PhiladelphiaDiscipline & climatemedium
Philly publishes the suspension distribution — and the heavy-tail share is the real story
Thesis
Unlike NYC (which publishes a single 'suspension rate'), SDP publishes the full distribution of how many suspensions students received: % with zero, with 1, with 2, with 3, with 4+. The 4+ share is the analytically interesting tail. In 2024-25, eight Philly schools have 1.8% or more of students with 4+ suspensions: Grover Washington Jr MS (5.3%), Gen. George G. Meade (5.0%), Strawberry Mansion HS (4.0%), Murrell Dobbins HS (3.0%), Roxborough HS (2.5%), Samuel Gompers (2.2%), Sayre HS (1.9%), Warren G. Harding MS (1.8%).
Supporting findings
- All 8 are 100% econ-disadv schools — discipline-tail correlates with poverty.
- Two MS, four HS, one K-8 (Gompers), one elementary (Meade) — pattern is older grades but with exceptions.
- Samuel Gompers is ALSO in the PSSA punching-above list — high-need school doing well on tests AND with heavy discipline-tail. Both stories about the same school.
- NYC's missing data here is real — their suspension loader is a stub, so no comparable figures exist.
Reporting directions
- Time series: pull the 6-year suspension trend for each of the top-8 schools. Is the tail growing or shrinking?
- Cross-reference with persistent attendance: do high-OSS schools also have low attendance? Likely yes; the question is direction of causation.
- Compare district + alt with charter (charter OSS data is in our DB too) — does the charter sector have a lower or higher chronic-suspension tail?
Methodology & replication recipe — the queries + sources behind the findings above.