Posted on May 8, 2023
Categories: Research and Evaluation

This report continues a series of publications examining the School District of Philadelphia’s (SDP) 2021-22 school selection process (SSP), and extends the analyses to final fall enrollment.

Four reports have already been published on the 2021-22 SSP, each of which is aligned to specific components of the annual cycle; specifically (1) student qualifications and applications; (2) outcomes of admissions lotteries; (3) distribution of admission offers via the waitlist and student responses to admission offers; and (4) comparative summaries of applicants internal to the District and external applicants (e.g., from students enrolled in charter, private, or parochial schools).

This report summarizes the last phase of this process with a specific focus on high school enrollment results for 9th grade students in Fall 2022. Fall enrollment is important to consider because some students may accept an offer of admission from a particular school but ultimately enroll at a different school. For this reason, fall enrollment represents the final action that students and families take in choosing where to attend 9th grade.

Key findings include:

  • From 2021-22 to 2022-23, the District saw increases in the percent of first-time 9th graders who identified as Hispanic/Latinx and/or were English Learners.
  • At criteria-based schools, students identifying as Hispanic/Latinx, who had IEPs, were ELs, or were economically disadvantaged were consistently underrepresented in all years covered in this report (2019-20 through 2022-23).