Philly schools overhauled the magnet-school admissions process in the name of equity. Did it work?

In a decision that was celebrated by some and denounced by others, Philadelphia overhauled its magnet-school admissions process this year in the name of equity, aiming to create more opportunities for Black and brown students at the city’s criteria-based schools.

Did it work?

The results are mixed, according to new Philadelphia School District research. Overall, more students, including students of color, met the admissions requirements of the 21 high schools — from Masterman and Central to the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts and Franklin Learning Center — and more of the students who qualified applied to at least one school. For Latinx and Black eighth graders, nearly 60% met admissions requirements, up from 14% (Latinx) and almost 11% (Black) last year. Nearly 86% of students who applied received an offer from at least one magnet school or program. (Of note: The researchers’ analysis did not include applications from students currently attending schools outside the district, including charters.)

The biggest change to this year’s selection methodology was a centralized lottery that decided who among qualified applicants got admitted to each school, instead of the long-held practice of principals having the final say. And students from a handful of zip codes (19133, 19140, 19134, 19132, 19121, 19135) that are traditionally underrepresented were given preference at Masterman, Central, George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science, and Parkway Center City Middle College.

Critics say the process was deeply flawed, though, instituted with no notice and little public input, in contrast to the way other cities have executed such changes. They question why certain zip codes were excluded from the preference list. They also cite a computer-scored writing test whose creators specifically counsel against using the exam to grade students, and how some students got multiple acceptances and some got zero.

Also, the pool of eligible students expanded in part because standardized tests were removed as an admissions requirement; COVID-19 caused the cancellation of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) in 2019-20 and few Philadelphia seventh graders were physically in school to take the test in 2020-21. Some schools also changed their grade criteria, allowing students who earned Cs in major subjects to apply; in the past, just one C was allowed.

(Central and Masterman, by contrast, used to permit students with one C to qualify for admissions; now students must have all As and Bs.)

District officials said they were “proud” of the changes.

“These results show that we are making progress to ensure a more equitable School Selection Process, one that provides opportunities for students who haven’t historically received the opportunity to attend specific criteria-based schools,” Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said in a statement. Hite, in the past, has acknowledged this year’s admissions cycle wasn’t perfect — technical glitches, delayed information, and shifting requirements complicated things — but said he had expected hiccups in the first year of a new process, and that it will be fine-tuned going forward.

The data, analyzed by the school system’s Office of Evaluation, Research, and Accountability, show that 65% of district eighth graders met minimum requirements for criteria-based school, a significant jump from the prior school year, when 20% hit the mark. However, those numbers varied by demographic groups — 59% of Black or Latinx students qualified, while 77% of white students and 89% of Asian students qualified. Students who receive special-education services were less likely to qualify, with 48% meeting the targets, compared with 69% of students who do not receive special-education services.

English language learners were just as likely as non-English language learners to qualify.

In all, 65% of district eighth graders applied to at least one special-admissions school, up from 60% the prior year.

Central received the most applications from district students, with 2,608 applicants (54% of those eligible received an offer); Northeast High’s magnet and International Baccalaureate programs were next, with 1,964 applications (51% of those eligible received an offer).

The schools with the highest acceptance rates were the Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP), where 100% of eligible students were offered admissions, and the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush, where 99% of those who qualified got offers. By contrast, just 25% of those who applied to Masterman received offers, and 38% of applicants to Science Leadership Academy Center City got admissions offers.

Particular concerns were raised by families with children at schools like Carver and SLA Beeber, where students who had applied for middle school grades were promised they could continue at those attached high schools if they kept their grades up. District officials have disavowed those promises.

Sixty percent of current Carver middle-schoolers who qualified for admission to the high school got in; 40% of qualifying SLA Beeber middle schoolers were offered admission. At Hill-Freedman World Academy, the number was 65%, and at GAMP, 100%. At Masterman, where middle school students were never given similar promises around high school admission, 25% of continuing applicants got into the high school.

And while there was some equity progress overall, significant disparities remain, especially when considering the city’s most elite schools.

Just 2% of Black and 3% of Latinx eighth graders citywide met the bar for Masterman entry, for instance, and 8% of Black and Latinx students hit Central’s target — and those numbers speak just to eligibility, not to admissions. (In total, 17% of all white students were eligible for Masterman and 30% of Asian students; for Central, 8% of white students and 15% of Asian students.)

Masterman is the only school in the city for which students must have completed Algebra I by eighth grade, a significant bar to entry for students in many neighborhood high schools. The schools that do offer Algebra I generally enroll higher percentages of white and non-economically disadvantaged students than those that do not. Just two schools — Masterman’s middle school and Baldi Middle School — produced 30% of students that met the algebra requirement; many city schools produced none at all.

What’s not yet clear is whether the process will result in increased diversity at the district’s criteria-based high schools: Final enrollment numbers have not yet been released.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.