A new analysis from the Commonwealth Foundation finds that Pennsylvania is violating federal and state law by failing to properly identify persistently dangerous schools and provide students with safer alternatives. The analysis criticizes the state’s reliance on arrest data rather than violent incident reports to determine which schools qualify as dangerous.
Under federal and state law, students attending persistently dangerous schools or those who have experienced school violence must be offered transfers to safer charter or public schools. However, the current Pennsylvania policy defines dangerous schools based on the number of arrests—not the frequency of serious violent incidents such as assault, threats, and weapon possession.
The Commonwealth Foundation warns that this definition leads to underreporting and allows schools with high levels of violence but few arrests to avoid the dangerous label. According to their findings, if the law were updated to include violent incidents, over 1,100 of the state’s 3,000 public schools—representing nearly half of all public school students—would qualify as persistently dangerous.
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are the worst-affected areas, with more than 70% and 80% of schools, respectively, meeting the redefined threshold for dangerous institutions.
The report accuses the Pennsylvania Department of Education of failing to maintain records identifying persistently dangerous schools and of ignoring their legal duty to provide school choice options for students facing daily threats of violence.
Rachel Langan, Senior Education Policy Analyst for the Commonwealth Foundation, argues that students’ safety is compromised when schools avoid the dangerous label through technicalities. “For students experiencing violence, their safety is compromised when assaulted, whether or not the assault results in arrest,” she said.
The U.S. Department of Education recently reminded states of their legal obligations under the Unsafe School Choice Option. Pennsylvania now risks losing federal education funding if it continues to ignore the law and deny students access to safe learning environments.
