At this week’s board meeting directors of the Pittsburgh Public Schools received the findings of an evaluation completed by the Council of Great City Schools, which an article noted “…is likely the most comprehensive look at the district in recent history …”
In fact, the Council completed an evaluation of the District in 2006: the report can be found here, and our Policy Brief on the 2006 evaluation can be found here. A search of the Council’s website shows four studies on Pittsburgh in the last eleven years. It is also worth noting that the District received a report in 2013 as part of a “large scale visioning process”.
What does the Council’s 2017 report show? At 175 pages there is a lot in there, but it should come as no surprise that the district’s enrollment is smaller (24,190) then it was in the 2006 report (35,146). However, the District’s enrollment fell at a greater rate than the state (31% vs 5%) based on the 2006 Council data. The pupil to teacher ratio is about the same, 14 students per teacher, as it was in 2006 (13). There is plenty of data about academic performance, benchmarked against the state and against other districts the Council analyzes.
So will this be the report that the District utilizes going forward? Maybe, but was that not the case with previous reports as well?
