{"id":27359,"date":"2026-06-11T16:27:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/?p=27359"},"modified":"2026-06-11T16:29:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:29:04","slug":"philadelphia-public-school-enrollment-2015-16-to-2025-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/2026\/06\/11\/philadelphia-public-school-enrollment-2015-16-to-2025-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Public School Enrollment, 2015-16 to 2025-26"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\">[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;]This brief provides information about enrollment patterns for K-12 students in Philadelphia\u2019s public schools. The analyses focus on enrollment changes with respect to governing sector (District, Philadelphia Charter, Cyber Charter, Alternative, or Other), admission type (catchment, citywide, or criteria-based), and student demographics, based on data from the October 1 Enrollment Snapshot.<\/p>\n<p>This brief looks at enrollment trends from 2015-16 through 2025-26, with a particular focus on year-over-year changes from 2024-25 to 2025-26.<\/p>\n<p>Key findings include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As of October 1, 2025, overall enrollment in Philadelphia public schools was 198,405 students. Of that number:\n<ul>\n<li>116,898 students were enrolled in District and Alternative schools.\n<ul>\n<li>113,735 students were enrolled in District schools.<\/li>\n<li>3,163 students were enrolled in Alternative schools.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>64,469 students were enrolled in Philadelphia Charter schools.<\/li>\n<li>14,844 students were enrolled in Cyber Charter schools.<\/li>\n<li>2,194 students were enrolled in Other school categories.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>From 2015-16 to 2025-26:\n<ul>\n<li>District school enrollment decreased by 13.6% (17,963 fewer students).<\/li>\n<li>Alternative school enrollment increased by 25.1% (634 more students).<\/li>\n<li>Philadelphia Charter school enrollment increased by 1.6% (1,028 more students).<\/li>\n<li>Cyber Charter school enrollment increased by 191.9% (9,759 more students).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Similar to prior years, Spanish remained the most common non-English language spoken at home, as reported by families of students in District schools.\n<ul>\n<li>However, for the first time since 2020-21, the number and percentage of students with a reported home language of Spanish declined year-over-year, dropping by 2.3% from 2024-25 to 2025-26.<\/li>\n<li>Portuguese was the second most common home language reported for students. However, for the first time since 2015-16, the number and percentage of students with a reported home language of Portuguese declined year-over-year, dropping by 4.2% from 2024-25 to 2025-26.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_btn title=&#8221;CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE BRIEF&#8221; style=&#8221;gradient-custom&#8221; gradient_custom_color_1=&#8221;#0b315b&#8221; gradient_custom_color_2=&#8221;#398635&#8243; align=&#8221;center&#8221; css=&#8221;&#8221; button_block=&#8221;true&#8221; link=&#8221;url:https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F10H_gp6gwzyGYpMtiN6LpnsUhT0wj02hD%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&#8221;][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This brief provides information about enrollment patterns for K-12 students in Philadelphia\u2019s public school (District, Charter, Alternative, and Other), looking at enrollment trends from 2015-16 through 2025-26, with a particular focus on year-over-year changes from 2024-25 to 2025-26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103956,"featured_media":27371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enrollment","category-system-trends"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103956"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27404,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27359\/revisions\/27404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philasd.org\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}