John Washington, now in his 50s, attended a public elementary and middle school in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia and then went to a large magnet high school, a type of public school that has a selective admission process. As he has gotten older, he has understood that in the education system in Philadelphia, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
John was bused during the integration movement of the 1970s and graduated from high school in 1990. Back then, he recognized that his school was not as segregated as the schools his parents and grandparents had attended in Philadelphia. As a parent of three current students, however, he has noticed how racially segregated most of the schools in Philadelphia remain.
