A sign reading “Public schools are for everyone” is seen at a June 2020 protest in Oakland. (Photo by Jay Manning/PublicSource)
by Oliver Morrison, PublicSource
As Pittsburgh Public Schools tries to address attendance challenges that worsened during the pandemic, it faces long-term structural problems that have left the city with segregated schools, inequitable funding and the loss of thousands of students, according to nonprofit A+ Schools 2021 annual report to the community.
The report focuses on a handful of Pittsburgh schools that are bucking the overall trends to provide models for other district schools to follow.
The annual report by the nonprofit education advocacy organization has historically focused on some of the important data and trends in the city’s schools. But during the pandemic, the lack of comprehensive testing data caused the nonprofit to focus more on success stories and identifying structural problems.
“Telling the district that things aren’t working hasn’t yielded the outcomes that we’ve wanted,” said James Fogarty, the executive director of A+ Schools*, during a Monday press conference to highlight the new report.
The report focuses on bright spots like fewer chronic absences at Schiller 6-8, an arts education program at Beechwood K-5 and an increase in AP tests taken at Westinghouse Academy.
But there are few enrollment bright spots: Only four schools have added students since 2017. The other 50 schools have lost students. Over the past five years, the district has lost 2,848 students, according to the report, which is about one in every eight students during that period. The pandemic appears to have made this trend even worse, with a big dropoff in kindergarteners enrolling this year, according to a recent report by WESA.
Read entire article here
About Post Author
