June 24-30, 2004

city beat

Progress Report

It's a mixed outlook for city children.

by Julia Zhou

When school's finally out for summer — which it is for Philadelphia kids — long-awaited vacation plans are tempered only by report-card anxiety. Last Thursday, Philadelphia Safe and Sound — a nonprofit that's tried to become the foremost source of information about the city's children — shared some grades of their own in its Report Card 2004. In its fifth annual examination, the outcome was mediocre or, as they put it, "mixed results with inconsistent progress."

Like kids with C averages still angling for a day at Great Adventure, some city officials were contrite in offering promises to improve. But Mayor John Street was fightin' mad.

"I am sick and tired of apologizing for wanting to spend money on children and neighborhoods," he said at a City Hall press conference. "So long as I'm the mayor of this city, we're going to fight for children."

A close look at the report card reveals that Philly's youngest kids are faring the best. Infant mortality rates are down, prenatal care is up and more first-graders advance to second grade in one try.

But moving up the age spectrum, the picture gets decidedly bleaker. Slightly more than half of the city's ninth graders graduate high school in the traditional four years; one in four drops out entirely. Juvenile homicides jumped 22.5 percent from 2002 to 2003 and marijuana use is on the rise.

Still, there is some good news for teenagers. Pregnancy rates are down 10 percent from 2001 and alcohol and cigarette use are on the decline.

So, why the discrepancy between younger and older children? Jo Ann Lawer, president of Safe and Sound, says that many of today's programs for children didn't exist five or 10 years ago. "Teenagers didn't receive programs as young children," offered Kianna Binns, student president of the Grover Washington Beacon Center.

While Lawer would like to see a "continuum of these support programs," she isn't overly optimistic. Early childhood programs may not be a miracle drug, but they are a vitamin, she says.

"The group of kids that are actually perpetuating the most serious kinds of criminal-juvenile behavior is a small, very difficult group of kids to reach. Keeping more kids from falling into the pattern, that's what we're trying to do," Lauer says. "Chances are, we're not going to reach the kids who are most far gone."