William Penn Charter School
| William Penn Charter School | |
|---|---|
| Address | |
|
3000 West School House Lane Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States |
|
| Information | |
| Motto | Good Instruction Is Better Than Riches |
| Established | 1689 |
| Founder | William Penn |
| Category | Independent |
| Head of school | Darryl J. Ford, PhD |
| Grades | Pre-K – 12 |
| Gender | Coeducational |
| Enrollment | 960 |
| Campus | Urban |
| Color(s) | Blue and Yellow |
| Mascot | Quaker |
| Nickname | PC |
| Rival | Germantown Academy |
| Accreditation | Pennsylvania Association of Private Academic Schools (PAPAS) |
| Yearbook | The Class Record |
| Affiliations | Religious Society of Friends |
| Website | http://penncharter.com |
William Penn Charter School (commonly known as Penn Charter or simply PC) is an independent school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1689 at the urging of William Penn as the "Public Grammar School" and chartered in 1698 to be operated by the "Overseers of the public School, founded by Charter in the town & County of Philadelphia" in Pennsylvania. It is the oldest Quaker school in the world, the oldest elementary school in Pennsylvania, and the fifth oldest elementary school in the United States following The Collegiate School (1628), Boston Latin School (1635), Hartford Public High School (1638), and Roxbury Latin (1645).
Today, Penn Charter enrolls boys and girls in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. It is considered to be an exclusive private school in terms of admission criteria and is ranked among the top schools in the Philadelphia area. According to Worth Magazine, Penn Charter ranks within the nation's top 100 private and public schools that send the most students to the Ivy League, particularly Harvard, Princeton and Yale. The school motto, taken from one of Penn's writings, is "Good instruction is better than riches."
Penn Charter is among the first schools in the United States to offer education to all religions (1689), financial aid (1701), matriculation to girls (1754), and education to all races (1770). The "Charter" in the school's name does not, as might be assumed, mean that it is a modern "charter school". Rather, it is a reference to the historic document that was signed by William Penn to establish the first Quaker school in America. Originally located on the east side of Fourth Street below Chestnut, the school officially consolidated in 1874 as an all-boys college preparatory school at 12th and Market Streets. Penn Charter moved to its current forty-seven acre East Falls campus in 1925. In 1980 the school became fully co-educational by allowing girls to continue past the second grade, thus graduating the first co-ed senior class in 1992.
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