For the first time in nearly a decade, enrollment at the School District of Philadelphia was higher than the previous year, Pew's annual state of the city report said.
In 2024-2025, an additional 1,713 students were registered, according to the analysis published Monday afternoon. The 1.5% jump could represent a changing tide, although total enrollment is still well below a decade ago. Meanwhile, the rate of Philly residents with a college degree, a key indicator for income, decreased slightly, while the number of children enrolled in preschool or nursery schools remained below the national average.
RELATED: Five takeaways from Pew's state of Philly report, from population growth to racial disparities
The Pew Charitable Trusts report uses public data and information from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics to study immigration, health, housing, economic and other trends in the city.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the education section in the report:
Enrollment, attendance and graduation rate
While the School District of Philadelphia saw a year-to-year uptick in enrollment, charter and Catholic schools have leveled off over the last three straight years. Charter schools have hovered around 64,000 since 2022-2023, down from more than 72,000 in 2018-2019. Catholic schools, which have had just above 16,000 students for three straight years, are down from a 10-year high of more than 24,000 in 2017-2018.
For the School District of Philadelphia, the rise ends a nine-year downward trend that began in 2015-2016, when it had 131,698 students. While enrollment in 2024-2025 is a three-year high of 114,529, that's more than 17,000 students shy of its total nine years ago.
Meanwhile, attendance at the district is down compared with the years of virtual schooling during the COVID pandemic. In 2023-2024, 43.6% of students had 95% attendance records, meaning they missed nine or less days. But during 2020-2021, that rate was 59.8%.
One positive trend that has continued is the rise in four-year graduation rates, with the Class of 2023 up to 74% — an increase of 2 percentage points from the previous year and 9 percentage points from a decade ago.
Nursery schools and preschools
The rate of 3- and 4-year-olds attending nursery schools and preschools was 41.5% in 2023, a significant drop from 49.2% in 2019. From 2007 to 2017, that number rose from 48.4.% to 52.3%, respectively, a previous Pew report shows.
While Katie Martin, one of the researchers on the report, said a number of cities have seen similar decreases due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Philly's rate is below the national average of 48.5%.
"A lot of parents took their children out of care during the pandemic, and there's just been a slow increase to return them to preschools," Martin said. "High-quality preschool education is really important for success for children in K-12 education, so it's a concern that the number remains so low."
Higher education
The rate of city residents with a college degree was 35.7% in 2023, down slightly from the 36.6% reported in 2022 after rising steadily over the past decade. This is slightly below the national average of 36.2%, and far below Washington, D.C. (65.9%), Boston (55.8%) and Pittsburgh (50.5%). Pew attributes this decline to a small reduction of college degrees in people aged 25-44.
Martin isn't overly discouraged by this drop, which she said is within the margin of error.
"We need a few more years of data to see if it's going to be plateauing or increasing, but this number is basically flat from where it was in 2022," Martin said.
Philadelphians with college degrees also continue to make significantly more than their counterparts with high school education. People with a bachelor's degrees or higher had a median income of $69,000, which is above the citywide average of $60,302. People with a high school diploma or equivalent had an average median income of $32,000.
The attainability of higher education is also much higher in certain neighborhoods. At least 75% of the population had a bachelor's degree or higher in portions of Center City, West Philadelphia and Northwest Philadelphia. In other areas, it was less than 25%.
"It's a really key story to tell that can show the importance or show the impact of educational attainment on people's earnings, as well as the types of jobs that they're able to participate in," Martin said.
