The new admissions process for elite public schools in Philly isn’t working. Here are five ways to fix it.
The new lottery system for applying to elite schools isn't doing enough to advance the cause.
I am a proud alumnus of the Philadelphia School District, and will always be grateful to it for endowing me with the tools to learn English when I came to Philadelphia at age 8 from the Congo. Now, as a parent of district kids, I see how the district must do better.
At the core of my concerns is a persistent lack of equity.
Just recently, my friend Rae Minter-Alexander lamented the plummeting number of Black students at Penn Alexander, named after her mother. Although Sadie T.M. Alexander was a trailblazer for civil rights — she was the first Black American to earn a doctorate in economics, among other achievements — the student body at Penn Alexander has dropped from 57% Black when the school opened in 2002 to only 13% now.
I’ve long criticized the School District for the lottery program it cobbled together to allow students in middle and high school to apply for admission to elite, “magnet” schools. The new criteria for the program were hashed in a backroom with no public engagement, notice, or input. And the changes will likely do little to advance equity in the district.
Under the old process, each magnet school used its discretion when deciding who to admit based on recommendations, test scores, interviews, and other criteria. Over concerns about the declining number of Black students at Masterman and Central High Schools, the district centralized the admissions process in 2021, and now assigns students to the schools they are applying to based on a computerized lottery; the most selective schools gave preference to students from zip codes that are historically underrepresented but also limited their lottery to students who satisfy minimum criteria, which include school attendance and a graded writing test.
Unfortunately, the School District’s own research shows that the new system did not yield any meaningful increase in the representation of Black and Hispanic students, especially among the most competitive schools, such as Masterman and Central. Beyond that, it also resulted in many criteria-based schools being left with open seats and undersubscribed, and by seizing all discretion from the schools, disrupted the careful process that other citywide admissions schools, like Paul Robeson High School, had for selecting students.
As a parent who participated in last year’s process, I can’t overstate how dispiriting and chaotic it was. The district provided little communication of basic information about the lottery, changed critical deadlines without warning, and then revised those very deadlines. The process was equitable in that everyone was treated to the same level of disregard and disdain.
The process was equitable in that everyone was treated to the same level of disregard and disdain.
What’s more, the people who suffered most were the children — who were still recovering from the adverse effects of remote schooling because of the pandemic.
Five fixes
In the last year or so, after Tony B. Watlington Sr. took over as superintendent, the district has sought to address some of these challenges in response to the widespread criticism of the lottery — eliminating the bizarre writing test and reintroducing the PSSAs, the statewide test, as one of the criteria for admission.
These changes fall short.
The lottery system is fundamentally flawed, and as long as the district continues to rely on it, it will fail to advance equity at the city’s most competitive schools and damage the carefully balanced approach that other schools had put in place to allow our students to succeed.
If the district insists on proceeding with its current approach, it has to:
Implement a ranked-choice process for the lottery, which other districts use and would allow the process to move more smoothly and efficiently.
Reconsider the reliance on attendance as a strict cutoff, especially as the district’s policy for recording attendance is often imprecise. It is needlessly punitive to deny a child, in the nation’s poorest big city, the opportunity to qualify for one of the criteria schools if they have 94% attendance, instead of 95%.
Evaluate the reliance on standardized testing in this process. The trend nationally, and certainly in higher education, has been to move away from standardized tests, and it’s not clear why the district focuses on them as a basis for admission.
Ensure that there is a real pathway open for eligible students to get access to Masterman, GAMP, Carver, and other high schools that give preference to students graduating from their middle schools.
Establish a formal and robust outreach program to identify talented students across our city and encourage them to seek admission to the most competitive schools. There are children who, like I did, are growing up near Ninth and Erie Streets in North Philly, and can blossom if the district makes a concerted and early effort to build that pipeline.
There are countless other reforms that should be considered, but those are at least a start.
Focus on the future
The unrelenting attention we give to the criteria schools causes us to ignore the neighborhood schools and promotes the notion that these schools, where the vast majority of our students are educated, are “less than.” The district reinforces that reality by expecting students (and teachers and staff) to attend buildings that are unsafe inside (due to asbestos or lack of repairs) and outside (because of rampant gun violence). We ignore the neighborhood schools at our peril.
I understand there is no political appetite to further revamp the special admissions system. However, this is one of the reasons that, as city solicitor, I worked so hard to transfer control of the district from the School Reform Commission — the district’s governing body for 16 years — back to the city in 2017: so that the city gets to decide what happens in the district.
Our next mayor can come in on day one and set up a nominating panel, like the one from which I resigned as chair, to appoint his or her own school board, which controls a budget almost as big as the city’s budget and will get an infusion of state funds. It is a powerful opportunity for the next mayor to articulate a vision around the lottery going forward.
I will always feel indebted to the district for propelling me to an Ivy League education and a legal career. Which is why I continue to push for the district to offer opportunities to the kids and families who are overlooked and shut out.
Real equity feels elusive in a city with a deep-rooted history of segregation, and where its four-decade school desegregation lawsuit was settled only in 2009. While there is no silver bullet, if we don’t keep trying, we have only ourselves to blame. And that’s a Philly shrug we must not tolerate.
Sozi Pedro Tulante is a lawyer in Philadelphia and served as Philadelphia city solicitor from 2016 to 2018. He attended Birney, Clymer, Sullivan, Bethune, Conwell schools, and Northeast High School.