Philadelphia tracts as well as money and academic help....The proposal calls for the district to build an elementary school for 700 students on a one-block site bounded by 42nd, 43rd, Locust and Spruce streets. The $14 million price tag - about average for an elementary school - would be covered by long-term bonds...The university would also provide up to $700,000 a year to reduce class size, and would help run the school and provide academic support through Penn's Graduate School of Education. The school's attendance zone would be shaped to ``ensure that the student population will be racially integrated and economically diverse, and will draw the children of Penn faculty, staff and students and the community at large,'' the draft agreement says. It also calls for Penn to provide a 1.8-acre site at 38th and Market streets so the district can replace George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science, now in North Philadelphia...Penn spokesman Ken Wildes acknowledged that the new elementary school would benefit university employees, who are being urged to live in the area. Wildes said Penn president Judith Rodin viewed a new elementary school as critical to Penn's plans to revitalize and expand the neighborhood around Penn...."
"Several days last week, five attorneys - sometimes six or seven - appeared in the elegant courtroom of Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith to argue about Philadelphia school desegregation. Wait a minute. Wasn't that settled when Smith ruled in April that students couldn't be bused to schools outside their neighborhoods against their will? The short answer is: No.
The case has waxed and waned in the public mind for the last 23 years - ever since the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission sued the school district in 1970 and charged it with discriminating on the basis of race. But it is still very much alive. Last week, a coalition of public interest groups finished presenting its argument that the system has reneged on a commitment to provide a good education to poor, minority students. These groups, represented by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, are hoping to force the school district to target more resources or change the way they educate children in "racially isolated" schools - those with fewer than 10 percent white students. Today, in a school district in which three-fourths of the students are black, Hispanic or Asian, 134 of the system's 250 schools are "racially isolated." They educate 53 percent of the district's students and the vast majority of its nonwhites....Judge Smith, who took over the case two years ago, eliminated mandatory busing as a remedy over the objection of the Human Relations Commission. She also eliminated the suggestion from a panel of expert mediators that suburban school districts be joined in the case on a voluntary basis to increase the pool of white students. ...Poverty alone cannot account for the differences in achievement between white and nonwhite students, Janice Madden testified on Wednesday: Racial discrimination also seems to be a factor. Madden is an economist and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania who holds a chair in urban studies and who has studied student achievement in the city's schools.
"Poverty explained a large share of the variation," Madden explained. ''But there was a significant effect on top of that."
Using the school district's own data, Madden compared the test scores in math and reading for students in racially isolated schools with those in other schools. She found that in the racially isolated schools, more students fell below the average in both reading and math - 4 percent more in reading and 7 percent more in math, even when the schools had an equally high poverty rate.
"Whatever is going on in the (racially isolated) schools is less effective in teaching kids," Madden said. "It could be the same thing, but the teaching methods aren't appropriate in these isolated schools." It's up to the school district to find the appropriate methods, Churchill has argued, and to spend whatever it takes....The desegregation program - including the voluntary busing of about 7,000 students each year, special programs at schools targeted for desegregation (not the racially isolated schools) and the maintenance of special magnet schools, has cost $200 million in 10 years, Brown said. With the district forced to cut programs to meet a $60 million deficit - the result of dwindling state, local and federal revenues - that money could be better spent elsewhere, he said."
6/18/98: SUPE: $14M Help Penn/ and Add 2 City Schools (Daily News)
"The cash-strapped Philadelphia School District is ready to pitch in at least $14 million to help the University of Pennsylvania stem professional and middle-class flight from around its campus. School Superintendent David Hornbeck wants to build an elementary school and new engineering and science magnet high school on two sites near the Penn campus, according to a confidential memo obtained by the Daily News. The university would provide the district with two West Philadelphia tracts as well as money and academic help....The proposal calls for the district to build an elementary school for 700 students on a one-block site bounded by 42nd, 43rd, Locust and Spruce streets. The $14 million price tag - about average for an elementary school - would be covered by long-term bonds...The university would also provide up to $700,000 a year to reduce class size, and would help run the school and provide academic support through Penn's Graduate School of Education. The school's attendance zone would be shaped to ``ensure that the student population will be racially integrated and economically diverse, and will draw the children of Penn faculty, staff and students and the community at large,'' the draft agreement says. It also calls for Penn to provide a 1.8-acre site at 38th and Market streets so the district can replace George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science, now in North Philadelphia...Penn spokesman Ken Wildes acknowledged that the new elementary school would benefit university employees, who are being urged to live in the area. Wildes said Penn president Judith Rodin viewed a new elementary school as critical to Penn's plans to revitalize and expand the neighborhood around Penn...."