My Philadelphia School System Report Card

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a report card on the Philly public school system. This tracks the district's progress in moving towards a number of goals laid out around the turn of the millennium. While they're nowhere near the set benchmarks, they have improved in almost every category, a good sign. (I should also note that where it says "% change" they actually mean "change in %"--that is, a change from 10% to 20% of students results in a 10% change, not a 100% change.)

What's most distressing to me is one little row. We commonly measure math and reading skills as a benchmark for academic achievement. Only 40.6% of 3rd through 11th graders read at grade level, and only 44.9% of them have grade-level math skills. But that's not the most distressing part: it's the science skills. The SATs don't measure science skills. No Child Left Behind doesn't treat them as important as math or reading. They're not widely publicized. But they are not only crucially important to our nation's future, prosperity and security, when held up against the vaunted "math and reading" scores, can demonstrate just how much we're gaming the system (are we focusing too much on math and reading and just "teaching to the tests"?).

25.5%

That's the science number. Only one in four students in the Philly public schools have science skills commensurate with grade level standards. Not only is this outrageous, but shows where our priorities are. Our focus, once on serving the students, has turned to getting higher test scores and good PR. In a field that will for better or for worse define the 21st century--science and technology--we're letting our kids down. Communications technology, energy technology, information technology...these will be the sectors on which our economy and national strength will rely. And we'll be giving leadership of 21st century Earth away to countries like China and India, because we evaluate teachers, students and schools alike on math test scores, reading test scores, and very little else.

[Editor's Note: The science skills were measure among 2rd to 10th graders, not 3rd through 11th--why the cutoffs are both 1 earlier isn't stated, and may affect results, but shouldn't make too dramatic a difference. If all the difference is accounted for by that discrepancy, then we either have the worst second grade or best 11th grade program in the world, and should study that.]