Each year, SDP and its partner organizations offer a variety of summer programs to ensure that students, especially those most vulnerable to experiencing summer learning loss, have the opportunity to continue learning during the summer months. This report provides a summary of the 2022 summer programs, including information about enrollment and attendance, and findings from surveys and observations.
The 2021-22 school year was the first year that the PSSAs and Keystones were administered normally since 2018-19 (pre-pandemic). These briefs describe District-wide performance trends on the PSSAs and the Keystone exams from 2014-15 to 2021-22.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education requires each district to survey exiting seniors about their intentions after high school—specifically, whether students plan to obtain additional education, secure employment, or pursue other activities. This graduate follow-up survey asked Career and Technical Education (CTE) students from the class of 2021 about their experiences after graduation.
Beginning with the class of 2023, Pennsylvania high school students will need to demonstrate career or postsecondary preparedness to meet statewide graduation requirements and receive a diploma. This Philadelphia Education Research Consortium (PERC) publication examines Pennsylvania’s new graduation requirements (Act 158), including the results of an analysis using historical District data to explore potential impacts for school communities.
This report and the accompanying addendum examine fall 2021 Star Reading and Math assessment performance for SDP students who attended 2021 summer programming compared to a matched sample of students who did not attend summer programming.
In fall 2020, all SDP students in grades K-12 attended school virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and students in grades K-5 took the within-year aimswebPlus Reading and Math assessments while students in grades 6-12 took the within-year Star Reading and Math assessments. In fall 2021, students returned to school in person, and all grades K-12 took the within-year Star Reading and Math assessments. Star includes an additional performance group, and the process of categorizing students into performance groups differs between aimswebPlus and Star. This set of reports compares student participation and performance on the within-year assessments in fall 2020 and fall 2021 given this context.
The 2021-22 school year was the first year that the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) administered the Renaissance Star assessments as a universal screening tool to all students in grades K-12. This series of end of year reports provides an in-depth look at participation and performance patterns as measured during the four 2021-22 Star assessment windows (Fall, Winter 1, Winter 2, and Spring).
When selecting which data to use to monitor progress towards the Board’s Goals & Guardrails, the School District of Philadelphia used prior research that identified relationships between certain data points and school-level outcomes. The selected data points reflect a broad range of specific, measurable characteristics of schools, but they can also be seen as three distinct “sets” of data points reflecting enrollment demographics, school staffing, and school climate. This brief seeks to identify which sets of predictor variables best predict the academic outcome variables and, therefore, provide the best “signals” for identifying groups of schools with common underlying root causes.
In the 2021-22 school year, the District began using Renaissance Star assessments as the screening and progress monitoring tool for all grades, assessing students during four assessment windows throughout the school year. The Star assessments provide multiple metrics that help monitor student performance at each testing window and student growth between testing windows. This reference document discusses what these metrics are, how they are calculated, and what kind of information they provide about student learning.
As one of the primary measures of students’ college and career readiness, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) closely monitors graduation rates each year. This brief explores graduation rates across public schools in the city of Philadelphia in 2020-21, comparing trends for District, Alternative, and Charter schools.