# Methodology and sources

psdreportcard.com is an independent, unofficial transparency tool. It gathers public records from Pennsylvania and the School District of Philadelphia into one report-card format for every public, charter, and alternative school in Philadelphia. It is not affiliated with, operated by, or endorsed by the School District of Philadelphia or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Always confirm enrollment, eligibility, transportation, and admissions details with the official school or the District before making decisions.

Live page: https://psdreportcard.com/about.html

## Sources

- School names, addresses, sectors, grade spans, and locations come from the School District of Philadelphia master list.
- Performance, growth, graduation, attendance, and demographics come primarily from the 2024-25 Future Ready PA Index and PSSA/Keystone results.
- Enrollment, suspensions, staffing, and per-pupil figures come from School District of Philadelphia open data.
- Neighborhood context on the story-leads page uses American Community Survey 5-year estimates, joined to each school by ZIP code.

## The core rule: a blank is never a zero

Some fields are intentionally blank where the state suppresses small counts, where a measure does not apply (such as graduation at elementary schools), for science (under a 2024-25 federal assessment waiver), and for a few alternative programs the state does not report separately. A blank is never counted as a zero. A citywide figure therefore reflects only the schools that report a value and can differ from an official districtwide rate.

## How citywide figures are calculated

Most citywide figures are enrollment-weighted across the schools that report a value. Trends are shown on a consistent set of schools across years where possible, so the years are comparable. Graduation is averaged across the high schools that report a 4-year cohort rate, which runs higher than the districtwide rate because lower-graduating alternative and transfer programs are often not included.

## Definitions

- Proficient or advanced: the top two of four PSSA/Keystone performance bands.
- PVAAS: the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System, the state's year-to-year academic-growth measure. A score of 70 meets the statewide standard. Growth reflects how far a school moves its students, not where they start.
- On-track: ninth-graders earning enough credits and attending enough to be on pace to graduate. It is widely cited as a strong early predictor of graduation.
- Economically disadvantaged: students whose family income is low enough to qualify for free or reduced-price meals, or an equivalent income measure.
- Chronic absence: missing about 10 percent or more of school days, that is, attending fewer than 90 percent of days.
- Selective or criteria-based admission: schools that admit by criteria. Admit rate overstates true selectivity, because applications are not unique students and offers exceed eventual seats.

## Reading the report cards

On each report card the bar is the school's value, the vertical tick is the statewide average, and the caret is Pennsylvania's 2033 goal or standard. Four- and five-year graduation are shown for high schools. Transportation is a straight-line estimate of the 1.5-mile rule, not an official eligibility determination.

## Privacy

There are no student-level records on the site, only school-level figures that Pennsylvania and the District already publish. When a visitor types an address to find catchment schools, the lookup happens on the visitor's device and the address is never stored on a server. The optional email newsletter saves only the names of a subscriber's catchment schools, never the address itself.