Eric.ed.gov – Citywide Education Progress Report: Philadelphia

The Citywide Education Progress Report looks at how a city is doing across three goals: (1) The education system is continuously improving; (2) All students have access to a high-quality education; and (3) The education strategy is rooted in the community. Across each goal it presents indicators of what the city is doing and how it is doing. The reports focus on education strategies for the 2017-18 school year. The analyses reflect developments through June 2018. These are updates to the original reports from the 2016-17 school year. In late 2017, the School District of Philadelphia began the process to return school governance to local control after 17 years under state control, with a new, mayoral-appointed board taking the place of the School ReformCommission. Over the past year, there has been progress toward simplifying the school choice system, improving school leadership, and supporting parent advocacy. Graduation rates have been on the rise, but they remain below the state average. School proficiency rates did not show statistically significant improvement relative to the state, and remained about 20 percentage points below state averages. Low-income students in the city are performing slightly lower in math and reading assessments than their peers nationally. In advanced coursework in high school, black students were underenrolled, while Asian American, Pacific Islander, and students of more than one race were overenrolled. [For the main report, “Stepping Up: How Are American Cities Delivering on the Promise of Public School Choice?,” see ED578178.]