Philadelphia Public Elementary Schools
General Information
- Generally are K-8 (but not always)
- Neighborhood schools are available to families that live in the catchment area
- Some neighborhood schools, which are not at capacity, can accept students from outside of the catchment zone
- The more desirable schools are that way because of parent and community involvement.
- Today we will discuss several public schools that might draw clients to neighborhoods around the city.
School Rankings
Many clients may be using online school rankings to evaluate schools
Greatschools.org is America’s unofficial ranking system and is linked to Zillow
Evaluate schools based on the following metrics:
- Standardized testing scores (PSSAs)
- Improvement in test scores
- School climate
- College and career readiness (for high schools only)
These ratings correlate highly with socioeconomic levels while not doing a great job at capturing how much a school helps students grow
A large body of academic literature warns against using performance on standardized tests as a proxy for quality of education. Many test questions, for instance, assume knowledge that lower-income students may not have been exposed to either in or out of school
We should caution clients that they need to take a deeper look into the school rather than just looking at the ratings before choosing a neighborhood.
Click here for detailed information about some of the most sought after schools in the city.
Additional Resources
Philadelphia School Catchment Finder:
https://webapps1.philasd.org/school_finder/
New Superintendent
Case Against GreatSchools.org
https://integratedschools.org/the-problem-with-great-schools/
Case for Neighborhood Schools
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/08/29/public-school-rankings-philadelphia/
Connecting Families to Resources for Out of School Time
https://www.phila.gov/programs/out-of-school-time-ost/