Study: Phila. parents want more school-choice options

Despite the explosive growth of charter schools in Philadelphia in the last decade, city parents say they still do not have enough good choices when it comes to picking a school, Pew Charitable Trusts says in a study released Tuesday.

White parents whose children attend district schools give higher marks to the system and individual schools than do African American parents. Parents younger than 30 are among the district's "most dissatisfied customers." Nearly eight out of 10 district parents under 30 say they have considered transferring their children to Catholic, charter, or private schools.

Those are just some of the findings contained in an examination of kindergarten-through-12th-grade education in the city by Pew Trusts' Philadelphia Research Initiative.

The report, which features a poll of 802 city parents with school-age children, found that school safety was a major concern and accounts for the largest differences in how parents view their schools.

The poll of district, charter, and Catholic school parents found that only 31 percent of district parents say their children's schools do an excellent job handling safety, compared with 67 percent for charter parents, and 73 percent for those whose children attend Catholic schools.

"There's a dramatic difference between how parents in the three systems see their schools on safety," Larry Eichel, project director of the Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative, said Monday.

In the foreword to "Philadelphia's Changing Schools and What Parents Want from Them," Eichel, a former Inquirer journalist, wrote that the report focuses on parents because they face the task of navigating an often-bewildering sea of choices.

Nonetheless, educational choice has become mainstream in Philadelphia. Both Eichel and Laura Horwitz, a research associate who was one of the report's principal authors, said they were struck that 62 percent of district parents have actively considered sending their children to charter, Catholic, or private schools.

"If people are being honest with us, it gives the idea that almost everybody is thinking about this," Eichel said. "Obviously, there are some people who put their children in the nearest public school as a default situation, but not many."