PhiladelphiaIntervention cohortsMethodology recipe

Philadelphia Military Academy graduates 100% — and 26% read at grade level

A reproducibility log: the data this analysis touched, the queries it ran, and how a third party would re-run it.

Summary

Joined Philadelphia Military Academy's grad rate (4-yr) with Keystone Literature across years. Surfaced as a case study of grad-rate vs proficiency mismatch.

Data sources

Database tablephilly_school_year_metrics
Long-format facts. PK (school_ulcs, year, metric_key, subgroup, population_cut). Carries comparison_group_percentile + citywide_percentile (direction-adjusted).
External datasetSDP PSSA & Keystone (OpenDataPhilly CDN)
External datasetSDP School Performance (OpenDataPhilly CDN)

Steps

Filter to PMA + the two metrics.

SELECT s.name, gr.value AS grad, lit.value AS lit
FROM philly_schools s
JOIN philly_school_year_metrics gr ON gr.school_ulcs = s.ulcs_code AND gr.metric_key='graduation_rate_4yr' AND gr.subgroup='ALL'
JOIN philly_school_year_metrics lit ON lit.school_ulcs = s.ulcs_code AND lit.metric_key='keystone_literature_proficiency' AND lit.subgroup='ALL' AND gr.value>=95 AND lit.value<50
WHERE s.name LIKE '%MILITARY ACADEMY%';

Caveats

PMA's high grad rate likely reflects waiver-based graduation requirements common at alternative HS. The story doesn't editorialize; it describes the gap and asks what the metric means.

Reproduce

Run query above.

The recipe lives at data/cities/philly/stories/recipes.ts in the repo.