Manhattan has the worst chronic absenteeism in NYC — wealth doesn't protect attendance
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
Computed average chronic absenteeism by borough; surfaced Manhattan's high rate despite Manhattan's high average household income. Decomposed by school-type.
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
Average chronic_absenteeism_rate by borough at 2024-25.
Decompose by district within Manhattan; District 5 (Harlem) and District 6 (Washington Heights) drive much of the average.
Caveats
Borough-level averages mask within-borough variation. Manhattan's average is pulled by uptown districts; downtown school absenteeism is closer to citywide.
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.