Lisa Zhu | Reforming school reform

For longtime Philly resident Tamara Ali, William Penn High School changed her life. A 2000 graduate of the North Philadelphia school, Ali participated in its communications and journalism program, which at the time was one of the best in the city.

"I transferred to William Penn from Strawberry Mansion, which was in a bad neighborhood," she said. At her former school, Ali's grades were poor, and she was frustrated with the lack of opportunities to pursue her own passions. But things improved once she arrived at William Penn -"Their communications program . enabled me to join the newspaper and get an internship with Comcast. My grades also started improving, and I graduated with honors."

Nowadays, Ali is the director of Performing Arts and Media for a local nonprofit. Though almost a decade has passed since she was a student at William Penn, the school still strikes a deep chord within her -"I still have articles that I wrote in 2000 for the school newspaper because I was so proud of them."

Unfortunately, such experiences at William Penn are rare these days. Constructed in 1974, it was to be a model of excellence, with specialty programs that would draw hundreds of students from around the city. District officials outfitted the building with state-of-the-art broadcasting and recording studios, a theater for 500 and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

But now William Penn is a decrepit shell of its former self: Three out of its five buildings are closed, and its once-famous communications program is gone. Though the campus can house 3,000, the student body has dwindled down to 600. Instead of the magnet school it once aspired to be, William Penn is now just another underperforming "neighborhood" school. It's no wonder, then, that Philadelphia's School Reform Commission announced last month that the school would be closing in 2010.

Understandably, the situation has not been received well by the local community. Many of the area's residents - including state Rep. W. Curtis Thomas - have formed the Coalition to Save William Penn in protest.

"It's unfair to place students from low-performing schools into other low-performing schools [like Benjamin Franklin and Simon Gratz]. It just makes class size larger in these already-underperforming schools," said Allison Acevedo, spokeswoman for Thomas. "If you're moving kids to another situation, you should be improving their educational opportunity; otherwise, you're giving up on the students and showing that you're not willing to invest in the community."

That may be the case; however, the closing of William Penn is much more than the struggles faced by one school and its community. In fact, this decision is indicative of a long history of failure in Philadelphia's attempts at educational reform.

Specifically, since the school was conceived, seven district superintendents have come and gone. "Every time there was a new superintendent, there was a new reform movement, so reform loses its meaning," Urban Studies professor Elaine Simon said. "There's been a lot of research that shows what works, but nobody really looks at that, so they start from scratch. There's very little institutional memory." (Funnily enough, the School Reform Commission was turning over just as I was writing this column - go figure.) In other words, the situation looks bleak - not only for William Penn, but for Philadelphia's school district.

But that doesn't mean we should give up on finding solutions. Though it may be too late to save William Penn, district officials can use its existing campus to house several smaller, autonomous schools. This way, students and teachers reap the benefits of a small-school education, and the legacy of the original school is preserved.

Community members agree this is one of the better proposals. According to Acevedo, "William Penn could be the site of three different academies - one for green industry, one for communications and technology and one for health care." But while there's no shortage of ideas from the community, it remains to be seen whether the administration can step it up to enact real change. If William Penn is successfully converted into smaller, more-effective schools, this approach could be applied to the other distressed neighborhood schools in the city. More likely, however, continued administrative turnovers will result in the existing structure becoming yet another abandoned building - and students would be the ones that lose out the most.

Lisa Zhu is a College and Wharton senior from Cherry Hill, N.J. Zhu-ology appears on Thursdays. Her email address is zhu@dailypennsylvanian.com

An earlier version of this article stated that four of the five buildings at the William Penn campus are closed. In fact, two of the buildings are still currently in operation. Also, while the school district administration has recommended closing Willliam Penn, the SRC has not yet voted on the matter and will do so in June.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.