School Progress Report on Education and Equity (SPREE)

School Progress Report on Education and Equity (SPREE)

SPREE and the Board Goals & Guardrails

In December 2020, the Board of Education (BOE) established the Goals & Guardrails, which set clear priorities for what our students must know and be able to accomplish, and describe the conditions that must be in place at each school to empower our students to succeed in and beyond the classroom.

The District set 5-year targets that schools need to meet to show they are making progress towards the Goals & Guardrails. The School Progress Report on Education and Equity (SPREE) is a critical tool that shows each school’s progress towards the annual targets and its performance on other important measures like attendance and graduation rates. This guide will help you understand the SPREE report for your child’s school, and it provides tips for how you can support your child’s success.

To learn more about the Board’s Goals and Guardrails click here.
To learn more about the District’s approach to achieving these Goals and Guardrails click here.

What is the SPREE?

A note about the school year 2021-2022 SPREE: These reports reflect results from the first year that the District has had comprehensive state assessment data, including Keystones and PSSAs, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, this year’s SPREE will represent a new baseline and will not include any year-over-year comparisons. This means that each school’s SPREE will only provide information on performance (Meeting, Not Meeting) and will not make comparisons to performance from the prior year (Improving, Not Improving). Based on performance only, schools will receive labels of Levels 1, 3, or 5 for the 2021-2022 SPREE reports. The District plans to include year-over-year comparisons and the full range of score levels on the SPREE starting with the reports for the 2022-2023 school year.

The SPREE is part of the District’s work to continually improve our schools. SPREE reports are released every year and provide a summary of how each school is performing and improving on the Goals & Guardrails and other important measures in the following areas:

Reading & English Language Arts (ELA)

Math & Science

College & Career Readiness

Climate, Culture & Opportunity

Goals & Guardrails Annual Improvement Cycle

Schools use their SPREE to create a school improvement plan for the next year to better support student success and progress towards the Goals and Guardrails.

Understanding Your SPREE Level

There are between 10 and 13 different measures evaluated in the SPREE. For each measure, your school’s SPREE report provides two pieces of information. First, it tells us whether a school is meeting the annual target for that measure. Second, it tells us whether the school improved on that measure from the year before.

Based on that information, each measure gets a color label:

Meeting & Improving: The school met expectations for that school year and improved from the previous year.

Meeting & Not Improving: The school met expectations for that school year but did not improve from the previous year.

Not Meeting & Improving: The school did not meet expectations for that school year, but improved from the previous year.

Not Meeting & Not Improving: The school did not meet expectations for that school year, and did not improve from the previous year.

The SPREE will then provide each school an overall level — the combined result of its performance and improvement on each target or measure.

The overall level will be one of these:

How can you help?

  • Talk with your child about the importance and fun of learning to encourage regular attendance — make sure they do not miss more than eight (8) days of school each year.
  • Understand your child’s daily schedule and be aware of test dates. Make sure your child is rested and prepared, and encourage them to always try their best.
  • Monitor your child’s report card grades and performance on tests throughout the year. Work patiently with them to seek opportunities for improvement where needed.
  • Discuss and review your child’s lessons with them to help them remember what they learned.
  • Participate in school improvement by taking the Philly School Experience Survey (PSES) each spring. Provide honest feedback about your child’s school and their education, and encourage your child to do the same.
  • Work with your School Advisory Council (SAC) to help improve your school’s culture and achievement.
  • Enroll your child in credit recovery or summer programs if needed, to give them an opportunity to get caught up.

School & District-Level Data

FAQs & Resources