Bronx Aerospace High School cut chronic absenteeism by 34 points. How?
A reproducibility log: the data this analysis touched, the queries it ran, the outside sources it leaned on, and the steps a third party would follow to re-run it.
Summary
Pulled Bronx Aerospace HS (DBN 11X440) chronic-absenteeism trajectory and identified the year-over-year drop. Cross-referenced principal changes (public Wayback snapshots) and program changes (news search).
Data sources
- Database tableschools
One row per New York City public school (DBN, name, district, borough, school_type, grade_band, latest_enrollment, proclivity_decile, proclivity_score, closed_at, admission_category).
- Database tableschool_year_metrics
Long-format per-school per-year metric facts (school_dbn, year, metric_key, subgroup, value, suppressed). Loaded from DOE/NYSED public files via scripts/loaders/*.
Steps
Per-year chronic_absenteeism_rate at DBN 11X440 for 2018-19 → 2024-25.
Caveats
A 34-pp drop is unusual; one possible explanation is a measurement/coding change at the school. Verification by interviews is the next step.
Reproduce
Clone the repo, set DATABASE_URL to a Postgres with the project schema loaded, run `npx tsx scripts/loaders/<source>.ts` for any not-yet-loaded data, then issue the queries in the Steps section. The story page also lists the exact `metric_key`/`subgroup`/`year` filters used. Searchable by the answer's headline number — every figure is recomputable from the queries shown.
The recipe lives at data/stories/recipes.ts in the repo. Corrections welcome.