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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.
As part of the Promoting Adolescent Student Health (PASH) grant, the Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) administers the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) every other year. In fall 2021, the YRBS was administered to a random sample of high school students at 30 randomly selected School District of Philadelphia (SDP) schools, and the CDC compiled a summary of the results.
Research has found that many high school graduates who intend to enroll in post-secondary education do not follow through with their intentions, a pattern known as “summer melt.” This brief summarizes findings from a study of the summer melt rates of the 2021 cohort of college-intending School District of Philadelphia (SDP) high school seniors.
The 2020-21 Senior Exit Survey contained a subset of questions specifically related to Career and Technical Education (CTE). The survey asked self-identified CTE students about their post-graduation plans for further education and employment. This slide deck provides a summary of the survey results for CTE respondents.
This brief explores 2021-22 student enrollment patterns at District, Alternative, Charter, and Cyber Charter schools in Philadelphia, including by school admission type and student demographics, as well as changes in those patterns over time.
In summer 2021, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) offered a series of virtual and in person summer programs for students who had completed grades PreK-12. In response to students experiencing digital and hybrid learning from March 2020 – June 2021, summer 2021 programming offerings were expanded from previous summers. Nearly 16,000 students enrolled in summer programming, over 12,000 students attended a program for at least one day, and nearly 6,000 students attended at least one program for 75% or more of days.
The School District of Philadelphia implemented a universal K-12 interim assessments program beginning in the 2020-21 school year. All schools across the District administered aimswebPlus for grades K-5 and Star for grades 6-12; reading and math tests were administered for both assessments. The overall goals of this analysis were: (1) to examine whether there are patterns of nonparticipation during the spring assessment window that can provide additional information when interpreting 2020-21 performance and (2) to discover whether there are ways to support increased participation in the 2021-22 testing windows.