The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania did not put any Philadelphia schools on its 2014–2015 list of “persistently dangerous schools.”
So, there is no list.
Without the city’s schools on the roster, there are no dangerous schools in the state’s 500 school districts, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
The empty lineup was announced earlier this month by the Philadelphia School District. The new list is the first that does not include a city school since the “persistently dangerous” designation began with 2001’s federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Just a few years ago, a dozen city schools, four of them in the Northeast, made the list. According to district spokesman Fernando Gallard, except for a Chester-Upland school in 2002–2003, only Philly schools have gotten the “persistently dangerous” designation.
This is the fourth year that the number of reported violent incidents has decreased, according to the school district. The current rundown represents a 9.9-percent decrease from the previous year’s accounting.
But violent incidents really haven’t changed. They remain 1.84 per 100 students. Last year, Lincoln High and Sayre Middle School were the only two schools on the list.
Under federal law, each state establishes criteria to classify a school incident as dangerous. In previous years, city school administrators have said Pennsylvania’s standards are very broad.
Fights that lead to arrests, attempts to bring weapons into school and pushing a teacher are examples of dangerous incidents just like rapes and homicides and kidnappings.
One quirky aspect of the commonwealth’s standards is that a school with 1,000 students could have up to 19 murders a year and not make the list if no other dangerous incidents are reported. On the other hand, a school with an identical enrollments that has 22 incidents, none of which are as serious as a homicide, would be on the list.
“It’s a relatively crude standard oftentimes,” Paul Socolar, editor of the Notebook, an independent publication that focuses on schools, told the Northeast Times in October 2011. But he added the general public takes the list’s name at face value. “It’s the opposite of the ‘Good Housekeeping seal,’” he said.
