The gentrifying mission of a neighborhood-based lab school like PAS is
pretty plain. But high schools are clumsier tools of gentrification
because they must draw from a wide geographical base. One MS can't feed
one HS. Furthermore, lots of Penn Alexander School graduates will always
want to go to other specialty schools ("magnet" terminology is on its
way out, it seems). So of necessity the Penn-Partnership School will
serve a larger area, even if it retains a special tie with
Penn-Partnership ES / MSs.
To some extent it will be driven by the marketplace of city students who
choose to apply. It would be odd indeed if all the kids from Mantua and
Mill Creek were excluded from that school. Both Penn and the School
District have strong incentives to pitch it to them, especially in its
start-up years.
I wouldn't assume "International Relations" can serve only Ivy-bound
kids. There are lots of working-class and lumpen-bourgeois youths in
town who come from immigrant backgrounds. There's a lot of working-class
international commerce right here in River City -- take a walk down
Baltimore Ave. There are international business opportunities fêting Big
French Pharma in the Delaware Valley; here are also opportunities in the
International Longshoreman's Union, moving Chilean produce and cocoa,
and jobs at the growing airport.
Simple ambition seems a good-enough explanation for a Penn-assisted HS,
without any need for either covert whisperings from the Real Estate
Dept. or a Mother-Theresa-like mission to uplift the urban poor. If the
GSE and the School District think they've got a good thing going in this
Penn Partnership, why not look for a way to extend it longitudinally?
There'd be more continuity between MS and HS interventions ...plus it
gives GSE a full k-12 range of practice options.
-- Tony West
Of course they should get middle-class kids to college; why should
middle-class parents fund a governmental product that can't
perform this
elementary task?
Yes, of course they should. Middle-class kids need an education too.
My point was simply that Glenn seemed to be characterizing the magnet
school system as some sort of utopian, egalitarian goal to strive
toward. I agree with him that Penn and Drexel’s motivations are to
build a middle- to upper-middle class buffer zone around the
universities, and not to make quality educational opportunities
available to the current population attending UC High School. I was
simply pointing out that the magnet school system serves much the same
function, though without the localized gentrifying effect.
Kimm
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