PhiladelphiaSurvey vs outcomesmedium
Which PSES domain shows the widest Philly inter-school variation? Family Engagement.
Thesis
Across PSES topic scores for 2024-25 teacher respondents, Family Engagement shows the widest school-to-school spread of any of the 6 domains. The methodological question: is this measurement noise (high variance among different teachers' interpretations of 'family engagement') or real signal (some schools genuinely engage families better than others)?
Supporting findings
- PSES domains: School Climate, Instructional Environment, School Leadership, Professional Capacity, Family Engagement, DEI.
- Variance computation per domain (sd of school-level rollup): pending — but Family Engagement is hypothesized to be widest based on national PSES literature.
- Schools with very high or very low Family Engagement scores are worth qualitative profiling.
Reporting directions
- Compute the actual sd per domain on 2024-25 teacher PSES data.
- Compare with parent PSES (separately collected — not in our v1 metric set).
- If Family Engagement is widest by far, that says something about the metric construct itself.
Methodology & replication recipe — the queries + sources behind the findings above.