Where every Philadelphia number comes from

Metrics

Algorithms and derivations

• Chronic absenteeism as 100 minus the 90%-attendance share — Neither publisher gives a school-level chronic-absenteeism rate, but both give the share of students attending 90%+ of days.
• Citywide and peer-group percentiles — For each metric, year, and subgroup, every school is ranked among all default-included Philadelphia schools (citywide) and among its own peer group (peers).
• Peer groups: 40 nearest neighbors on demographics — Each school's peer group is the 40 schools most similar to it demographically, chosen only from schools with the same grade configuration, the same admission bucket (catchment, lottery, selective, CTE, alternative), and the same sector (district vs charter vs cyber).
• Suspension shares derived from the published 0/1/2/3 columns — The district publishes the share of students with zero, one, two, and three suspensions but not 'four or more'.
• Survey topic scores per respondent type — The district publishes survey subtopic scores per respondent type but topic scores only aggregated across respondents.
• School demographic shares from per-grade counts — The district's enrollment file has one row per school and grade.
• Reading the state's wide-format datafile — The state's Future Ready datafile has one row per school and hundreds of columns named measure_subgroup.
• Movers: change between two years — The Movers table is simply each school's value in the later year minus its value in the earlier year, for schools with an unsuppressed all-students value in both years, sorted by that change..
• Weighting the state's attendance measure by enrollment — The state publishes no student counts for its attendance measure, and enrollment is loaded for every sector only for 2024-25.

Working-analysis statistics

Every figure on the chronic-absenteeism working analysis renders from one committed data file; these trees explain each block of it.

• District-wide chronic absenteeism by year — The share of all students at district-run schools who attended less than 90% of days, each year, plus how individual schools were spread (median and percentiles).
• Chronic absenteeism by grade — The district-wide below-90 share for each grade, K through 12.
• Chronic absenteeism by type of school — The below-90 share by grade configuration (elementary, K-8, middle, middle-high, high).
• Chronic absenteeism vs average daily attendance — How the two measures move together, and by how much more the threshold measure changes.
• Chronic absenteeism by race/ethnicity — Each group's below-90 share over all schools that report the group.
• Chronic absenteeism by gender (schools reporting both) — Male and female below-90 shares restricted to schools reporting both genders in that year, plus a fixed-panel version restricted to schools reporting both in every in-person year.
• Black–White gap at schools reporting both groups — Black and White below-90 shares at schools reporting both groups: the pooled rates and their difference; the mean of each school's own Black-minus-White difference (every school equal, and weighted by the school's Black + White student records) with the level pair behind each; and a fixed panel of schools reporting both groups in every in-person year.
• Chronic absenteeism by school composition (thirds) — Schools split into thirds by a demographic share, and each third's student-weighted below-90 share.
• How many schools at each level — School counts in 5-percent ranges of the below-90 share, and how many schools are above 50%.
• Year-to-year stability — How much a school's below-90 share changes from one year to the next, and how that varies with school size.
• District-wide months, including 2025-26 — The within-month below-90 share, district-wide, each month of each school year, plus a September–March average.
• District-run vs charter on the state's measure — Sector averages, like-for-like comparisons by school type, and within-school subgroup gaps, all on the state's Regular Attendance measure, for attendance years 2017-18 through 2023-24.
• Source-vs-database crosschecks and universe reconciliation — The district-wide series recomputed straight from the district's file and compared to the served database, plus the list of school-years the database lacks.

Publisher files

• Master School List, 2024-25 — School District of Philadelphia. first-fetch findings
• Enrollment & Demographics, 2024-25 — School District of Philadelphia. first-fetch findings
• Student attendance — % with 90%+ attendance, by school and year — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• Average daily attendance, by school and year — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• District-wide monthly attendance — % with 90%+ attendance within the month — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• Out-of-school suspensions, by school and year — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• Graduation rates by cohort, 4/5/6-year — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• PSSA & Keystone results, 2024-25 — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• PSSA & Keystone results, 2023-24 — School District of Philadelphia (Performance Office). first-fetch findings
• Philly School Experience Survey — topic and subtopic scores, 2019-20 to 2024-25 — School District of Philadelphia (Research, Evaluation & Accountability). first-fetch findings
• Future Ready PA Index datafile, 2024-25 — Pennsylvania Department of Education (Future Ready PA Index). first-fetch findings
• Future Ready PA Index datafile, 2023-24 — Pennsylvania Department of Education (Future Ready PA Index). first-fetch findings
• Future Ready PA Index datafile, 2022-23 — Pennsylvania Department of Education (Future Ready PA Index). first-fetch findings
• Future Ready PA Index datafile, 2021-22 — Pennsylvania Department of Education (Future Ready PA Index). first-fetch findings
• Future Ready PA Index datafile, 2020-21 (older long format) — Pennsylvania Department of Education (Future Ready PA Index). first-fetch findings
• Future Ready PA Index datafile, 2018-19 (older long format) — Pennsylvania Department of Education (Future Ready PA Index). first-fetch findings

Registry of every source with URLs, column mappings, and caveats: sources.yaml

Data loads

Every run of a loader script is recorded with the file it read (SHA-256 hash), the script, and the code commit. Most recent first.