George Washington wants
off ‘dangerous school’ list

The School District of Philadelphia is waiting for the state Department of Education to remove George Washington High School from Pennsylvania’s most persistently dangerous schools list for 2005, which was released in September.
The school district sent a letter requesting the removal after discovering that an incident incorrectly attributed to a George Washington student falsely brought the number of violent incidents to 20, the point at which a school of 1,000 or more students is eligible for the list. (George Washington has roughly 2,300 students.)
Principal Alan Liebowitz considers the formula flawed.
"If it’s twenty for one-thousand, why isn’t it forty for two-thousand?" said Liebowitz.
Liebowitz also thinks incidents off school grounds or stopped at the metal detectors should not be counted.
The incident in question was an off-campus assault on a Washington student by a student from the Shallcross Disciplinary School.
A Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman said he would not comment before the school district received the response to the request.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are required to report violent incidents — such as assaults, weapons possessions, robberies and sexual offenses — to the police. School district spokesman Vincent Thompson said Philadelphia reports all incidents, not just violent ones, and enforces a 24-hour, seven-day code of conduct.
The fact that all 10 schools on the 2005 list are in Philadelphia County is testament to the school district’s aggressive reporting, according to Thompson. Reporting mechanisms vary across the 501 Pennsylvania school districts, as well as throughout the county, making a distorted picture of "dangerous" schools, he said.
Thompson noted that the school district has come a long way, with the dangerous schools dropping to 10 from 14 last year and from 27 in 2003.