Today’s reality: Philadelphia public school students receive Chromebooks for use during school but these devices are under powered for many tasks, unavailable during recess, and often in disrepair or without a charger. In many cases, students use mobile phones to try and complete online assignments.
Many classrooms do not have spare computers for students to use when theirs are broken, missing a charger or left at home by mistake. As a result, these students often cannot access their online curriculum or web-based tools that greatly enhance learning.
This certainly contributes to the fact that only a dismal 22 percent of the Class of 2017 will graduate on time, according to a 2015 School District of Philadelphia study. (2)
The majority of students that do not graduate on time drop out altogether. Of these:
- 67% are economically challenged,
- 59% are male and 58% are African American.
- The majority of dropouts score basic or below on 8th grade math.
- Over-age, previously-held-back 9th graders are more likely to drop out
These citywide averages are probably weighted down by the schools PCF supports, where the statistics are likely much worse!
What We Do
PCF helps address these issues and close the digital divide for tomorrow’s leaders attending low-income area Philadelphia public schools.
Our formula is simple: When local companies upgrade their still-very-usable computers, our volunteers collect, clean and re-furbish them for installation into classrooms that need them. We also gift them to families directly and to churches, community centers and other organizations that operate in the communities we serve. But we need your financial support to buy refurbishing parts, chargers, power strips, networking and to offset installation costs.
Once installed, these units become essential tools for teachers to assist all students but especially those that are behind, and they help keep order in the classroom.
- Teachers tell us they love having our computers in their classrooms where they are utilized constantly, particularly for accessing the successful educational websites made available by the school district: First-in-Math, Lexia (reading/writing), SumDog, ABCya, Class DoJo, Kahn Academy, etc.
- They are fast and have low viruses or malware risk, since we use Linux
- As a school district partner, PCF is allowed to work with schools directly and our units are all put on the district’s network and behind their firewall.
Feedback from our classrooms has been overwhelmingly positive, as detailed on our testimonials page.
Initial Results:
The schools we have supported have seen an improvement in math and reading performance as a result of being able to access web-based “Intervention Tools” during class. In our testimonials, one teacher states that six of her held back kindergarten students moved up to 1st grade before the end of the year, putting them back on track. Other teachers spoke to the ability to use the educational websites to track students’ individual progress and address specific shortcomings.
(1) Report gives District low technology ranking; The Notebook.
(2) High School Graduation, Dropout, and Retention, January 6, 2015, School District of Philadelphia; http://webgui.phila.k12.pa.us/uploads/zp/XR/zpXRP2gKeFXQY-3TPN_alw/HS-Grad-and-Drop-FINAL.pdf