The Pennsylvania Department of Education has released its annual list of Persistently Dangerous Schools.

While the School District of Philadelphia cut its number of dangerous schools by almost half in the last year, 10 high schools remain on the list. And four of them are in the Northeast.

Fels, Frankford, Lincoln and Northeast high schools all meet the state qualifications for the list, based on the variety and number of violent incidents among students during the school year. These four were on the 2011-2012 list, and all made the list in 2009-2010. Harding Middle School also made the 2009-10 list, but has since dropped off.

Pennsylvania recently released its list of Persistently Dangerous Schools for the 2009-2010 school year, and the top 25 are all in Philadelphia. Of those 25, five are in the Northeast.

A school is defined as persistently dangerous if it meets any of the following criteria for this year and one of the two previous years: at least five dangerous incidents in a school with enrollment of 250 or less; dangerous incidents representing 2 percent of a school’s enrollment for schools with 251 to 1,000 students; 20 or more dangerous incidents in schools with enrollments exceeding 1,000. continue reading »