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11/23/2004: "Violence and Philadelphia Schools"
Another shooting outside of a Philadelphia school, this time outside of the Strawberry Mansion High School. Earlier this year there had been another shoot-out where a young child had been caught in the crossfire between two adult groups. This time there were apparently two men waiting for a student to depart to attack him.
This attack, along with the recent rape of a young boy at Stetson and an assault on a young girl outside of Wilson, makes you wonder if things are really getting better inside Philadelphia schools.
Paul Vallas on the shootings:
“It’s impossible to do anything once they leave the schools...There are just too many guns on the street. The challenge we face is not the students’ safety in school, but on their way home."
and
"There didn't appear to be a problem inside the school today... The problem is we have unsafe neighborhoods. Too many guns and too much crime. I'd like to think our schools are very secure.
Now usually I can get behind any sort of structural explanation- the economic problems that have devastated large parts of Philly are well beyond the power of schools to address. But let's not point at these issues and forget that our schools are becoming test-taking discipline centers where real learning is not particularly encouraged. And let's not pretend that there haven't been many stories on the chaos that continues to exist in many secondary schools.
School reform is always fun when it's the little kids- everybody loves these photo ops and the chance to reveal a shiny science lab for second graders. But it's a lot harder for the big kids and the past few chief administrators have barely tried.