PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Thousands of Philadelphia public school students drop off the rolls each year, with no explanation. A new administrator is joining the Philadelphia School District with the sole focus of preventing dropouts.
At the end of last school year, 3,600 students had disappeared from the district's attendance rolls, with no information about why they weren't in school anymore.
As of December 2023, the district listed more than 1,900 dropouts for the current school year. That's about 900 fewer than December 2022, but Superintendent Tony Watlington said it's still too many.
So, he's hiring someone to tackle the issue.
"We're going to bring aboard a new assistant superintendent who will focus exclusively on coordinating our dropout efforts across the school district," Watlington said.
Dr. Melvin Marshall, a former high school principal in Guilford County, North Carolina, will become the district's latest assistant superintendent. Marshall was an assistant principal at Dudley High School in Greensboro — the same school where Watlington served as principal two decades ago.
"It's a school where we had a significant improvement in student achievement and significant decreases in the dropout rate," Watlington said. "He has experience significantly improving student outcomes, including for children of color, and for significantly reducing the dropout numbers and increasing the four-year graduation rates."
Watlington said Marshall will work with the city, the Philadelphia Housing Authority and other agencies to keep students in school.
"We have a very tightly coordinated intergovernmental strategy, and we won't stop until we get the dropout numbers down to zero," he pledged.
Watlington pointed to a study that determined every dropout costs the city $405,000. Because students who drop out generally don't have good life outcomes, he said keeping students in school is a moral issue for the district.
Marshall comes to Philadelphia from North Carolina, but Watlington noted that he has promoted several assistant superintendents from within the Philadelphia School District in recent months.
