DN Editorial: Is there a conspiracy to keep city kids out of college?

WE DON'T fully embrace conspiracy theories, like the one about corporations in cahoots to privatize public education, but that's not to say that we're blind as to how budget cuts are systematically dismantling public education, especially in this city.

And, given the last six months of the school district's financial woes, we're ready to sign on to a new theory: how lawmakers are conspiring to keep the city's students - many of them low-income and disadvantaged - from getting to college, thereby relegating those students to remain in the margins of the economy for the rest of their lives.

In September, while its budget hole was $304 million, the district laid off thousands of assistant principals, aides, teachers and counselors. As money began trickling in, the district restored some of those jobs -including 206 of the 283 counselors who had lost their jobs. That would be a laughable number given the size of the student population . . . if it weren't so tragic.

The district is still in trouble, primarily because the teachers' contracts are not resolved yet, but also because the state remains indifferent to providing a stable funding base for the schools. It's not even moving on long-shot funding deals, like raising the city's cigarette tax.

Consider: Counselors are the professionals who are there not only to help students with problems and crises, but also to help students navigate the complicated system of college applications and financial-aid applications. More importantly, counselors can identify and encourage students who might not be thinking about college but should be.

In 2000, the district employed 364 counselors - a ratio that, at 810 students per counselor, still exceeded the national average ratio of 561 students per counselor. By 2004, that number had risen, but then began dropping to its current shameful low.

So, why isn't this counselor crisis being declared an emergency? It's not as if Mayor Nutter is unaware; he has promised from the time he was elected to double the 18 percent college-attainment rate. The Mayor's Office of Education has devoted time and energy to the problem. So have outside groups, like Philadelphia Futures and the Philadelphia Youth Network. But far more is needed.

Right now, college application deadlines are passing. Every day that students miss those deadlines, the chance that they ever will get to college diminishes. And for every Philadelphia student not going to college, the city is less likely to move forward. Lack of college means lost earnings, lost potential and lack of opportunity. Many with high-school-only educations succeed. And skilled trades are a viable option, if students know about them. But lifetime earnings of those with a high-school diploma are about half of those with a bachelor's degree. Those with college degrees have unemployment rates about half those with high school only.

Today, the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015 may well be relegated to lives of struggle and low earnings because we can't be bothered to fund their path to college. Maybe it's not an evil conspiracy to keep the poor in poverty, but it is a conspiracy of indifference, which is just as bad.